FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
The new Operating Plan for 2021 was approved at the September board meeting. Now for the hard part: executing on all these promised reforms and deliverables. For the first time, we have an official project management platform, which provides access for the Board and Committee chairs and our staff to deliver results for the community. I will be automating the milestone view from this single source of truth.
Finance reform
I have been consulting with large regional events to ensure that the Operating Plan's finance reform is communicated and has consent from those most affected by this fundamental change. I will be building a package of reforms that will require entirely new expenses, grants, events, awards, scholarships, bartering, sponsorship, and donations policies. Be on the lookout for a Town Hall to answer any of your reform questions.
Finance reform means a great deal to the Foundation. We can finally retire the broken funding mechanism and ensure all chapters, projects, events, and committees have access to the same expenses policy, regardless of funds. Our operational reserves will be accurate for the first time since 2012, and reduce our admin overheads, allowing us to fund even more mission-related activities.
The reform package will be a part of the 2021 Budget, due in November. Expenses, awards, travel, scholarships, committee budget requests, and grants for 2021 will be decided and funded by the Board via the 2021 budget. I am working with Committees already to define their 2021 budget requests.
Complimentary Membership for Active Leaders
The Board at their face to face strategy meetings approved active leader complimentary membership. We will be implementing this change for active leaders by November 1st. We are currently thinking of an automated check that runs during the membership join page workflow and presents a complementary option to eligible leaders. Once the automation is built, we will be announcing it with detailed instructions on how to access the benefit.
This leader benefit helps the public, our members, and active leaders discover active chapters and projects. It also encourages active leaders to keep their project or chapter information up to date. Discovery requires automation and API access to project or chapter metadata, and later committees and events.
Leader benefits will only be available if you use standard OWASP systems. We simply don't have the staff or the time to maintain a manual exception process and will not be processing any complimentary leadership requests via the ticketing system. It is still early days for the automation being built, but you can get ready today.
Before you apply for a complimentary membership, your project or chapter must be in a position by which we can detect your eligibility:
- Maintained the OWASP.org page. Your chapter or project must not be the draft page and contain a list of active chapter or project leaders in the leaders.md file.
- Only 5 leaders will be eligible. Only the first 5 leaders in leaders.md in your project or chapter page for your chapter or project will be eligible. You can have more leaders, but if you need to give the benefit to others, they need to be in the top 5.
- Eligible Leaders must have been active for the last six months. This is the same as the current Honorary system.
- Meet minimal Chapter Activity. You must have met the Chapter minimum activity requirements of 4 meetings within the last 12 months. You must have a Meetup group linked from your owasp.org chapter page showing these meetings and who attended them.
- Meet minimal Project Activity. You must have your GitHub repo linked from your owasp.org page. The repo must show activity over the last 12 months, including formal releases, answering questions, check-ins, pull requests being merged, etc.
For GDPR reasons, it is opt-in. You don't need to accept complimentary leadership. I have Lifetime OWASP membership, which I highly recommend to all Leaders. Lifetime and existing members do not need to take complimentary membership. We will be working on improving paid and Lifetime member benefits to compensate those who have paid for their membership, supporting our mission.
Two new committees
At the November board meeting, I hope to be presenting a motion to establish two committees. The first is the Events committee, to help promote, mentor, and assist local and regional events. The second is a Corporate Advisory Committee to help advise the Board and our community on better ways to interact with industry, fund, or sponsor our mission. If you are interested in joining the Events Committee or the Corporate Advisory Committee, please email me.
COVID restrictions update
I have reviewed the temporary COVID restrictions I put in place. The only change is that I have added the 60-day window from the existing expense policy. If you are a chapter, project, or committee leader, please review and get those expenses in a timely fashion. A gentle reminder that if you have an idea which costs more than the cap, please ask for pre-approval.
Please vote
Lastly, please vote. You will receive a ballot in your OWASP email shortly. You MUST opt-in to an email from the Foundation to receive your ballot. If you want, opt-out as soon as you've voted. Good luck to all the candidates, and I look forward to seeing who the community votes in!
Thanks,
Andrew van der Stock
Executive Director, OWASP
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