Date: 2002.09.16
Committee: Executive Committee of BoT
Document: excom-02-008
Revision:
Supersedes:
Status:
Maintainer: Minutes taken by Christian Huitema.
Access: Unconfirmed
Attendees:
Fred Baker
Rosa Delgado
Christian Huitema
Toshio Mikki
Kees Neggers
Glenn Ricart
Lynn St.Amour
Excused:
Lynn Duval
Latif Ladid
I. Financial Update
Lynn St.Amour presents the financial update. At the end of July, the amount of cash available was $145K, and the account payable was $378K; this last amount rose to approximately $450K at the end of August. We have finalized our settlement with Exponova and are scheduled to pay $71K to Exponova in early October at the latest.
Year to date, we have incurred a loss of $162K, and we are $355K behind budget. However, our revenues from “regular” organizational members are only $40K behind budget, and we even had some good news, e.g. NTT DoCoMo-USA Labs joining upgrading to as a Sustaining Gold membership. We expect to close this gap later in the year with the arrival of our Platinum membership dues.
The Standard pillar is showing a loss against budget; this will be offset by the arrival of payments from Platinum members this fall.
The Education pillar shows significant loss against budget, as salary costs moved to education to support INET instead of organization member services; the INET expenses were not fore planned in the 2002 budget. Our discussions with Foretec show that salary expenses of $104K will probably not be recovered. We have suffered a double hit from INET: salary cost, and then distraction from regular fund raising.
Losses in the Public Policy pillar continue to increase after the loss of a Platinum member. Public policy revenues currently are a few individual member fees, and some donations.
The cash flow follows the same historical trends; we are however forecasting a more aggressive A/P payment schedule due to increased predicted revenues in the last months of the year; the cash on hand will be managed to about 2 weeks of operating revenues until A/P is brought current.
II. Fundraising update
A big concern is that the board is not actively raising funds and this is a traditional responsibility of not-for-profit boards; there was hardly any response to a recent message from Lynn on this subject.
Philippe Courtot sent a note asking to pass the responsibility of the fundraising committee to Latif. Philippe is very busy with his company at the moment, not able to devote enough time to this activity. Latif will now lead this committee.
III. .Org bid update
We have received additional questions from ICANN, to which we replied within the required timeframe. We still expect a board decision beginning of October.
We have decided to extend board membership of PIR from five to seven members. The executive committee will act as nomination committee, and will put a slate in front of the board for ratification. We are currently developing and reviewing a list of qualified candidates. One of the first executive committee decisions, in its PIR nomination committee role, is to post a public call for nomination: Lynn will send a note to all individual members, and also a specific note to the organizational members and other appropriate bodies.
Lynn will send a note to the full board, asking for advice on the presence of an ISOC board member on the PIR board.
The most appropriate location for incorporating PIR appears to be the US states of Virginia, Delaware or Massachusetts. Incorporating in a different country does not appear realistic: it will take a long time to study the legal situation, and it would increase the complexity of the financial and legal relations between PIR and ISOC. Incorporating in the US appears to be the conservative alternative.
IV. Publications strategy update
A preliminary report has been published, but has not received any feedback from the board. Lynn asks Toshio to resend the report to the board. Lynn suggests reaching out to experts in the field, who could join the committee.
V. Code of Conduct Update
Brian has written an initial memo, for which he requests comments. The memo will be submitted to the full board for a 1 week review, before sending it to the chapters, in order to get comments in time for a discussion during the November board meeting.
Rosa suggests getting a legal review.
VI. Future Conferences Task Force Update
Christian has written a preliminary report that he has sent to the committee members for comments. The memo will be reviewed at the November board meeting.
VII. Preparation of the November 2002 Board meeting
One of the main objectives of the board meeting will be to review the proposed budget. There is a need to increase the amount of time spent on discussing strategic programs and initiatives. Lynn proposes thus that the agenda will start with a strategic review, followed with committee and key initiative reviews; each area reviewed will be requested to propose a clear action plan.
A proposed agenda should be sent to the board 6 weeks before the meeting.
The bulk of the meeting should clearly be devoted to creating new activities, specifically education activities and regional activities. This should take precedence over discussions of the internal organization of the society.
VIII. Individual Membership
There is a motion currently submitted to the board.
A side issue is that of chapter based election, for which we have to clarify the rules. A possible simplification is to evaluate chapters once a year, and to avoid any manipulation of the election. The simplest solution is that chapters duly recognized at the beginning of the calendar year will be the ones allowed to vote, thus removing the possibility of “validation” debates during the discussion period.
All Board Executive Committee Meeting Minutes