February 10, 2004

A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation (the "PSF") Board of Directors was held over Internet Relay Chat at 18:00 GMT. Martin von Löwis presided at the meeting.

1. Attendance

The following members of the Board of Directors were present at the meeting: Guido van Rossum, Martin von Löwis, Tim Peters, Jeremy Hylton, Marc-Andre Lemburg, Thomas Wouters. Neal Norwitz also participated in the meeting. A quorum was present. Martin was taking minutes.

2. Meeting minutes of past IRC meetings

The December minutes where not available yet. The January minutes were approved with 4 ayes and 2 abstentions.

3. Member meeting

Martin asked for the procedure for electing the new board. The ballot could either be a ranked list (by preference), or just a list of names. The board agreed that the ballot should not imply a preference.

Marc-Andre reported concerns about the proposed change to the bylaws; in particular, Jeremy raised concerns that a lawyer should review such changes. He withdrew the motion, and the board agreed that the issue should be discussed at the member meeting.

4. Extension of early-bird fee deadline for PyCon

Marc-Andre asked why the deadline for the early-bird fee was extended, and who made this decision. Jeremy answered it was a stealth decision, as neither the conference committee nor the pycon-organizers list were involved. Guido said there never was a clear decision point. People discussed it as a good idea, them somebody got confused and Steve Holden reported it suddenly as decided. Marc-Andre pointed out that he agrees with the decision itself, but doesn't like the way it was handled.

5. PyCon report

Neal reported there were 204 confirmed registrations, and about $44700 income. Jeremy reported that the program committee selected 49 proposals, 8 60-minutes talks, and the rest 30 minutes talks. They invited Bruce Eckel to give a third keynote speach. The schedule was not decided, but Jeremy expected to have only two parallel sessions most of the time.

Marc-Andre asked whether we are on target wrt. the budget. Neal answered that he believes we will stay within budget, but he had no estimates for food cost yet (and assumed they will be $95/person).

Jeremy asked to compare the registration numbers with last year. Neal reported there were 235 attendees, 186 of which registered before the early-bird deadline (which ended March 1).

5. Adjournment

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned.