Attending:

jacob
Larry
Neil
Greg
Narayan
Dries
Cary
Kieran
Khalid

Thank yous

  • Peter is doing more good work on D&O insurance and general liability for conferences and other activites. Since we don't have a building and our purpose is not typical, the companies are confused. We (Dries/Jacob) are discussing this with other FOSS Leaders.
  • Shouka (our lawyer) is doing lots of great work with the IRS.
  • Drupalcon event folks are doing lots of great work (Cary, Chicago team).

IRS Status

  • Lots of questions about Drupalcon Inc. relationship to Drupal Association vzw. Our scholarships alone are confusing to the IRS.
  • Our reviewer is responding quickly these days.
  • We hope to be done this fall (2010).

DrupalCon Copenhagen Updates

  • Cary made a great update to the Association mailing list Thu the 22nd called "[association] DrupalCon Update"
  • Ticket sales are ahead of where Paris was at this point
  • Sponsorship sales are a bit slower than we hoped
  • Financially this conference looks like it will lose a fair amount money ~(50kEuro) so we should do as much as we can to promote ticket sales and/or sponsorship
  • Hired Richey Zamor and Crystal Williams who are doing great work selling sponsorships.
  • Chicago's keynotes should help to draw people in (tickets and sponsorships).
  • We probably need a more complete, ongoing model for sponsorships to make the European conferences more sustainable.
  • London and Sao Palo are taking baby steps towards completion.
  • Kieran had concern that Chicago's keynotes are too technical/wonky. Debated a bit. Decided to push this to more appropriate venue.
  • Kieran: We are paying Blue Projects nearly 100kEuros for Copenhagen. They did not respond to Kieran's request for a Core Developer Summit venue. Per Cary, that is not technically in their scope of responsibility.
  • Kieran: We knew that our sponsorship salesperson and marketing paid/volunteers were not doing good work for Copenhagen almost right away. We need the association (or a local organizing committee or...) to push harder to execute properly right away.

Hiring Update

  • Sponsorship salesperson/manager of development is a goal. We are not executing well on this front.
  • Conference manager: this position is not logistical details (since blueproject/groundswell do that) but they keep track of "everything else"

Redesign Updates

  • We've now got contractors rolling.
  • Git Migration technical implementation scoped at 1000 hours. 3X initial estimate for whole project.
  • Current estimates could be 2X budget. Need tighter financial model, management.
  • Redesign sprint
    • Moving to a scrum project management system
    • Standardizing on tags, and a single backlog
    • Front page post promoted
    • Project status Major deployed on Drupal.org issue queues
    • Project browsing Solr making great progress
    • Great strides in creating infrastructure development tools, de-coupling infrastructure from OSUOSL bureaucratic security bottlenecks
    • Architecture road map coming together: https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/redesign?status=All
    • Project module road map extensive and detailed, over existing budget
  • Microsoft - funding .zip files, better ads, better windows documentation. $10K, but tax issues.
  • Sent Bluecheese theme contributors mailing to ~200 contributors
  • Fundamentally we need to decide: cut features or expand budget (by increasing revenue) or pray we get more volunteers.

Financial Overview

  • After Copenhagen (assuming it is break-even) we will have approximately 500kEuros.
  • Our burn rate means we will have ~150 days of redesign
  • We are working on improving our revenue from advertising on d.o