Minutes:2013 Dec ConfCall

Agenda

Venue: to be held by conference call on Dec 12, 2013, 12pm EDT (17:00 UTC)
Dial-in Number: 1-605-475-5950 (US Midwest)
Participant Access Code: 279610

1. Old business
• Apr 2013 BoD meeting minutes
2. New business
1. Board elections (by secret electronic ballot):
   • Hilmar Lapp, running for a 2nd term as President
   • Peter Cock, running for office of Secretary
   • Nomi Harris, running for a 2nd term on the Board, as at-large member
2. To the extent available, review of 2013 financials (Hilmar)
3. BOSC 2014: update from and vote of confidence for the 2014 chairs (Nomi, Peter)
4. Does OBF and/or BOSC want to be listed as an ISCB "Community of Special Interest" (COSI) along side other SIGs and communities? See NetBio and RegSys examples. (Peter)

Minutes

Attending:

• Directors: Hilmar Lapp, Peter Cock, Chris Dagdigian, Chris Fields, Nomi Harris, Jason Stajich
• Guests: Michael Heuer

Minutes:

Draft of the Dec 2013 conference call minutes:

Attendees: Board: Hilmar Lapp, Nomi Harris, Chris Dagdigian, Chris Fields, Jason Stajich, Peter Cock Guests: Michael Heuer

Meeting called to order at 17:04 UTC. Roll call yields all 6 Board members present. Quorum is therefore established.

1. Approval of April 2013 Board meeting minutes. The minutes were approved with unanimous consent.
2. New business.
   • Board elections. Hilmar remarked that he wants to get aware from implicit continuation of posts, both as a way for the post-holder to explicitly express their interest, and for the board to explicitly re-endorse them.
     • Hilmar was elected President in Dec 2011. He is standing for re-election despite having previously planned to step down as he enjoyed it more than he expected and realised there is still more that he can do.
     • Peter was elected to the Board as Director at-large in Dec 2011. He is volunteering to serve as Secretary recognising that Hilmar had too many responsibilities serving as both Secretary and President.
     • Nomi was elected Parliamentarian in Dec 2011. She is standing to return as a Director at-large.
     • Election was by electronic ballot. Results confirmed all three posts with six votes (unanimous barring one abstention).
   • Review of 2013 financials.
     • Hilmar is waiting for major expenses, specifically the AWS running costs. Major income: $1000 donation from Eagle Genomics for BOSC 2013 (and delayed $1000 from BOSC 2012). Personal donation from Hilmar earmarked for 3 years of renewal for domains he donated. Full 2013 financial report to be reviewed at another public Board meeting in Spring 2014.
   • BOSC 2014 update.
     • BOSC 2014 is confirmed by ISCB. Two keynote speakers are also confirmed, and provisional session titles have been planned. The committee has been active active with some new members.
     • Discussed BOSC finances and the fact that due to high SIG registration fees, which are set by ISCB and are outside of our control, we have been running a sizeable surplus. The BOSC committee is considering ideas for how to use the surplus to give back to the community. One idea is to offer all non-commercial speakers (or at least student speakers) a 50% reduction in the registration fees.
     • We agreed to approach other SIG chairs and Scott Markel (ISCB Board of Directors) informally to see if they would also support reducing the SIG fees.
     • The Board made a unanimous vote of confidence in the 2014 BOSC co-chairs (Nomi and Peter), and appreciates their service and time investment.
   • ISMB COSI
     • Contingent on there being no expectation of exclusivity with being a COSI (Peter to follow up), the Board unanimously endorses the OBF being an ISCB COSI.
3. Ad-hocc business from Directors or the Public.
   • There was agreement that OBF should try to participate in GSoC 2014, and to confirm with Pjotr Prins that he is willing to lead this. Chris Fields will follow up.
   • Discussed the proposed BOSC twitter competition idea. The Board is positively predisposed to the idea, but leaves discussing the details to the BOSC committee.

Meeting adjourned with unanimous consent at 17:52 UTC.