TPF Meeting Minutes for December 2020
Sun, 31-Jan-2021 by
Makoto Nozaki
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TPF Board members and the community leaders meet every month and here are the minutes from the December 2020 meeting.
# Part 1 - Community
## Attendees
- Board: Dave Rolsky, Stuart Mackintosh, Ricardo Signes, Curtis Poe, Dan Wright
- Community leaders: Todd Rinaldo, JJ Merelo, Daniel Sockwell, Jason Crome, Andrew Solomon, Mark Keating, Alex Beamish, Nigel Hamilton
- Admin: Nic Evans
## Main session
### Marketing, Mark Keating
- Had conversations with Gary Beckwith. He has lots to contribute regarding surveys. Need a quick survey ref TPF name - we need people's feedback in their own words, and he helps us achieve that.
- Supporting projects and the languages and supporting community projects are the key things people are interested in. Going to get a survey out over Christmas.
- Stuart: we need to ensure Nigel's perspective is considered in terms of trademark and branding.
- Need a brand that is identifiable to us and then we can move on in terms of sites that are recognised as Perl resources.
- When we do bring new people in we need to share the right resources with them (Recognised resources)
- Some overlap between marketing and sponsorship - would like to get a meeting with the sponsorship team to talk about working together.
- Nige: we were trying to tackle the "Perl is dead" theme and did the Raku advent calendar
### Compliance / OpenChain / SPDX, Stuart Mackintosh
- Ability to determine your licence position, technical project Stuart is keen to drive forward - if we can bring this structure into Perl / CPAN, that puts perl at the front of the line of professional software languages. Keen to get people's views/thoughts. Continue conversation offline
- Curtis: I would argue it is a good theory but my clients don't care - it's not a good thing they don't care.
- Stuart: It's about the ability to be auditable. By bringing in SPDX it helps auditability.
- Dave: At ActiveState we have customers who really do care about this and there is a lot of interest. I could perhaps get time to do some work on it myself because it would be beneficial for us. A lot of companies care.
- Stuart: Oracle v Google legal news - The outcome of this will that corporates have to know where the licence is and it can be audited. Something to watch. Project I am working with is funded by Linux Foundation.
### TPC Conferences, Todd Rinaldo
- Houston conference being moved to June 2022, Contract to be signed and deposit to be paid.
- Board to confirm approval
- Todd: should TPC Board member sign this? -> Discussion with Board to follow.
- We need to communicate there will be no in person conference - planning repeat of last years. Beginning planning in next month or so (after Christmas)
- Stuart advised Todd to look at FOSDEM
- Stuart: we all need to look at how we can amplify messages - all get involved in sharing news - make sure information gets out.
- Mark: needs to get to all different groups outside of our own, via LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter
- Stuart: need to consider structure
- Mark: Need a channel where we say about sharing messages - act on good faith
### FOSDEM, JJ Merelo
- There are 6 references to Perl dev room in Twitter - we are failing - we are missing
- It is important to submit talks.
- Urged people to attend FOSDEM, to submit talks
- As it is online we have a unique opportunity for all international coders to get involved and share passion about Perl and Raku
- Currently have just 2 submissions - both are Raku. Need to get Perl speakers.
- Stuart: FOSDEM will be very different - there is just one week to submit a paper - you don't need to have written it - just need a title and how long you need to reserve your slot. Then have one month to record slot and send to FOSDEM to publish - live QA after then hallway track.
- Stuart will get something together to explain what people need to so - look at existing call for papers and edit, or do a new article
- Stuart and JJ are official Perl/Raku coordinators so get to choose the papers. We can also help people work way around FOSDEM and processes and putting together a talk.
- We have one day - would be great to have it packed full of Perl and Raku content.
### Grants, Jason Crome
- Most recent grant period - November - no grant submissions
- Stats for last three years:
- 2018 - $32.5k proposed, $27.5k granted (approx, same below)
- 2019 - $23.5k proposed, $13.5k granted
- 2020 - $45.5k proposed, $12k granted
- Most recently completed was Jason Mackintosh
- This year was highest of the last three years grant requests. Summary of activity to be published on TPF Blog
- I think $20,000 a year is a good amount, ideally $25k - if looking to increase activity.
- May need to update Charter of Grants committee to better reflect what we do.
- Will be a focus of the grants committee for 2021
- Stuart to take amount to agree for grants to the Board.
### Newcomers, Andrew Solomon
- We have no place for newbies to engage with experienced coders - we are looking at what we can do.
- I have been talking to Gary to find out who the newbies are, what they need to get support, what level they are at within Perl, what chat technology they use, etc.
- Once a survey drafted, who needs to approve it? When can it go out?
