TEI Board Minutes: Google Hangout 2016-04-12

In attendance:

• Marjorie Burghart (MB)
• Hugh Cayless (HC)
• Michelle Dalmau (MD), chair
• Kevin Hawkins (KH)
• Martin Mueller (MM)
• Kathryn Tomasek (KT)
• Pip Willcox (PW)

Apologies: John Unsworth (JU)

1.0 Meeting Procedures and Other Announcements (MD)

1.1 Decisions made over email

1.1.1 It was agreed over email that a donation would be made to the hospice in memory of Sebastian Rahtz, with a message recording the gratitude and regret of the TEI. Action: Michelle will check with John that the donation has been made.

1.2 Status of meeting minutes for January and February

1.2.1 KT noted that the minutes from the January and February meetings have been agreed. They will be encoded in XML and posted to the website, and KT will email the Board list when this is done.

2.0 Approve Board Meeting Minutes from March 2016 Meeting

2.1 These were not ready, due to a misunderstanding on KT’s part. Action: KT to recheck March’s minutes, which were taken collaboratively during the meeting in a Google Docs document.

3.0 2016 Conference Updates (MM)

3.1 The CFP has been published.

3.2 Keynotes are being decided, with conference hosts taking the lead. As was the case in Lyon, hotel and travel expenses will be covered for keynotes.

3.3 The conference website is in progress, with development led by the hosts. The website will lead with logistics rather than programme details.

4.0 Update on Social Media Coordinator Position (MD)

4.1 Paul O’Shea declined the Board’s offer that he continue in the position.

4.2 Email discussion has yielded two yes votes for posting the position. With a third yes from the Board meeting, Action: Michelle will post the position to the TEI list today.

5.0 Proposal for Rahtz Prize for TEI Ingenuity (MD)

5.1 The monetary value for the prize will be finalized by email discussion.

5.2 The review committee was decided by the same discussion

5.2.1 The review committee will be: Chair of the Board, Chair of the Council, and Distinguished Community Representative (as tie-breaker).

5.3 The Board will formalize these decisions in preparation for announcing the prize at the Members’ Meeting in September.

5.3.1 It was agreed that nominations should come from the TEI community, to allow for nomination of Council members without the appearance of conflict of interest.

5.3.2 Other possibilities were discussed, including rolling nominations and no repeat awards within a three-year window. Action: Michelle will firm up plans.

5.4 See emails to board & council lists from March 24 and March 25.

6.0 Convene Nominating Committee (MD)

6.1 Bylaws on nominations process:

6.2 This group should be convened soon so that we can revisit the nomination and ballot submission processes to proof them against errors. Google forms are suggested, and there may be alternatives.

6.3 There will be 3 positions for the Board and 5 positions for the Council.

6.4 Board members coming to the end of their terms are not eligible to be on the nomination committee. Since Pip and Kathryn are the only two Board members who are not at the end of their terms, they are the Board members of the committee.

6.5 Pip sought advice, asking whether anyone at the meeting had been on the committee before, referring to the Board’s action items for this year and the charge to improve the nomination and ballot submission process:

6.5.1 There was additional discussion about proper procedure.

6.5.1.1 Topics included: seeking volunteers from Council and the community to serve on the committee, the need to improve the nomination and ballot submission process. It was noted that some past issues included not nominating people who should have been nominated, concern about clarity regarding when to submit bios, and inadvertently leaving people off the slate.

6.5.1.2 Solutions include: outreach, self-nomination, follow up.

6.5.1.3 There was also discussion of the Google forms process as discussed at Lyon: . Michelle noted that a workflow was sketched out in Lyon, where John Unsworth outlined ways to automate more of the process to avoid mistakes. The operation of automated “email triggers” that was discussed is not entirely clear. The nominating committee will use Google forms at a minimum, with next processes either automated or done by hand, precise procedures to be decided later. No alternatives were suggested.

6.6 The bylaws are not clear about the voting time line. On discussion, it was decided that the mechanisms for managing nominations should be in place and codified, with the call for nominations to be made no later than June. Since the length of the voting period is not specified, we agreed to at least a month. Action: Kathryn to look to notes from Lyon. Michelle noted that voting should open in mid-August at the latest and that we will codify the process as we work on it. It was agreed that biographies should be published before voting opens to give people the opportunity to double-check their applications were received.

7.0 Review TEI-C Website Redesign Plans (KH & PW)

7.1 Kevin has put a plan together which has been discussed by email, and Pip has fleshed out some of the steps to align with recent Board discussions. She has created some personas () and is keen for comments/amendments/unrepresented groups. It is not yet clear how these personas fit with the Next Steps. We need to assign roles over user testing. Michelle noted that the Board will have input on audiences and how things should be laid out. Are we looking for design, branding, architecture, ways into the site? The Board and Council could help with this. The technical side could be taken on by a different team. There is funding for this: what are we going to outsource?

7.2 Pip will start design coordination. She notes she is not a UX expert and requests help and guidance. Of particular interest is whether we can fund someone to create wireframes, so we can think about navigation and pathways through. Action: Michelle will follow up with John Unsworth on funding available for new website.

7.3 Martin suggested that the presentation be turned inside out, so we start with a description of the TEI and move from there to the technical guidelines. Pip’s work with personae will help with the human-facing portion.

7.4 Kevin suggested that he and Pip flesh out plans further and ask additional questions via email. We will work in costs for discrete packages (e.g. information architecture) for a freelance or small web designer. Many of these tasks would be better done by someone entirely new to the material. The rest of the committee will then be asked for approval.

The meeting ended at 16.02 GMT.

Minutes taken by Pip Willcox and revised by Kathryn Tomasek.