Governance/Foundation/OIFBoardProcessGuide

Board of Directors Processes
This document describes the operational processes of the Open Infrastructure Foundation Board of Directors. Keeping this document up-to-date makes it easy to hand off the Chair role every year, and also makes it easy for Vice Chairs to stand in for the Chair as needed.

Regular remote Board meetings
The board meets by conference call about every other month. The meetings are usually held on Tuesday, recently at 7-9am US Pacific time, though there have been some experiments with alternating timezones, to accommodate our globally distributed board membership.

The Chair/Vice Chair tasks for each meeting are:


 * Send out a calendar invitation for each board member individually (CC their assistant if the board member has requested it), including dial-in information and link to agenda wiki page.
 * About three weeks before the board meeting, the Chair will schedule a meeting with Vice Chairs and staff to plan agenda items, or other needs from the meeting
 * Call for agenda items on board confidential mailing list, two weeks in advance of the meeting
 * Check with board committees and working groups to see if they have reports or items to review/discuss.
 * Set up agenda wiki page for the meeting, using previous agenda pages as a template, at: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/DDMMMYYYYBoardMeeting
 * Get the official minutes of the previous meeting from Mark Radcliffe, and post them at: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation/DDMMMYYYYBoardMinutes
 * Update the Governance/Foundation wiki page with links to the agenda page and previous board minutes: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation
 * Send a notice of the meeting to the public board mailing list and foundation@lists.openstack.org, including the date, time, and link to the agenda.
 * Send out board packet to the board confidential mailing list a few days before the meeting, including PDF of previous meeting minutes and any supporting materials for agenda items.

Face-to-face Board meetings
During a normal (non-pandemic) year, the board meets face-to-face for one or two full days, about twice a year and usually co-located with the Open Infrastructure Summit. We've found that it's best to hold the board meeting before the main event gets started. (We have tried overlapping days, but it always means board members miss out on fully participating in the main event, and participation is important.)


 * Since the face-to-face meetings have more planning involved, it can be helpful to put out a call to board members to participate in the planning.
 * Tasks for the agenda, minutes, calendar notices, and wiki pages are the same as the monthly conference calls.
 * A half-day is generally reserved for joint meetings with the project technical leadership.
 * In addition, there may be dinners or other social events to add to the agenda, notifications, and calendar.

Annual tasks
The board elections for Individual and Gold board members happen in January, so there are generally a few new board members to welcome each year.


 * Reach out to each new board member to welcome them, and offer to meet them for an introduction call.
 * Update the board directors contact sheet, and send out a PDF to the board confidential mailing list.
 * Go over policies and procedures in the first board meeting of the year, including antitrust policy, Code of Conduct, transparency policy.
 * Call for new members of board committees, and vote on new chairs for board committees.
 * Vote for chair and vice chairs of the board.
 * Prepare draft meeting schedule for the year, and review with the staff first, then with the entire board. Look for conflicts with open source events. After review, add the planned dates to the Board Meeting schedule on the wiki page: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Governance/Foundation

Irregular tasks

 * Sometimes additional board meetings need to be added during the year. It's helpful to send out a poll to plan dates. Otherwise, the tasks for added board meetings are essentially the same as the regular monthly meetings.
 * Platinum Members may change their representative at any time. Announce the change in the next board meeting. Reach out to the new board member to welcome them and offer to have an intro call with them.