- Stuart: no reason it cannot be done - asked Board if needed a formal approach
- Dave: Beyond the survey we need to think about two other things:
1. What sort of of commitment are we making in terms of technology - is there a financial consideration;
2. How do me manage moderation?
- Stuart to share survey with Board for feedback.
### Sponsorship, Alex Beamish
- Been crafting message for corporates
- Not paid attention to personal donations - need conversation with Mark about that - an interesting angle. Been concentrating on corporations.
- Not sure we have infrastructure to do same as Python to have a major push.
- Want to use 2021 to really push sponsorship
- Dave: I have a lot of experience with individual fundraising so can help the sponsorship committee
- Andrew: happy to help through Geekuni in a similar way as Python
- Stuart: Does Board need to consider if there should be a target for sponsorship each year.
### Legal update, Nigel Hamilton
- Been looking at Raku trademark guidelines
- EU trademark application - refused late November. Not sure if we had correspondence. Digging deeper with lawyers involved and following up in next few days.
- UK trademark is fine - and currently in application in US.
- Brexit not an issue with trademark.
### Raku update, Daniel Sockwell
- Had Raku Steering Council and agreed code of conduct - needs some revisions before submitting publicly to Raku community as a whole.
- Agreed to meet roughly monthly. Next meeting early January 2021
- Been doing Raku Advent Calendar - JJ has really spearheaded this. Been successful looking at Wordpress stats. We did lose viewers with shift from Perl 6 to Raku advent calendar, but this year we are 30% above we were were at end of December last year.
- Coding challenge going on - has drawn a number of people from outside of the Raku community to try out raku.
- Had successful outreach.
- Stuart: what does Raku community need from Perl Foundation?
- Daniel - As of now we are continuing to benefit from support of trademark work and grants committee. I will raise it at next steering council meeting.
### Perl Governance, Rik Signes
- Voting underway for last 16 days. We haven't had all votes yet.
- As far as language track - little has happened on mailing list
### Perl infrastructure, Rik Signes
- Infrastructure groups starting to become more active again.
- Looking to set up some compute for hosting things. (That is, cloud hosting for software, like Digital Ocean, Linode, and Azure, all of whom Rik has approached.)
- What are we going to do and what are going to back burn.
- Need to look at rt.cpan.org - one of our members thinks they can do something.
- Discussion around dromedary. "dromedary" is a very powerful server used by some of the Perl 5 developers for testing and other development work. What will it be?
- Depends on what people want. We'll be following up in January.
- Dan: we like CPAN mirror and want to keep it - is it going to be a problem
- Rik: people will still be able to mirror CPAN.
### End of year message from Stuart
- What is most important to you? I'd like to hear what you would like to be included in that message? Suggestions?
- Stuart to write blog and publish
### 2021 meeting schedule planning and publication plan
- Need to schedule next 12 months.
- All OK with the time we currently hold it.
- Nic to do calendar and share with Board for approval before publishing - publish full schedule on Perl Foundation website.
# Part 2 - Board
## Attendees
- Stuart Mackintosh
- Dan Wright
- Curtis Poe
- Dave Rolsky
- Makoto Nozaki
- Rik Signes
- Nic Evans (Admin)
## Main session
### Grants
- Need value proposition / business case
- Budget
- Guidance - is there a threshold, should smaller grants be easier to get than bigger grants. Tiered approach.
- Level of grants versus income needs to be considered.
- Need to look at value proposition and business case - what's the ROI. Can't just say it will be a great bit of code - need to say what value it will bring, how it will be used.
- Perhaps need more dialogue with Jason to understand better
- Should we only look at grants that benefit the perl community or look at grants that support a general problem that needs to be solved. Non-technical people could submit applications for grants to be used to solve a problem and our community use the grant to fix it.
- Setting budget seems to be right thing to do - Look at $25k as starting point for 2021 - we can't give them autonomy then not give them a decent sized budget (Awarded in the financial year, not necessarily paid).
- Outside of vote we need to look at how grants are reviewed, business cases etc.
### Sponsorship target
- Inform Alex of sponsorship target $200k
### Contracts / Authority to sign, Todd Rinaldo
- Has concerns about signing contracts under TPF name as not a Board member. Concerned about legal exposure. Should a member of the Board sign conference contracts?
- ACTION: Insurance review to ensure we are covered in the activities we carry out
- Board happy to sign contract for Houston 2022 - need Todd to send through.
### Advisory board
- Mailing list - no obligations. Need to get going with building it - Web content is published: https://www.perlfoundation.org/advisory_board.html
### Procedure for purchasing infrastructure items
- Rik unsure of how to purchase items/services.
- Small items can be purchased and claim back costs. Alternatively credit card is possible
### Thanks to Dan for service to the Board
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