welcome: please sign in
Page Locked

IrcMeetings / 20230128

When

Agenda

Records

smichel17       #startmeeting
hcoop-meetbot   smichel17: Meeting started at 2023-01-28T17:14+0000
smichel17: Current chairs: smichel17
smichel17: Useful commands: #action #info #idea #link #topic #motion #vote #close #endmeeting
smichel17: See also: https://hcoop-meetbot.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

smichel17       #topic roll call
#here smichel
keverets[hc]    #here keverets[hc]
unknown_lamer   #here clinton
smichel17       *role call 🤣️
robin   #here robin
smichel17       #topic agenda building
We should probably do this before meetings, but oh well. In any case, we'll want treasury report, any other topics you'd like to bring up?
keverets[hc]    None from me
smichel17       Elections are coming up, I'd like to discuss scheduling them and the next meeting
robin   none from me
keverets[hc]    I think the schedule is baked into the role guidelines
smichel17       👍️
(In that case, just the next meeting then)
I also have some idle chatter after the board meeting but nothing official
unknown_lamer: anything you wanted to discuss?
unknown_lamer   nothing in particular
smichel17       ok
#topic Treasury Report
unknown_lamer   Bank balance:    $8,032.79
Paypal balance:  $  373.27
Total:           $8,406.06
Member balances: $2.425.48
Coop balance:    $5,445.87
Total:           $7,871.35
difference: $534.70 -- mostly due to phantom payments inflating coop balance.
Members to boot: 12
Member likely to pay: 4
Dues are around $511/mo but will drop once I actually boot all members that are unresponsive
smichel17       Looks like there's currently 62 members, 50 after booting?
unknown_lamer   expenses are $355.10 for digitalocean + $10 for linode currently (+ yearly expenses), will increase a bit once we split the postgres/mysql servers away from gibran
54, I am pretty sure at least four people on the list just need to be manually prodded, but the rest look like they just stopped using services and never said anything
keverets[hc]    What are "Member balances" vs "Coop balance"?
smichel17       Member balances is people topping up their account, in advance of being charged monthly dues
unknown_lamer   coop balance is the coop's balance (amount we have in dues paid to the coop), member balances are member's balances
yeah
keverets[hc]    OK, thanks
Any other questions or comments on the report?
unknown_lamer   we have a small discrepancy from some ancient lost transaction, once I clean up delinquent members I think at this point we just need to insert a reconciling transaction (I think it was some remotes hand fee or hardware when we were on site at the DC many, many years ago).
but otherwise everything is up to date
smichel17       Comment: It's nice to be in the black again, but I am concerned about gradually losing members and income/expenses creeping closer together
"again" — I guess we've been in the black for a few years at this point
unknown_lamer   I would say we were on track for a member refund at the end of the year but we are getting close to 1:1 dues and expenses
keverets[hc]    Might be worth asking the people who are leaving why the coop no longer meets their needs
layline Yes, reconcile the books with a balancing transaction. 
keverets[hc]    How much buffer are we allocating? 6 months or a year of expenses?
robin   yeah, that sounds reasonable at this point
unknown_lamer   https://wiki.hcoop.net/FinancialReservePolicy

although it looks like we went over the budget a bit since DO increased prices
(limit was $350 for hosting, now we are at $365.10)
keverets[hc]    Thanks. No further questions for me
smichel17       Is that limit calculated from the reserve goal, or something else?
unknown_lamer   https://wiki.hcoop.net/HcoopBudget

smichel17       got it, thanks
unknown_lamer   hrm I suppose we should have a budget for 2023, we did ok for two years but then didn't vote on one last year
smichel17       That seems prudent, especially since we expect expenses to increase a little bit
with the db split
separate topic?
unknown_lamer   Sound reasonable if I calculate our yearly expenses (everything is up up up so 2021 numbers are wrong for that now) and set hosting at maybe $450 and vote using the portal on that?
smichel17       Ah, portal vote sounds good
unknown_lamer   I just have to do some number crunching and today I am making chili
smichel17       Could we use excess balance in a one-time way? e.g. maybe a contract with one of our sysadmins to take on some maintenance tasks which have been neglected for a while? (minsky ooming…)
unknown_lamer   that is permitted
although at least for me the issue isn't money, I have very little free time anymore
smichel17       I was thinking specifically doecelic
(I didn't talk to him about it yet)
unknown_lamer   we should start by lowering the max number of idle apache workers, I think spidering of the mailman archives causes the number of procs to spike and then they are never terminated and use up too much memory.
but that's another discussion
smichel17       He's currently a sysadmin, doesn't spend as much time on it any more (mostly approving ssl cert installation requests), and is a contractor, so financially the time-for-money trade can actually happen
vs e.g. I'm salaried so I can't just reduce my hours to take on an hcoop contract
layline Keeping a 12 month reserve with montly expenses of $450 doesn't leeave us with a surplus
smichel17       What about $400?
It would be nice to get a breakdown of current expenses to see where we might be able to trim, too
unknown_lamer   $400 won't be enough for a new db server (although if we replace rather than upgrade gibran for afs/misc services we can probably use a smaller vm)
that was the breakdown, DO and linode
and then SSL + domain + registered agent, but the registered agent is prepayed for quite a while
smichel17       What do we spend on storage vs compute? Do we have old member data we could put into cold storage to save a little?
unknown_lamer   https://wiki.hcoop.net/Hardware has all of the details on our hardware

