Minutes:2013 Apr ConfCall

Posted on December 9, 2013 by admin

Agenda

Venue: to be held by conference call on April 9, 2013, 1.30pm EDT (17:30 UTC) 
Dial-in Number: 1-605-475-5950 (Midwest) 
Participant Access Code: 279610

  1. Old business
  2. New business
    1. Administration of O|B|F’s 2013 Google Summer of Code participation (Pjotr Prins)

Minutes

Venue: held by conference call on April 9, 2013, 1.30pm EDT (17:30 UTC)

Attending:

  • Directors: Hilmar Lapp, Nomi Harris, Chris Dagdigian, Chris Fields, Peter Cock; Jason Stajich joined for the last 15 minutes.
  • Guests: none

Minutes:

Meeting called to order at 10.37am PDT

Old business:

  • Minutes from previous Sep 2012 meeting are approved by unanimous consent.
  • Treasurer’s 2012 report:
    • Chris D. summarizes and explains the 2012 expenses and income items, as well those in 2013 up to April 1st, which is when the account was closed in order to transfer our financial assets to SPI.
    • Check was mailed to SPI on April 3, and the SPI Treasurer today has acknowledged receipt of the funds.
    • Closing the account unfortunately means we can no longer obtain online statements for past periods. If we ever need those, Chris D. may have to visit the local branch in person, or we would have to make another formal and authenticated request (which would likely cost a fee).
    • Expenses incurred from hosting VMs on Amazon (AWS) are still being donated by Chris D. Amazon needs a credit (or debit) card for payment. Currently this is Chris’ card, but we should ask for a credit/debit card from SPI that would charge against our funds with SPI.
    • Peter moves to approve the treasurer’s report, motion approved by unanimous consent.

New business:

  • Pjotr’s role in Google Summer of Code:
    • Pjotr did not attend the Board meeting because just two days prior the O|B|F’s mentoring organization application to GSoC was declined.
    • This outcome is unfortunate, but nonetheless there is unanimous support and endorsement for Pjotr continuing to serve in this role next year. The Board thanks him for his work this year, and encourages him to continue this next year.
    • Pjotr is already planning a post-mortem, and has expressed interest in trying again next year.
  • Updates on BOSC 2013 by Nomi:
    • Deadline for abstracts is this coming Friday, April 12. A good group of reviewers is lined up.
    • There is some worry with the open-source software sustainability and funding models panel. It lacks in diversity of viewpoints right now, and they need to look further for panelists. If necessary, we registration for panelists could be comp’ed.
      • Several suggestions were brought up, including Eagle Genomics / Richard Holland (doing commercial work on top of ENSEMBL), people or companies doing commercial services on top of Amazon, Scott Markel (Accelrys’ Pipeline Pilot product uses BioPerl, and has on occasion contributed back), and Alex Pico (Cytoscape ecosystem, which has enabled commercial players to plug commercially sold components into the main open-source platform).
  • OBF Interoperability Hackathon at the Broad:
    • The event has just taken place, organized by Brad Chapman. Unfortunately, Michael Reich and Broad staff had to bow out.
    • According to Brad, it was nonetheless a success. The Board is grateful to Brad for running this.

Adjourned at 11.15pm PDT by unanimous consent.

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