Where are we?

joom-nothing.md

Hi Joomla friends

I don't wish to be negative but I do need to point out that leadership has done (from what I can see) very little in 2016 so far.

Now before I get to why that matters, let's first remember where we are at:

1. Joomla World Conference Pandimonium: everyone on leadership is more or less completely occupied by JWC for endless amounts of time. Totally understand the lack of communication because of this.

2. Holidays: November - January is a holiday season. Lots of time away spent with family and loved ones. Totally understandable.

3. Taxes & Finances: January brings tax season, we have a budgeting process which is being worked through (the one place I have seen leadership activity)

4. There is some activity on PLT

So that's the current state of things from my perspective. Lots of business and distractions from Joomla.

But what of the elephant in the room. You know the one I'm talking about:

The big org restructure.

Are we still doing that? Wasn't it discussed at JWC? Were there meetings? What happened?

Curious minds want to know.

Where are we? It's february in 2016 and there's hardly been a single leadership mailing list post about the fact its a new year, about the fact that basically, the leadership restructure has been stagnant since it was voted on (it at least appears this way, reality or not).

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Its important to note a few things:

1. I don't want to attack people who do important work like taking notes or minutes. I don't want to attack people period, but please know that I am specifically not blaming note takers for lacking in their duties. Its a tough job no one else wanted to do, thanks for doing it. its so important for everyone's visibility. Thank you. Thank you.

2. I don't want to appear negative, or nagging. I really just wanna know what's going on!

3. There has been a lot of distractions - see the 4 points I raised above. I get it!

4. I don't know what its like :( I'm not on leadership, I recongize that. I know its tough and I know you probably all hate it. I'm sorry if posts like these contribute to the reasons you do. All I can say is...I'll make a deal with you - post more info on what's going on and I promise I'll not make posts like this asking about it ;)

So, Feb 2nd, 2016. Where are we?

From the finance side, I can speak as Treasurer.

Taxes and Accounting

The tax return process has begun. Reconciliation of our books looks to be complete for 2015, though i feel one line item has an error, we we're looking into that. Turns out the PayPal account had a number of missing years RE: reconciliation, so our accountants and tax folks are sorting that out to get us on firm footing.

Budget

We're a little delayed because we had that re-budgetting at the end of 2015. However, I've exchanged a few "get ready" messages with liaisons from PLT and CLT and some other line item owners from the 2015 budget.

To facilitate, I'm working on a submission form for budget requests to help standardize and organize the information. This form will also include a field for where the line item fits into the new structure so we will have a smooth budget transition when that process moves forward.

I've also requested that the folks with their fingers on ad and affiliate revenue to come up with some good revenue projections for 2016. Projected revenue and a completed 2015 final report are my deliverables before the budget process moves forward.

Finally, OSM passed a short term budget resolution at their meeting last week that extends the 2015 line items through March 31st. Each line item is pro-rated at 25% of the annual 2015 rate. Thus, March 31st is the target date for an approved 2016 budget.

FiT team

The FiT team has a new, provisional member. Saurabh Shah has agreed to take on a position as a "purchaser" who can manage signing up for new accounts, updating billing agreements, booking shipping (Fedex), booking travel, etc... We have had many requests for such things, and his position is meant to streamline and formalize this process. Saurabh attends his first team meeting this week.

Reimbursements

All reimbursements submitted through January 11th have been processed. Currently there are 7 items requiring my attention.

Thanks Vic!

Its just wrong Chad - just Wrong - very little people from leadership was involved in JWC.

There was no official leadership summit at JWC.

Leadership has not been involved in JWC.

In truth the only person in the team organizing it involved in leadership was me.

So its just plain wrong from assumption and on.

Lets try and be A LOT better at being Factual when we post things online so its not based on rumors or opionions but instead on FACTS.

Yes people across all teams has more or less gone in vacation mode - and yes lets get the fuck back on track and move forward :)

Hi Ronnie

I think you may be misunderstanding my tone in this post -- I was simply trying to relate and symapthize with the many reasons why things have been a little slow lately from the leadership end. Please understand: I"m not blaming, I'm understanding :)

My comments about JWC may be wrong, but they aren't based on conjecture. Sarah Watz actually posts right here:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/joomla-dev-cms/ynZ74AHwa3E/6B8WlfbSBQAJ

That the capital team (leadership!) was meeting at JWC, and that she was busy due to JWC. Also I understand there's a difference between someone being busy because they are attending JWC, and leadership persons being busy because they are concurrently doing leadership tasks and helping to organize JWC - I didn't make any assumptions or suggestions as to which of those two reasons were involved in this issue.

Now, perhaps I am wrong in assuming that there was a larger set of leadership meeting at JWC. I did kind of assume that there would be a sort of summit as there usually is. In fact I would expect, and hope, based on this huge organizational change that has been proposed, voted on, and is supposed to be going forward; that the team members would have met.

All in all, I don't believe I was wrong or that I made anything up, hopefully after reading the reasons why I added JWC in there, you won't think so either.

If by Capital team (leadership!) you mean Joe Sonne (leaving as the lead) and Mike D (coming in as the lead) getting together to talk (and possibly Ronni), I guess you could call that leadership. I'm not in leadership either but I didn't get a sense of a lot of time consuming meetings going on at JWC.

Yes there was no leadership summit at JWC - it was decided to not have it in the hopes of the transition team being sofar it would not make sense to spent money on sending all of leadership to JWC for a leadership summit.

Both OSM and CLT has decided to not relect new people in the anticipation of the elections for the new leadership structure, which sadly seems to take a longer time than planned, and also have some challenges with people who have resigned from the transition team.

Leadership are currently debating how it can help the transition team to finish the proces so we can move forward.

Chad you can be sure everything is good as it always is be, just in case if you are wondering, I am sober

Thanks Ronni for that insight. Is there any estimate on when we will see some decisions made? I really does feel like leadership has been completely halted since september almost. No notes, no meeting minutes, etc... the silence is deafening.

For teams and WGs, I noticed 13 reports here since Jan 1: https://volunteers.joomla.org/reports

Hi Vic - thanks for joining the conversation and sharing updates from some of your areas of responsibility.

Thanks also for sharing the link highlighting that some of the grass-roots level working groups are indeed making an effort to honor the project's frequently mentioned principles of openness and transparency.

Along the same lines that Chad asked above, how do you think OSM itself is doing in terms of honoring those same principles of openness and transparency? I'm thinking of things like the timeliness of publishing OSM board meeting minutes, timeliness of publishing OSM Year to Date Budget vs Actual reports, and the frequency of use of the OSM public email list for non-confidential subjects.

Thanks again for joining the conversation - having an authentic dialog is certainly a step for rebuilding trust. :-)