Stewards Council Telecon: 2008 February 6

Attending

• Christopher Allen
• Peter Davis
• Kaliya Hamlin
• Eugene Eric Kim
• Fen Labalme
• Dale Olds
• Dan Perry
• Drummond Reed
• Mary Ruddy
• Marty Schleiff
• Paul Trevithick
• Bill Washburn

Agenda

• Update
• Working Groups Vote
• Collaborative Tools
• Procedures for Paying for Work

Summary

Updates

Chris reported on SGFOO Camp. Chris Saad has started drafting a charter for Data Portability Working Group on his web site. His proposal was somewhat controversial, in that many asked why he was trying to subsume existing efforts. Chris noted that he heard similar comments about Identity Commons.

Kaliya released the Working Groups newsletter last week, but she hasn't gotten much feedback. We all need to blog about it as widely as possible.

AI: Blog about the newsletter so people know what's going.

Stewards Council Votes

Eugene was late in initiating the first round of voting for the new Working Groups, but he sent out an email this morning. The first round will go until 11:59pm, this Friday, February 8. After that round is complete, we'll do a shortened round of discussion for the next set of Working Groups in the queue through Sunday, February 17, then will vote again.

Chris asked for clarification on how to start a Working Group. The requirements are listed in our Bylaws. Drummond asked for clarification on how to initiating voting for Working Groups. Eugene responded that this is something that we should be clearer about on the Wiki. Once a group has put together a charter and chosen a Steward and an alternate, they should initiate discussion on the community mailing list. When the group feels ready to be voted on, they should indicate as much on the community list. The Stewards Council will initiate the voting process at least once a month, probably timed in accordance with its monthly calls.

Eugene also noted that the Stewards Council Chair may shorten the discussion period at his or her discretion. In other words, if there's already been a lot of discussion about a Working Group, there's no reason to go through another mandated two week period. With this in mind, proposed Working Groups should initiate discussion as early as possible.

Collaborative Tools

Fen got a VPS created for Identity Commons and is in the process of transferring the old site over. This means that he'll be able to give access rights to other people, enabling others to help with the system administration process. Paul offered the assistance of Parity's sysadmins.

AI: Paul will introduce his sysadmin to Eugene and Fen, so that he may start helping out.

Dale, Fen, and Eugene spoke yesterday about OSIS's needs. In particular, Dale noted that it wasn't clear what services IC was offering to its Working Groups and how to get them. In response to this, Eugene created the Working Group Collaborative Tools page.

Kaliya said that some pending Working Groups -- Newbies4Newbies, Inclusive Initiatives, and Enterprise Identity Architects -- have been waiting to get lists for some time. Fen said he had some concern about the proliferation about lists. Eugene suggested that, given Fen's valid concerns as well as the fact that all three groups have fulfilled the guidelines listed at Working Group Collaborative Tools for getting mailing lists, that we set up lists for them as quickly as possible. He also asked Kaliya to have those Stewards post to the community mailing list so that people are aware of their existence.

AI: Fen will create mailing lists for Newbies4Newbies, Inclusive Initiatives, and Enterprise Identity Architects.

AI: Kaliya will touch base with the heads of those groups and ask them to initiate discussion on the community list.

Chris asked if IC is the best place to get a mailing list, in particular advocating Google Groups. Dale noted that he's created lists on Google Groups for OSIS, but that he wants to have his lists hosted at IC for three reasons:

• Branding in the domain name
• Concerns over having Google host the data
• The ability to eventually OpenID- and infocard-enable the listserv software.

Drummond echoed this sentiment and said that these services are exactly what IC is for. Eugene said that groups are welcome to use whatever tools they wish, but that the IC infrastructure is available to them if they so desire.

Drummond wants to make sure that each of the proposed working groups link to their online spaces (Wikis, lists, etc.) from their charter pages. He will look into this.

AI: Drummond will add links to the online spaces of proposed Working Groups on the Wiki.

Process for Paying People

In the process of putting together her newsletter, Kaliya decided that it really needed to be professionally edited. She recruited her friend and -- opting to ask for forgiveness later -- told her that she could invoice Identity Commons. The cost of the work was $120.

Dan noted that we can't operate this way in the future. There's a danger that Identity Commons could be held liable for invoices approved by rogue Stewards. He noted that we've got $1,846 in the bank right now, and that about $750 needs to go to paying accountants for our tax returns this year. That leaves us with very little operational budget. (Kaliya noted that Planetwork is going to donate $1,000, and Bill said that Owen is planning on making a donation as well.)

Chris said that it would be good if we had some sort of written standards outlining the fiduciary responsibility for Stewards.

Eugene said that in the future, we should require a work agreement before accepting any invoices. The question is, what should be our procedure for approving operational work? Eugene proposed that the Stewards Council appoint one person to manage an operational budget of a set amount, and that that person would have complete oversight over that budget. Chris suggested that we cap the amount that person would be able to approve per invoice. Fen suggested we needed more than one person in order to check each other.

Eugene tabled this discussion, saying that we needed to come up with a straw man and discuss it with the community so that we can put it to vote next month.

Regarding the invoice from Kaliya's editor: Eugene double-checked with Dan to see if he had authority to approve the invoice. Dan said that it's unspecified in our charter, so he does. As a one-time move, Eugene is using his authority as Chair to approve the invoice. From this point forward, we'll go by the book (which we need to write).

Next Call

Wednesday, Stewards Council Telecon: 2008 March 5, 9am PST / 12pm EST.