TYPO3 Association set-up meeting

The following people attended the setup meeting:

• Gina Steiner (GS)
• Jürgen Egeling (JE)
• Olivier Dobberkau (OD)
• Patrick Lobacher (PL)
• Ben van 't Ende (BE)
• Frederik Gaus (FG)
• Robert Meyer (RM)
• Stefan Busemann (SB)
• Jan Hendrik Heuing (JH)
• Peter Pröll (PP)
• Ingo Schmidt (IS)
• Jonas Felix (JF)
• Michael Stucki (MS)
• Søren Schaffstein (SS)

Due to other arrangements those could not join:

• Georg Ringer
• Jochen Weiland
• Alain Veuve

The main purpose of this setup meeting was to inititialize the work of the boards and the newly elected members.
Monday started with a general presentation of the new structure by Gina Steiner and was followed by different discussions about the current status of the TYPO3 Association's work. The fact that the official bodies need to comply with the new bylaws and the stated purpose within them was a major topic in the discussions. Article 3: "The TYPO3 Association promotes the project of the free software TYPO3 under the GNU GPL (GNU Public Licence). It serves the TYPO3 community. The TYPO3 Association is a non-profit association in that it provides free software development by third parties to the public. In order to finance the further development, the association raises funds through membership fees and collects donations for development projects. The TYPO3 Association is neutral with respect to politics and religion." Article 4  "The TYPO3 Association has the following tasks in particular:

1. Events for the purpose of information and further training
2. Internal and external communication to spread knowledge and competence for using the system
3. Sustained particularly long-term further development of the software-project TYPO3
4. Securing trademark rights in the interests of the TYPO3 community"

The participating Members expressed their thoughts and explained their motivation to each other. Some quotes from the participants:
Patrick Lobacher expressed his wish to work not only on TYPO3 but also for the TYPO3 Community.
Jonas Felix: "I am here to contribute, because this is right place to do so". The Board of the TYPO3 Association explained its view as being a Piggy-bank for the TYPO3 Project. Gina Steiner continued her explanation of the new budget process and how the timeline for 2012 will look like. It will be the task of the Expert Advisory Board (EAB) to implement, communicate and manage the whole process. This will be a very transparent process aimed to inform the TYPO3 Association Members on how their funds and donations will be used. A clear differentiation between committees, community projects and budget was sketched allowing the present members to communicate this to the outside. Our Community Manager Ben van 't Ende explains how he works as a bridge between the many projects and official parts of the TYPO3 ecosystem. He informs about the expressed code of conduct and that all members should be as close a possible. Furthermore Gina provided an insight into the different tools used by the boards so far and advised the BCC and EAB to follow this already set course. The presented tools are: mailinglists, a global calendar and projects on forge. Some official Dates (to be confirmed):

• 13.08.2012: Budget Planning Meeting in Düsseldorf
• 05.11 - 06.11.2012: Budget Finalization Düsseldorf
• 01.02 - 02.02.2013: General Assembly Basel

2013 will be the first year the TYPO3 Association will work according to the new budget procedure.  A lot of time was spent to present and discuss the different aspects of this new process. The timeline was explained, discussed and refined. It was the main objective to clarify when the different steps in the budget process will take place and where the responsibilties for those will reside. The meeting also discussed the future way of communication like has been done with the quarterly reports until recently. It was decided to change it to a more fact sheet like publication and see if members like this way better. Another point of the agenda was a looking at the upcoming elections of part of the EAB and Business Control Committee (BCC). According to the bylaws some board members need to be re-elected by the TYPO3 Association assembly. In this context we had a look at the voting application. One participant expressed his wish to add SSL and to move this to a typo3.org subdomain. The EAB will vote for new board members in 2012 as 3 positions will be needed to be filled. All meeting participants were asked to think of potential candidates and to discuss possible participation with them. Let us know if you have a potential canditate for the EAB (<link>eab@typo3.org). The first day of the meeting was closed by a voting on how to proceed with the requirement that all official members need to have a personal membership of the association. It was decided that this should be the case. Last but not least the participants discussed the initiative to create a inter-project communications entity that was presented by former steering commitee members initially called "product board". All participants understood the need for a communication body across the different community projects, but thought that the name might be misleading in the context and that it should sought to communicate with the proposal owner about alternatives. It was clearly observed that forming such structures should not try to clone a second organisation thus leading to confusion and weakening the TYPO3 projects and the TYPO3 Association. A part of the evening was used to get insights into the current discussions and decisions around the product-naming process of the different projects within the TYPO3 Association funded budgets. The second day was filled with separate meetings of the TYPO3 Association board and EAB.
You can find the protocol of the EAB meeting attached separately.