Thoughts on Getting the House in Order

[Jason Roy Gary]

OSF has a lot of administration issues, I think we all are blindly aware of this. We have 60+k in the bank (and more than 100k when dues payments arrive). How about we just spend some money and solve these problems?

Problems (in no order) - and I am sure I am missing quite a few:

1. D&O Insurance
2. Web Presence Stinks (no offense to Mark :-) )
3. Legal representation
4. Shindig's challenges
5. Adoption difficulties
6. SOTU
7. Marketing
8. Outreach

I don't think Virtual or IEEE are the immediate answer to these problems. I think we need to get sanity to the foundation first, then go to a Virtual to take us to the next level. I would not even know where to start we are so in the hole right now.

Suggestions:

1. Go hire an OpenSocial staff member. In the RTP area (co-located with Mark and Andy) there are lots of people out of work that are tallented back-office staff. Someone whom can do basic event planning, manage the intern(s), setup the board calls, follow up with our lawyer, drive membership adoption, work on outreach programs, etc. For Mark and Andy: I have in mind a Chris Collins type. Play them 35k a year and let's get dug out of the hole we are in. I trust Mark and Andy to find an aggressive person for this role.

2. We need to hire 1-2 interns ASAP. This is not that hard to do. I officially volunteer to help Andy in managing payment. Salary should be $2250 / month and we should hire them for the Summer (June / July). Tasks should include:
a. Shindig (which is quite a mess) - we need a solid ref impl, not something that is chaos incarnate
b. Documentation - how do you get started, what can you do, etc.
c. Our Web presence - Our homepage needs to be an activity stream with ee, full-stop.
d. We need to de-Google our back-office functions
e. Help setup SOTU
f. Other??

3. Find an attorney that we can put on retainer and be done with it. Connect the attorney with the OpenSocial Foundation Manager we hire in #1.

4. Getting D&O insurance can't be that hard. I know the board does not have the time to manage the task. Get #1 to go and solve it.

5. SOTU - We have way too short of a runway for OSCON. How about we go for TechCrunch in SF in September. That gives us more time to plan and get our new staff to get it executed right.

Let's go do something rather than drift toward the chasm.

Thoughts?
~Jason