Drupal Association Board Meeting: 17 December 2014

This week we held our last board meeting of the year, and we covered a lot a of ground. Unlike November, where we had a relatively short public meeting, this session took the full two hours to get through. We covered a lot of topics, from DrupalCon Amsterdam to updates from the Working Groups. As always, you can review the minutes, the materials, or the meeting recording to catch up on all the details. Here's a summary for you as well.

Operational Update

The month of November was short given the US holiday (Thanksgiving), but we still have a number of initiatives that we managed to push significantly forward. Among them:

• Licensing Working Group: We recently put out a call for volunteers for the Licensing Working Group, whose charter was approved at the November board meeting. If you are interested in licensing issues, we hope that you will consider applying. The Licensing Working Group will play a pivotal role in helping contributors navigate what is and isn't allowed quickly and in keeping our code GPL compliant and safe.
• Social capital and the Driesnote: In Amsterdam, Dries laid out a vision for the future of contribution in our community. We also began sharing a plan for Drupal.org in 2015 at DrupalCon Amsterdam that aligns with that vision. We have been laying the groundwork over the last few months, working on commit messages and profile improvements that will make it possible to illustrate not just code contribution, but the many kinds of contribution that individuals (and soon, organizations!) make in the Drupal community.
• 2015 workplans: Association staff have been very busy preparing workplans for 2015 as well. The DrupalCon team has been rethinking food and fun at DrupalCons based on recent survey feedback. The Drupal.org team has been working on the roadmap. Our revenue team has been planning for solidifying the new revenue programs we launched this year (like Drupal Jobs) and planning for new opportunities as well.
• DrupalCon Latin America: We are all very excited to get to Bogota for DrupalCon Latin America next February. Everything is on track for this event from a logistics standpoint. We have speakers and space and now all we need are more people. We are planning for 400 people to be there and have about 90 registered so far. Normally, we would have a much higher percentage of tickets sold at this point, but with a very minimal price increase between rates, and with the holidays, we suspect we will see more registrations closer to the date of the Con.

Marketing & Branding Committee Update

We're coming up to a pretty pivotal time for Drupal marketing. As we near a Drupal 8 release, the Marketing and Branding Committee can help lead the community in making this the biggest Drupal release ever. In the meeting, the Board voted to approve the appointment of Gina Montoya of Blink Reaction as the new Chair of that committee. Congratualtions and thank you Gina!

DrupalCon Amsterdam Wrap

Over the last few Cons, we have worked hard to collect more data about our attendees and their experience and to analyze that data to understand what's working and what's not. We looked at a LOT of data for DrupalCon Amsterdam, and shared what we learned and what we will be applying to future Cons. In short - the Con was very successful financially, but we continue to struggle to collect session evaluations and, frankly, the food was terrible. We are very sorry about that. Basically, until the last two weeks before the Con, ticket sales looked slow, so we modified the catering order to mitigate the budget loss we were facing. When the upsurge in ticket sales began, it was too late to change our box-lunch order. We will definitely be rethinking food overall. It's one of the single biggest expenses at DrupalCons, and we know it's one of the best ways to keep attendees happy. Check out the complete overview.

2015 Budget and Leadership Plan Highlights

The board approved the 2015 Budget and Leadership Plan in executive session at the previous board meeting. We reviewed the highlights this month in the public board meeting. If you're interested in even more details, you can watch the recording of the webcast that we presented on Thursday, 18 December.

Governance Updates

Board Term Limits

The Board of Directors operate under a set of rules that govern issues like how the board is structured, the length of terms, etc. This set of rules is codified into the organization's Bylaws. Like any good governance document, and like any good governance group, it makes sense to review how the group operates and what rules might need to be changed in order to provide a better framework for governance. The Governance Committee of the board is charged with ensuring that the board is operating at its best, and making recommendations when things could work better.

In the original bylaws of the organization, terms for Class Directors (nominated and approved by the board, not community-elected seats), are set at 3 years, with a limit of 3 terms. That means that any Class Director could serve a total of 9 years on the board. This is not absolutely a problem, but we do know that board operate best when members are energetic and fully committed, and when new ideas and perspectives can be added to the mix. Nine-year terms work against both of those concepts. To solve for this, the board voted to change the bylaws and limit service to two 3-year terms, or 6 years total. A board member does have the option of taking a year off at that point and could be re-appointed after a year of downtime. We are currently updating the bylaws document to reflect this vote and will update the Association site when this work is complete. 

Community Elected Candidates

One other issue that has been raised by the board is preparing community-elected board members for their service on the board. This class of directors exists to provide a balance of perspective on the board, and everyone understands that many community-elected board members will likely have little board experience prior to their service. The board wants to ensure, however, that these members can jump into their term easily and figure out how to advocate for their agenda quickly. To that end, the boad agrees that it makes sense for candidates to at least have some experience with the mechanics of the Association Board. The Governence Committee recommended that a requirement of board meeting attendance would be a low-threshold to meet, and would expose candidates to how the board operates. The proposal was that, starting in the 2016 elections, candidates will need to attend a minimum of 3 board meetings, which can be tracked by Association staff.

This proposal was voted on and adopted by the board. However, I do want to note that it was not a unanimous vote; we had 2 nay votes. The point was made that currently, all board meetings are held at noon pacific on the third Wednesday of the month. That time slot is during waking hours for the US and Europe. It's early in Australia, but doable. However, anyone in Asia, in particular, can't participate in those awkward hours. The suggestion was made that we shift some of our meeting times to accomodate these other time zones if we are going to make attendance a requirement for running. There was general agreement with this sentiment, but no clear conclusion about how to actually make that happen. The board decided to call the proposal to vote now and work out the logistics of shifting board meeting schedules at a later date.

Working Group Updates

Lastly, we got updates from all of the Drupal.org Working Groups: Software, Content, and Infrastructure. In addition to the work they are pursuing related to the Drupal.org roadmap, Working Groups are also reviewing their charters. With more than a year of operations under their belts, and with a full tech team on staff at the Association, it's important to take a look at how things have changed and ensure that charters are still in alignment.

Goodbye 2014!

It has been a big year for the Association and the Drupal community. I want to take this opportunity to thank the Drupal community for all your support for the Association. It's a joy to come to this job every day and work together to take on the challenges and opportunities we face. Your generosity, smarts, and sense of humor makes it all that much more rewarding. I can't wait to see what we tackle together in 2015!

Flickr photo: Matt Westgate