The board, nominees.

[Gregory Meyer, CPA]

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 5:36 AM, Leo Franchi <lfranchi at kde.org> wrote:
> On 1 Feb 2009, at 08:42, Mark Kretschmann wrote:
>>
>> Option: Lydia Pintscher
>>
>> If anyone would like to append a name to this list, you have until tomorrow
>> to do so. I'll start the vote tomorrow night or so. The vote will last 1
>> week (unless someone would like it longer?).
>> cheers,
>
> 09:24 < markey> uhm guys, the whole voting stuff
> 09:24 < markey> don't we first need candidates?
> 09:24 < markey> who declare what they actually want to do?
> 09:24 < markey> I thought that's a prerequesite for voting anyone
> 09:24 < markey> e.g. who wants to become Treasurer?
> 09:25 < Mamarok> and know what structure we are going to have exactly
> and what tasks are needed to be covered
> 09:25 < markey> looks to me like lfranchi is kinda skipping this step
> 09:26 < markey> imho it would make sense to do that first
> 09:27 < markey> instead of voting a bunch of people, and then letting
> them figure out what they actually do
> 09:28 < markey> the way it would happen now, we could vote 5 people,
> among which is noone with the slightest clue about financials
> 09:28 < markey> i.e. no Treasurer
> 09:28 < markey> what then?
> 09:28 < markey> read a book on Treasuring?
> 09:29 < markey> I would say we want Greg Meyer to stay treasurer, if
> he's up for the task [1]
> 09:29 < markey> the man is a professional
> 09:29 < markey> and has been doing this job for amarok for 5 years or
> so, very successfully
> 09:30 < markey> (Greg is a professional accountant)
>
> First of all, yes Greg is an accountant. He has done an awesome job and I am
> really thankful that he has stayed onboard even when (it seems) he is quite
> busy.
> We've  been talking about this for 3 months now. We have not set up the
> board to be designated with certain positions. You have had innumerable
> chances to provide input on how we wanted to do this (did i mention that
>  you were on the transition committee?) and this is the first time that this
> has come up. The board is 5 people who vote on whether or not to give
> funding to certain proposals, and maybe take care of legal things if
> something comes up. I don't see the particular value of having 5 individual
> "roles" for board members to be (what would they be? secretary? treasurer?
> we need 3 more...)
> Also, our "treasurer" is basically the SFC (they are  professional lawyers,
> accountants, and tax experts). They are the ones who actually have the
> money, and where our money comes from. So someone on the board will need to
> interact with them and work with them. However, they do speak english, which
> makes it much easier for a normal board member to be the one doing the task.
> That said, if Greg is a member of the board and (him willing) he ends up
> doing that part of things, that sounds great also.
> Anyway in other news, we have a request to be a voting  member so the
> original vote timeline is back on schedule. The current vote on a new member
> will continue until Friday the 6th, after which the board vote will begin.
> So this also gives us another week to discuss this.

I appreciate the kind words, but I did have the impression that the
SFC would be taking custody of any funds I have and they would
ultimately do what I am doing.  I also think it is probably somewhat
important for the board to have a secretary to be a secretary to
document the decisions being made, but that can be done after the
election.  The SFC may actually have guidance on that.