(Note: thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue to update the blog with a backlog of meeting minutes for 2024. Please send any comments to secretary@wpcampus.org.)
Meeting date/time: January 19, 2024 at 3:30 pm Eastern
Attendees: Ed Beck, Rachel Cherry, Kiera Howe, Dash Kees, Reed Piernock
Guests: Kevin Grimley, Jason Woodward
Goals
- Charter remaining standing committees.
Agenda
Roll Call
- Note attendees of this meeting (in the Details section above), and list any absences.
- Recognize attendee guests.
Approval of Minutes
- Review, correct, and approve the minutes from the previous meeting.
Reports or Presentations
- Report on the organization's finances.
Old Business
- Discuss unresolved action items from the previous meeting.
New Business
- Charter the remaining committees.
- Prioritize the search for an Events committee chairperson.
- Discuss changes to the organization bylaws.
Private Session
- A private session may be held here if there are matters that only members of the Board of Directors need to discuss at this time.
Action Items
- A list of action items as a result of this meeting
Closing
- Confirm February 16, 2024 for the next meeting.
- Final thoughts, reminders, or general chit-chat.
Minutes
Call to order.
Dash called to order the monthly meeting of the WPCampus Board of Directors at 3:37pm (Eastern) on 19 January 2024, virtually in Zoom.
Ed, Rachel, Kiera, Dash, and Reed were in attendance. Guests included Kevin Grimley and Jason Woodward.
Dash moved to approve the minutes for the December meeting; Ed seconded the motion. The Board approved the minutes.
Charter the remaining committees.
Dash reviewed the charters for the Technical, Communications, Membership, and Librarians committees, and standardized the formatting to be consistent with focused content that is easier to read, skim, and understand. Reed appreciated the scope of the charters, in that it is defined yet still flexible. Rachel suggested the organization start recruiting for the various committees; the charters can be marked “draft” until fully approved or the committee is formed.
Dash stated the Communications committee charter still needs work. Ed moved to approve the charters for all committees minus Communications; Reed seconded the motion. The board approved the charters.
Dash created emails for each committee, e.g. events@wpcampus.org. Rachel suggested we research the best methods for allowing transferable accounts in the Google workspace, in the event of a board officer or committee chair role turnover. Management of the workspace accounts will eventually fall under the Technical committee, but Reed suggested the board secretary also have access to create redundancy of ownership.
Per previous discussions, Eric resigned from the board, and Phil declined to seek re-election at the end of his one-year term.
For the Nominations committee, Dash planned to work with Pat Lockley on updating the nomination form and publishing it to various outlets, such as the organization’s Slack, blog, and job board. The goal is to have nominees by the February board meeting.
As Rachel plans to onboard a future Technical committee, she has worked on several updates for the website and blog: removed the Multiple Authors plugin because it has not been used much and because it greatly slows down the website; published the job board and wrote documentation; created a Committees page on the website. Dash recommended a “freshness” plugin to monitor the staleness of website content.
Regarding the job board, listings can have a status of “active” or “filled”. Users can subscribe to job listings as either RSS feeds or email newsletters, the latter through MailChimp.
Prioritize the search for an Events committee chairperson.
Dash stressed the importance of finding an Events committee chairperson as there is a tight timeline for the 2024 conference. Reed asked about ways to publicize the search. Ed stated he would reach out to the 2023 conference committee and to the 2024 conference location selection committee. Rachel suggested LinkedIn and other social media, while Dash suggested reaching out to local meetups or WordCamps.
Dash also mentioned the search for the Director of Events should stress the role’s responsibilities with leading the committee and with organizing events, and WordPress-specific knowledge is less important.
Rachel clarified that the board can recruit for all Events committee members in addition to the chairperson.
Discuss changes to the organization bylaws.
Dash added a changelog to the bylaws document. The board will review the document at the next Side Quest meeting, and vote on the updates at the next board meeting. Rachel asked if version 1.1 of the bylaws should be posted to the website, and Dash proposed waiting until the PDF of version 1.2 is finalized.
Closing.
Rachel indicated that she will move any official WPCampus documents from her personal server storage to the organization’s storage. She stated this was initially done to keep the documents “walled off” from the WordPress site. Dash and Ed suggested updating document permissions in Google Drive to include public view-only access. Rachel will update the links from WPCampus to redirect to the files in Drive.
Ed informed the board of training geared toward the standards and practices of being on a board of directors; he had previous good experience with such training with other organizations. Dash performed a quick search and found a lot of resources and agreed with Ed that it was an excellent idea. Reed suggested creating a document or spreadsheet to keep track of the features of various training.
Rachel added an Up Next status for ClickUp tasks.
Ed asked the board to review an estimated budget for the next year at an upcoming meeting.
Kevin thanked the board for its work and stated that he appreciated the policy of having open board meetings.
The board delayed confirming Friday 16 February 2024 as the date for the next meeting, since several members would not be able to attend. The board will discuss moving the meeting to 23 February instead, over Slack.
Ed requested approval to send thank you notes to previous board members and to previous committee members. Rachel estimated $40 to cover cards and stamps. Reed moved to approve; Dash seconded the motion. The board approved Ed’s request.
Rachel will update Kiera on financial strategy, and will forward information from the organization’s accountant.
The meeting adjourned at 5:07 pm.