Minutes of SunPy Board Meeting 20210319
19 March, 2021, 17:00 GMT
Present: Monica Bobra, Tiago Pereira, Stuart Mumford, Jack Ireland, Russell Hewett, Steven Christe, Kevin Reardon
Absent: Bin Chen, David Perez-Suarez
Agenda:
- Board member renewals (current status) / new members
- SPD/AAS Plans
- SunPy Coordination Meeting
- Sunpy Management Structure Proposal (PR)
- Other
Question was raised about how many people should be on the board and whether terms should be longer than two years. Five people with five year terms provide more continuity and long-term perspective, but requires a long commitment, more than what early-career researchers might be able to accept. Five people might also be too few to bring in the variety of viewpoints that need to be represented.
The project needs oversight of the political, financial, and technical dimensions. The PR will primarily move the financial oversight into the executive (together with the technical planning).
This PR is part of a larger puzzle, which is not supposed to solve all the problems, but just get the board out of certain areas. Board members will make additional comments to PR, and approve off-line through the review process.
SEP's are an avenue for direct community input or guidance, and the board is still intended to vote on those SEP's. Some SEP's are more technical, and some could be more general (i.e. SEP's may lie somewhere along technical or political dimensions). I evvaluating the different SEP's the board should state it will follow community consensus.
How does the existing NASA ROSES proposal change the immediate needs and role of board? Maybe the ROSES project is not tightly tied to SunPy governance.
Bigger management restructuring needs some thought and work. It might be presented at the SunPy 2022 Coordination meeting, but should probably be well hashed out beforehand. Stuart will try to put together a small group to have separate discussions outside of full board meetings to draft a proposal. Steven, Russell, and Kevin volunteer to be part of discussions.
Goal remains to find new members willing to serve on the board. Application process to fill potential board vacancies can be advertised through various channels. Potential members can also be individually approached to solicit their application.
Board votes to extend terms of expiring board members until 06 March 2023, except for Bin Chen, given his email statement that he would like to step down. All approve.
