Board of Directors Meeting

Directors in attendance: aryanshetty bencuan bplate dapark drestiny ericyang ethanhu etw jaysag jyxzhang kian lucdar ncograin njha oliverni ooehmke rameesha rjz trinityc

Guests in attendance:

Guests marked with a * were appointed to BoD.

Quorum for this meeting is 11

Meeting Started at 19:10

Status updates

• monitors
  • one incoming tomorrow
• HPC
  • "expected to arrive by the end of next week"
• ASUC Chartered Programs Coordinator
  • 1 Candidate for Final Round!
  • old SUPERB general manager
  • Student-Led Final Interview/Discourse 11/7
    • Give jyxzhang your questions
• Docs

Berkeley Subdomain Moratorium

• njha: he emailed me back and said proposal looks good
• but what about accessibility
• they require enrollment in siteimprove
• we said ok, now reviewing the proposal
• njha: we can also push back a little and run our own accessibility scanner
• it's kinda annoying to enroll the sites (email confirmation)
• API access?
• etw: Deque Axe is the industry standard tool and it's OSS (it's what Google uses for scoring search results)
• njha: up to sms

New Kubernetes Server!!!

• njha: it's amazing and fantastic !!!
• racked yesterday, bring up today if we have enough cables?
• hyper-converged infra!!1

OCF + Teleport

• they asked an email for license
• haven't issued license
• etw: we should have a dedicated email for licensing purposes
• njha: we need a root@ for actual current rootstaffs

Need-Based Stipends

• Proposal draft for need-based stipends

  • tldr; people with demonstrated need can do ocf project (technical) and be paid
  • vote here! https://forms.gle/SGNyrpbmamdE5EnL9
    • trinityc: people have some concerns in the poll
      • https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11esvifDHOFQnP49SDTPbxQtLrvIPvMCkdaqLCZE0yQM/edit#gid=2011116512
    • jyxzhang: work-study is for opstaff, so it's separate
    • njha: we might not be doing opstaff work-study, because we can't support both non- and work study positions
    • trinityc: what are our next steps, do we want to discuss the concerns people brought up?
    • concerns from form and bod:
      • might not be worth the effort
      • introducing a bias with money incentives
      • don't want people joining ocf just for the money
      • model after google summer of code
      • we don't want to give people work for the sake of work
      • bit of effort for current staff to write project proposals (might be a benefit actually, we need to be more on top of doing this anyways)
      • need to have a formal process (not vote/nomination based)
    • benefits:
      • formalizing the contribution process could create a pipeline for newstaff to maintain infra (right now we rely on someone conveniently being there to take over when knowledgable staff graduate)
      • integrate with LAEP for highly subsidized benefits
  • some other discussions:
    • jyxzhang: strongly against paying volunteer staff for all of the reasons mentioned above; volunteer staff is volunteer for a reason, and this would create unnecessary divisions
    • njha: good for inclusivity efforts (get more people interested in tech)
    • trinityc: target demographic is not existing staff; it is more for attracting nontraditional audiences into the ocf + learning about infra
    • ncograin/bryli: how do we determine eligiblity?
    • trinityc: qualifying for LAEP
    • jyxzhang: since person receiving stipend is doing the same work as volunteer staff, they might be ostracized/treated differently
    • jyxzhang: i feel like it's not something in the ocf's purview to provide; it's not something that makes sense for the ocf to be doing; we only requested money for operating the lab??
    • njha: would you be okay with requesting money specifically for this purpose?
    • jaysag: do we even have a consistent source of funding?
      • not really, but CACSSF
    • jyxzhang: regardless of funding we need to disclose the purpose beforehand
    • jyxzhang: fine with opstaff being compensated for technical work
    • rameesha: do opstaff have the ability to work on technical projects?
    • oliverni: shouldn't need to be concerned about different treatment of people receiving stipends (comparable to financial aid)

• action items:

• figure out if we can spend opstaff money on running a trial / add to funding requests
  • 2 people for a trial
  • bencuan: we should almost definitely be able to request CACSSF money to do this
• tentative vote: Contingent on getting a source of funding and on finding other participants based on LAEP/work-study eligibility, would you support running a small (2-person maximum) trial in Spring 2023 to hire technical staff members?
  • Passed with majority

• tentative vote if the first one fails: do we want to hire opstaff for technical work?

  • no vote needed

• work-study for opstaff?

  • some major concerns from opstaff
    • max of hours worked per week (prevents opstaff from working as much as they want/subshifts)
    • not as much control of where the money made is going
    • limit on how much you can get paid
    • allows for more access for people to know about the job but this could impact quality? (someone who actually uses the ocf regularly vs someone who found out through work-study portal)
    • ocf can't grant work-study so it will be granted under ASUC Finance
  • conclusion (bencuan): work study is probably not going to happen for opstaff position anytime soon, but will be under consideration for future positions when needed
    • we now know who to ask to get it started (lead center) and what to ask for (department code) so it should be doable if required

Funding Status

• Meeting with ASUC Finance Stephanie next week
• Henry wants to come check us out?
  • he wants to understand how the OCF works more
  • let's schedule a time

Notable RT Tickets

• rt#12119: sorried account - repeat problem for this group
  • Needs someone with root
• rt#12118: is mastodon up? going to be supported in future?
• rt#12116: SUFMO got asked by Student Affairs IT if we host a bunch of sites
  • We should clarify that IT can check by running dig or similar
  • Going to have a brief meeting tomorrow about these specific cases
  • No action items, just a PSA
• rt#12029: Wants more email addresses (but can't get a hostname right now)
  • We can't do what they're asking but they can do [username]+(something)@ocf.b.e right?
• rt#12102: Wants to host an app
  • Can't give a new subdomain, but they already have a domain
  • Just set up apphost on the same domain?
  • Requires someone with root
• rt#11596: Offsite faculty hosting
  • An SM should respond to this

Buy Sheet

• ocf.io/buysheet
• Add more items to buy this semester: ocf.io/buy
• tote bag design
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BoD Queue

• ocf.io/rt

Committee Check-ins

University Affairs

• ASUC finance meeting soon
• Henry tour soon

Opstaff Updates

• rameesha: interest in decorative/lab space related projects?
  • strong yes
• welcome poster being made
• waste posters (recycling, trash, compost, etc) any info to add?
  • the green bin is compost but everyone just uses it as a recycling bin lol
  • ocf-themed version of the informational waste posters
• still work being done for making centralized concern doc
• meet the staff!
• adding more big waddles posters
• thoughts on more decor for the lab? budget ideas? do we need? etc.

Internal Comm

• alumni banquet this sat (11/5) - ocf.io/banquet
  • if you know alumni, please reach out to them and invite them to come
• hiking social soon?

External Comm

• EFA responsibilities could use some attention
• any plans for a guest speaker?
  • Rory@EFF suggests we could get Cooper Quinn (Security Expert w/Tor Relay Challenge)

Finance Comm

• Proposal draft for need-based stipends
• We need to buy merch things asap so they come before the end of the semester!!!!
  • submit sticker designs before this Sunday
• finance comm dashboard project: help wanted
  • https://notes.ocf.berkeley.edu/9IWheJG7QcCaFp0-juVAoQ
  • (trinityc) work done so far: scraping purchase requests, parsing into beancount
  • next week: dashboard work, cacssf funding application, purchase tote bags and stickers

Decal Comm

• decal approved by scheduler, off to chair for signature
• submitted all required forms except to COCI (pending chair approval), will be accepting 150 students
• currently biggest issue is infra (how are we doing vm's)

Meeting Adjourned at 20:00

notetaker: bencuan, rjz