Agenda

  • DrupalCon Europe
  • Financial Update
  • Budget
  • Drupal.Org Redesign
  • Publicizing Meeting Minutes

Board Members in attendance

  • Bert Boerland
  • Dries Buytaert
  • Angela Byron
  • Jeff Eaton
  • Larry Garfield
  • Gerhard Killesreiter
  • Dries Knapen
  • Jacob Redding

Absent (approved): Kieran Lal, on holiday.

Drupalcon Europe

VOTE 1: do we accept the Hungarian proposal as the official DrupalCon Europe 2008? (ACCEPTED8 yes, 0 no, 0 abstain) Bert asked who from the Association would coordinate with the Drupalcon Europe team. Jacob Redding appointed himself to act in this role.

Financial Update

Dries Knapen then provided a financial update. The current funds available (including bank, PayPal, SPI, Amazon Associates) is 76K EUR (120K USD)

Since the General Assembly on January 15, we have had: -
40 Organization Memberships (4300 USD) -
106 Individual Memberships (3400 USD) -
2 USD 500+ donations 
DrupalCon Barcelona final settlement by Robert Garrigos: 1600 EUR 
Drupalcon Boston Bert Boerland pointed out that the exchange rate between USD and EUR is an issue. DriesK responded that we are keeping our funds in accounts which are based in both Euros and U.S. dollars. This allows us to keep our funds in the currency local to the expected expenses and limit problems from exchange rate fluctuations. Further discussion of this topic will be moved to the mailing list. Jacob asked whether or not any profit from Drupalcon NA would be rolled over to Drupalcon Europe. DriesK pointed out that it would just be put back in the bank account, where it could be spent on any item, including Drupalcon Europe.

Budget

DriesB assembled all the budget input and made that available. We need to discuss this and match it with the actual budget: http://buytaert.net/drupal-association-budget-2008.pdf (temporary URL). Time was given to provide feedback on the budget. Dries pointed out that the budget was just basically there as a guideline, and would be updated to reflect the actual money we possess. The legal budget assumes SFLC's counsel, which is free of cost. But recently, he was asked to provide a second opinion on the copyright matters, which would of course incur additional costs. Dries said the way to handle this was to send an e-mail with some concrete numbers to cover this kind of thing, so it could be reflected in the budget. Numbers in the budget are important for designating priorities. Jacob asked whether we could see a budget that also includes expected income, so that we can have an idea of what we expect to bring in in order to shape what we expect to spend. Dries noted that this was a good idea, but is hampered by the fact that we have not traditionally had a reliable income source -- efforts like advertising/partnerships are still in flux. But for reference, in 2007 we raised about 108K Euro/160K USD. Dries Knapen pointed out that a way to get around this uncertainty would be to prioritize the budget; for example, identify areas that /have/ to be covered, like accounting. Dries Buytaert pointed out that there is a Must/Could/Should/Want column in the budget to cover this.

Drupal.org redesign

Kieran has requested for $100,000 USD to be budgeted for the Drupal.org redesign. The actual spending will take place in contract approvals. The Association will be presented with a range of choices, and recommendations based on actual contacts submissions, courtesy of the Drupal.org Redesign organizing team.
VOTE 2: we acknowledge that we'll probably spend up to $100k USD on the redesign and will plan for it, but not commit any specific money at this time until we see RFCs. (APPROVED 8 yes, 0 no, 0 abstain)

VOTE 3: do we authorize the Drupal.org redesign team to solicit Requests for Proposals for the redesign of Drupal.org according to the process described by Kieran (see http://buytaert.net/b.html)? (APPROVED8 yes, 0 no, 0 abstain)

Publicizing Meeting Minutes

Over and over again, publicizing meeting minutes has been brought up as a step toward the Drupal Association achieving better transparency with the Drupal community. This agenda item was brought up as something to vote on, although Dries Buytaert has asked for voting to be postponed until after legal counsel is sought. U
NOFFICIAL POLL
: do we want to pursue this and contact a lawyer (spend money) to help us figure [the publicizing of meeting minutes] out? (8 yes, 2 no, 1 abstain) We will pursue this with a lawyer to find out what our options are.