Board of Directors Meeting

Directors in attendance: anddone asai bencuan ethanhs jaw kmo ncberberi njha rjz ronitnath snarain

Guests in attendance: fydai*

Guests marked with a * were appointed to BoD.

Quorum for this meeting is 6

Meeting Started at 20:10

STF: - STF is in an inconclusive state. EC certified it didn't pass, JC is postponing certification. - ethanhs: campus policy says abstentions do not count towards 20% turnout minimum, whereas ASUC regulations say they do. Emailed student groups such as Daily Cal and STAR to file petition to follow ASUC bylaws, and now JC is postponing certification. Alternative funding possible from CACCSF, and we might be able to hold special elections. - ncberberi: possibly bad precedent to allow campus to set fees with a failing referendum via CACCSF, or if OCF would be included in that. We should be able to pass STF again due to most being in favor and issue being with turnout in virtual semester. Should students be paying for it, if campus can pay for it? Special election would be in September, which might be problematic since there is less political activeness. - ethanhs proposes holding vote to send a letter to chancellor - No BoD in RRR. Next BoD is last bod.

Elections: - GM Tickets: - ronitnath, snarain - ncberberi, snarain - ncberberi - SM Tickets: - ethanhs, njha - njha, rjz - ethanhs, rjz

• GM Speeches:

  • ronitnath:
    • Working with jaw and kmo last semester, kmo and snarain this semester, knows how the GM-ship works. Basically building on internal/commcomm experience. Seen the OCF's up and downs, and take the OCF into the future.
    • Questions:
      • njha: Do you plan on keeping committee positions?
        • Will focus on GM
      • asai: outside commitments?
        • Space Enterprise @ Berkeley & ASUC (Chief of Staff). Will discontinue exsurgo.
      • asai: priorities?
        • Internal organization. Hard to tell who is where. Collaborate with others more closely to help our users. Want OCF's reputation to expand outside of printing. OCF provides web/mail hosting and we haven't been the best provider in terms of helping people. Our responsibility is in open computing for those w/o resources. Intend to do via projects and other organizations (Web Design @ Berkeley).
  • ncberberi:
    • Been around for a while. Mostly worked on STF with ficomm, and will continue. With finances settled we can think bigger. Restoring the lab space as a community space that we've missed.
    • Questions:
      • asai: biggest problems? what do you want to do?
        • Recruiting and retaining new people. Want to focus on this going forward. Still thinking.
      • kmo: plans for ficomm?
        • If not elected, will run again. Once STF is passed our operational costs are basically set and ficomm can think about other things like retreat.
  • snarain:
    • Current GM & ex-internal/commcomm head. Know a lot of administrative tasks. Want to smoothly transition to in-person. STF is in the air so we need to think.
    • Questions:
      • asai: problems and what do you want to do?
        • Recruitment/Retention. Familities/Interest groups?
      • asai: Looking back at last semester, do you have things you want to improve on?
        • Not really, mostly just following the same old that I learned from this semester.
      • asai: Concerns with opstaff productivity?
        • Web development? Expanding interests. Recruiting diverse skillsets to help the OCF.

• SM Speeches:

  • ethanhs:
    • Reinforcing existing services and improve them. Looking at expansions. Improving staff hours and focusing on new service committee for help queue. Expanding services such as HPC, remote printing, etc.
    • Questions:
      • asai: Which new services are most important in your opinion?
        • Atlas to provide students w/ their own VMs. We can buy more compute.
      • asai: We get comments that our services are mainly geared towards CS students. What other needs/in which way can we provide better for everyone else?
        • We should look into this, I want to hear more.
      • jaw: Plans for upkeep of existing services esp. if we have new ones?
        • Focus on committee. Staff hours can pass down technical information. Provide more consistent services over time. Once we're in person hopefully there are more people.
      • kmo: what do you envision as connection from SM to broader student community?
        • Our most important services are compute/printing access to those who are without, and web hosting. Depends a lot on how STF turns out.
      • kmo: SM with GM?
  • njha:
    • Worked on lots of k8s. From nonexisting up to Hack Day w/ CI working. Stagnating services. Reduce friction w/ responding to RT. Look into nicer UI and polishing current services. Newer versions of software.
    • Questions:
      • asai: Making services accessible?
        • Look into deploying other things for web hosting that make dragndrop possible. We should be aware of our limitations.
      • asai: Lot of friction esp. for RT, with manpower shortage. What do you feel is the SM's role here. How do you feel about mentorship & envisioning future.
        • Hopefully we have more manpower. More structure to responding to RT tickets. Organizing tickets, and making RT UI less scary.
      • asai: Is polishing RT a priority?
        • Not a main priority. Looking to work on technical priorities. Will do it though.
      • kmo: Technical priorities?
        • Buster. Moving to k8s. Updating services. Making sure lab reopens better than pre-covid. Reduce opstaff load with ID cards.
      • kmo: Do you plan to fit HPC? Is it in the agenda? Do you have plans to expand HPC compute nodes?
        • It's in the agenda. Make sure people have access to GPUs. Should add automation/guidance. JupyterHub will be huge.
        • Unfortunately we can't get hardware. Our few options probably include getting NVIDIA donations.
      • asai: context: First HPC node was funded by STF. We could apply for other grants like CACCSF. Would you apply for funding like that?
        • Did not envision heading funding committee due to existing technical responsibilities.
      • kmo: Interactions with student body & GM/SM relationship?
        • Keeping services running. Making sure staffers have access to services. Maintaining lab space. Making sure GMs & everyone is happening.
        • We need monies and that will be a collaborative effort.
      • jaw: commitments?
        • Research position and classes
  • rjz:
    • New but have experience w/ server admin & project management. As SM priority will be making sure OCF services are reliable and OCF staff work on RT. Optimizing other services such as mirrors and keyserver to deal with capacity issues.
    • Questions:
      • asai: You're newstaff (yay!). From your perspective do you feel there are problems, and as SM what do you want to do to fix them?
        • More handholding in onboarding needed. Throw more resources into training staff.
      • jaw: What do you like about the OCF and will you emphasize on them?
        • Decal was good, but we need to work more on general training programs for wider community, and this should be part of the OCF.
      • jaw: Training programs for wider community, what do you envision?
        • Train newstaff on procedures and workflow. Staff hours.
      • kmo: Best parts of the OCF in terms of services? Ideas to make them even better?
        • OCF is important to the community. Web hosting. Mirrors. Keyserver. Would be great if we can optimize those and other services
      • asai: commitments?
        • SysAdmin position 8-10hr/wk w/ SAIT.
  • Question from kmo to all SMs: As SM what is your vision for leading service comm?
    • rjz: no concrete plan, but need to improve staff participation.
    • ethanhs: ties well into goal of expanding staff hours. Everyone who responds to RT has a playbook. Add docs. RT usage flowchart to make responding easier. Encourage more staff hours.
    • njha: +1 to ethan. I go to templates and there aren't templates lots of times.

Election Results: - GM - 5 - ronitnath, snarain - 7 - ncberberi, snarain - 0 - ncberberi - SM - 8 - ethanhs, njha - 1 - njha, rjz - 3 - ethanhs, rjz

Final results: - GM: ncberberi, snarain - SM: ethanhs, njha

Committee Nominations: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e-3V3ZEm4FkGR8FWDt1eMo-jjdEekGYwHcMktG1mfoI/edit#gid=0

Meeting Adjourned at 21:30

Notetaker: jaw