Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
111 lines (103 loc) · 6.02 KB

meeting_notes.md

File metadata and controls

111 lines (103 loc) · 6.02 KB
Raw

NumFOCUS 2024 Town Hall: Charting a Strategic Path

Monday, February 12 2024 18:00-19:30 UTC (12-1:30 PM CST)

Collaborative notes taken by C.A.M. Gerlach and the NumFOCUS community during the meeting

Presentation

  • Introductions
    • Leah introduces the NumFOCUS staff
  • First annual town hall
    • Goal is to bring the community together and share NF's strategic goals for the year and beyond
  • Agenda
    • Celebrate milestones from NF's history
    • Embracing transformation: Chart a strategic path
    • Strategic Vision: Discuss key priorities and plans for growth
    • Q&A: Answer questions from attendees on the above
  • NumFOCUS mission: Support open scientific computing
    • Want to make sure NF's efforts all center on this mission
  • Celebrating milestones and looking forward
    • NF has had considerable impact over the past 12 years
    • This motivated NF staff to look at how programs and services can better serve mission and projects
      • Made significant improvements to financial systems in response
      • Added Nolan to focus on business development
      • Nicole has helped get operations in a better place
      • But still more to do in each of these areas
  • Growth and impact over past 5 years
    • 160% increase in # of projects
    • 255% increase in project support income
      • "Nearly all income spent in support of projects"
      • S: note that this primarily refers to grant funding raised by the projects; NF charges a fee to administer those funds.
    • 362% increase in internal NF grant funding (Small Development Grants)
      • Getting close to $300000 mark
      • Would like to double that
  • Adapting to dynamic growth
    • Growth is not only in scope, but in types of needs as well
    • Need to diversify NF's services to not only meet more projects, but more needs
    • Increase resilience and come up with new funding strategies to address this
  • Now going to talk about how NF is going to address these challenges
    • Continue to innovate new funding strategies
    • Develop more financial sustainability
    • Ensure NF's role is continuing to support the community
    • Increase transparency
    • Invest more in infrastructure to support projects
  • NF Strategic Vision
    • Strengthen what makes the NF community unique while learning from what has been successful for others
    • Try to put projects first and support them
  • Execute on our vision
    • Focus next year will be an investment year and building capacity
    • Looking at what makes NF unique and what should guide our decisions?
    • First and foremost, how does it benefit NF projects?
      • Also have a developer community, donor community and user community
    • Second, make sure it is consistent with NF's values as an org
  • Formation of NF OSS Alliance
    • Is a 501(c)6 arm of NumFOCUS
      • More attractive for many corps to be able to give money to NF projects
    • Current 501(c)3 will remain as we know it
    • Will allow for a supporting member program
      • Memberships provide access to different corporate budgets than donations
      • Gives members a return on investment for their membership
      • Provides new opportunities for project and supporter cooperation
      • Can be a more renewable funding resource
      • Will also allow a member advisory council to get corporate feedback
  • Strengthen community ties
    • Right now have the board of directors and advisory council
      • Board looks at strategic aspects as well as administrative and operational aspects
    • Want to split Board into an administrative board as well as a technical advisory board
      • Administrative board handles legal and administrative matters
      • TAB will provide direct oversight and support to projects and initiatives
    • Election will be different in the past
      • Will give weighted votes to committees, affiliated projects and community organizations
      • Board members will be nominated and reviewed prior to community
      • New volunteer election committee to help manage and guide the process
    • Updated code of conduct
      • Projects completed a questionnaire
      • Will establish a project-driven code of conduct response committee
    • Want to increase involvement in AI alliances
      • NF thinks AI is critical in the future and they haven't been on top of it
  • Investing in additional staff
    • First new staff member is going to full time fundraising and finding money for projects
    • Second staff member will focus on shared infrastructure
      • In particular, some kind of shared "build system" (?) for projects
  • Current staff status
    • Capacity
      • Staff is currently at max capacity supporting projects
      • Staff has grown a lot, but needs have grown even faster
      • Paused staff expansion over the past year, but restarting it now
    • Ticketing system
      • Moved to a new ticket system but not meeting our needs
      • Key need is providing a message history
      • Also want to have an "AI-supported knowlegebase" for quick answers
    • Communication
      • Want to continue sharing latest updates with projects via NumFOCUS weekly updates
    • Development team expansion
      • Right now just Nolan, haven't been able to "develop" it too much yet
      • Hiring a full time "Fundraising Resource" to work directly with projects on fundraising
      • Will work with projects to collaborate on best funding resources for them
    • Project infrastructure
      • Brought in someone in part time already
      • Infra committee has a PoC for a "Building and Testing Environment"
      • Will be hiring a full time infrastructure person to work on it and other NF infra initiatives
      • Will be posting it soon
  • Q&A!

References