2022-09-12 Meeting notes

Attendees


Guests: Kristin Martin (PC); julie.bickle ; Ian Walls ; Marc Johnson ; Jesse Koennecke 

Discussion items

ItemWhoNotes
FOLIO SMLLC Manager
  • Boaz steps down
  • Dracine volunteers
  • Vote

Gratitude to Boaz for serving in this role. Dracine has offered to serve.

AGREED - Dracine will serve as new FOLIO SMLLC manager

ACTION - Mike will coordinate with OLF to make change

 WOLFcon recap and action items CC

 Recap and discuss CC meeting, 2 Cross Council meetings (see part 1 and part 2) and other discussions:

Paula - Note that we can't be sure of surplus. Thinks that the three councils need to discuss more

Harry - We might want to out money aside this year and then spend on WOLFcon. Could be lots of things like making attendance free, work to grow community

Boaz - Feel we are stuck with what we are working on, can we invest the money in other things. One idea is investing in onboarding developers or training developers. Can be tied to DEI. Think about values for community driven work

Paula - At meeting did have surplus for end FY22 and agreed to put that as reserve fund

Simeon - Think we should agree on the goal for reserve fund

Simeon - Think from cross council meeting that the amount of money is small compared with resource needs for FOLIO, we need to use it in a way that leverages the small amount to help get more resources

Marc Johnson - From TC have had discussions of bringing initiatives forward for funding, discussion sounds different

Mike - Should decide on reserve level. Multiple ideas for how to spend surplus and should circle back with discussion.

Mike - Other discussions included platform and product, what we other key topics or actions?

Simeon - Think we should get to the bottom of what we mean by "the FOLIO platform"

Simeon - Suggest that we schedule more cross council meetings. I think that quarterly might be a good idea.

Kristin - Being able to discuss cross council was really helpful, highlighted areas where councils thinking differently. Would like to discuss definitions further, these are foundational to knowing what the work is.

Marc - TC discussed and agreed that we need better cross council collaboration

Tom - Agree that defining product and platform is essential. Resourcing group may help with how best to apply funding, next meeting is this time next week

Mike - Cadence of cross council meetings? Quarterly, monthly?

Kristin - We'd want to make sure our agendas are well-thought, regardless.

Marc - Have attended meeting of all councils and notes gaps between them and concerns about the governance model. Might also be other channels as

AGREED - Quarterly meetings

ACTION - Mike will work with other chairs to set them up

Ian Walls - the Platform is the common base for FOLIO LSP, ReShare, and various regional builds (each of which are Products)

Mike - How/where should the platform and product be defined?

Kristin - Think it needs to be a tri-council discussion. There is a significant marketing

Marc - Notes that TC have an initiative going on call "platform minimal". This has an idea of platform baked into it that perhaps isn't what everyone agrees with. This might not be the same definition as we want for marketing.

ACTION - Mike will coordinate with other chair/co-chairs to facilitate the cross council discussion

Marc - Notes concerns about governance model, that was his number one thing from TC. 

Boaz - Though there was discussion of accountability and who owns decisions. May want to spend time 

Marc - I agree we need to spend more time. We have two levels of misalignment wrt platform:
* higher level: is there one platform or many?
* lower level: what makes up a / the platform?

Simeon - Think that question of authority was key topic in second day. Think sense was that we need to refine current model rather than trying to make major changes so soon. For example, want to empower TC to publish agreements clearly so at least we can tell how much is it being followed

Kristin - WOLFcon was a good opportunity to think about how to influence and guide the project without formal authority. In open source we often can tell people what to do.

Marc - TC has recently had somewhat fraught discussion where it has realized that it can provide guidance but doesn't have authority. Agree that agreements should be written down so that we can see whether guidance if followed. However, TC doesn't have capacity to carefully track where this is followed.

Mike - Put lots of effort into cross-council discussion including definition of "product" and "platform", and where responsibility and authority lies

Treasurer's reportPaula

Ended FY22 with a surplus which we will use to create a reserve fund.

For FY23:

  • $370,000 in membership commitments so far
    • $240,000 in payments received
  • $109,000 commitment from FOLIO for tech support

Barring unforeseen expenses, expect a modest surplus at EOY

AGREED discuss next time the timescale for developer funding (current commitment is through end Dec 2022)

AGREED discuss next time the reserve level we would like to aim for (currently have $90k which is about 3 months, best practice is 3-6 months)

Additional agenda itemsCC

Tom - Notes prior CC agreement for CC members to follow up with 3 people each to better understand opportunities to improve FOLIO

ACTION - Everyone to add responses to https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-F613EM2d4pOwgRQobRQyS0k5T2T9RjoprNcfA_NLa0/edit in time for discussion at next meeting