We don't retain old member data, 30 days after booting their volumes are deleted
smichel17       Hm, ok. So no low-hanging fruit
unknown_lamer   (or immediately if they actively exit and specify)
smichel17       If we'd make good use of it, I would be up to make a one-time donation to this cause
unknown_lamer   I think first we'd have to see if anyone were interested and have well defined goals
layline Perhaps asking docelic as to his requirements would be informative.
smichel17       Maybe as a decision for this meeting, we could ask sysadmins to get together a list of goals?
Yeah, or whether he'd be interested at all
unknown_lamer   I wasn't expecting to vote on this use of money and would prefer not to today
I am not sure we even can, we are in a position where expenses will have to exceed dues to just maintain the current level of service (- constant issues with the mail server hopefully)
smichel17       I think it would be good to vote on budget today, and agree to gather information about the one time expense for next meeting
unknown_lamer   I need to recalculate what our yearly expenses are because prices have increased at least twice for the domain and SSL since we last renewed, and do not have time today. I was going to do so tomorrow or Monday and create a portal poll to vote on it as discussed earlier.
keverets[hc]    Need a budget proposal first, and I'd also rather not come up with that on the fly today
We can meet again if needed, or wait for the next regular meeting
unknown_lamer   I do need to leave within 15 minutes, I have to get to making chili so I can eat lunch at a reasonable hour
smichel17       Next scheduled meeting will be relatively soon, since elections happen at the end of march
So let's do then
keverets[hc]    Sounds good
robin   +1
smichel17       #action smichel17 will make an agenda for the next meeting
#motion smichel17 will ask doecelic if he'd be available/interested for a contract (if the coop can find money for it)
hcoop-meetbot   smichel17: Voting is open
unknown_lamer   #vote abstain
robin   #vote +1
layline #vote +1
keverets[m]     Hmm. Xmpp froze
Sent a +1 on that vote, but there's a hiccup where it's not going through
smichel17       #vote +1
keverets[m]     That seals it anyway
smichel17       #info keverets also voted +1, not showing up for technical reasons
#agreed smichel17 will ask doecelic if he'd be available/interested for a contract (if the coop can find money for it)
hcoop-meetbot   smichel17: Unknown command: #agreed
smichel17       #accepted smichel17 will ask doecelic if he'd be available/interested for a contract (if the coop can find money for it)
unknown_lamer / robin: Would you be up to make a shortlist of tech debt we'd really like to clean up?
robin   there is also #close to end a vote and report results (idk if we use it though)
unknown_lamer   I think I have made many such lists on the wiki in the past
smichel17       #close
keverets[hc]    #vote +1
hcoop-meetbot   keverets[hc]: No vote is in progress
smichel17       If we have a relatively up-to-date one, that would be fine
unknown_lamer   were we scheduling the next meeting now? I do need to run, in five minutes max.
smichel17       #topic scheduling
Are weekends around this time still best for everyone?
keverets[hc]    Xmpp got unstuck it seems
This timing is OK for me. Preferred 2 hours earlier, but can make this work too
layline Weekends are good for me until mid April
smichel17       If so, how does Saturday, March 4th sound as a final board meeting?
unknown_lamer   tentatively that should work for me
robin   works for me
smichel17       keverets[hc]: Yeah, I think earlier didn't work for unknown_lamer last time around due to sleep schedule, so I think noon Eastern is our best compromise at the moment
#action smichel17 will schedule a board meeting for 12:00 ET on 2023-03-04
Sounds good
unknown_lamer   11 a.m. would probably work, but once DST is in effect I prefer noon EDT
smichel17       uhh, when's the cutover?
unknown_lamer   sometime in march 
so if everyone else wanted to do 11 for the next one I'll be awake
smichel17       march 12
Okay, let's do 11:00 then if that's good with everyone?
#undo
hcoop-meetbot   smichel17: Removed event: 68e3ab03a5e34ff8a36ef1ae6b85006c@2023-01-28T17:57+0000
layline 11:00 EST will be better for me
keverets[hc]    Sounds good to me
smichel17       #action smichel17 will schedule a board meeting for 11:00 ET on 2023-03-04
Or maybe that should be #agreed, whatever
Anything else before closing?
keverets[hc]    Nothing from me
robin   nor from me
layline I'm good. 
unknown_lamer   nothing from me, was gonna go afk to make this chili
smichel17       #endmeeting

IrcMeetings/20230128 (last edited 2023-01-28 23:03:59 by 2603:7000:7540:4b00::17)