Committee Meeting Minute - 2019-08-17¶
tags: `Meeting'¶
:::info - Location: Mountbatten level 4 meeting room - Date: 2019-08-17 - Agenda 1. Commitee structure 2. Society structure 3. Tyler 4. "Sourcebots" as a brand 5. Software bus factor 6. Joyce 7. Sponsorship 8. Freshers 9. Git and GitHub 10. SRO/SR relationship - Participants: - Dan Trickey (DT) - Dan Hobson (DH) - Anton Nitkin (AN) - Joseph Morton (JM) - Jenny Walker (JW) - Chair: Unspecified - Minutes: DH dsh1g18@soton.ac.uk - Minutes Archive: - Available here
:::
Agenda¶
- Commitee structure
- The current president is stepping down and we are going to restructure the committee to better reflect the society. The following changed were proposed by the outgoing committee (an Extrordinary General Meeting, EGM, is being called for the following proposals to be formally made to the society):
- The EGM is likely to be held on the 2019-08-26. Remote attendance and voting will be available.
- It is proposed that the committee should consist the following roles:
- President. The President shall oversee the organisation and management of the Group and the Committee as a whole; ensure the officers’ accountability to Members, the Committee, and the Students’ Union.
- Secretary. The Secretary shall oversee the administration of the Group, take minutes at General Meetings and Meetings of the Committee, and maintain the register.
- Treasurer. The Treasurer shall oversee the financing of the Group, set the Group’s budget, oversee the acquisition of sponsorship for the Group and maintain the accounts of the Group.
- The role of Social Secretary is being removed with the role of social and cultural pursuits for the Group’s Members being connected to the role of Welfare Officer.
- Welfare Officer. The Welfare Officer shall oversee the personal welbeing of the Group's Members, including organising small-scale social events for the Group's Members and mediating between members where such action is necessary.
- The role of SourceBots Director shall be split into Summer School Lead and an optional Summer School Second and shall oversee all activities related to the running of the annual, however the Summer School Lead and Summer School Second are expected to involve the rest of the Group in decision making and are not expected to be solely responsible for the running of the event. Going forward, effort will be made to ensure this role is particularly well considered when roles are handed on to new Members.
- The role of Outreach Director shall be removed
- Marketing Director. The responsibility for the organisation of outreach activities shall become part of the role of Marketing Director, who shall also oversee the promotional materials and promote the Group to prospective Members and potential sponsors alongside the Treasurer by managing our online presence.
- The role of Student Robotics Liaison is removed
- Technical Officer. Co-ordination of events and communication between Student Robotics, an external Charity no. 1163168 and the Group are handled as part of the role of Technical Officer. The Technical Officer is responsible for overseeing any kit development work the Group may carry out and is expected to work closely with the Kit Team Committee of Student Robotics.
- The new committee, being elected at an EGM to follow, are expected to meet weekly or biweekly to discuss and act on matters of the Group and will consult and report to the Members on such matters.
- The current president is stepping down and we are going to restructure the committee to better reflect the society. The following changed were proposed by the outgoing committee (an Extrordinary General Meeting, EGM, is being called for the following proposals to be formally made to the society):
- Society structure
- In a hope to prevent the stress caused by this year's Smallpeice summer school, we are planning to make the summer school our focus for the coming academic year and start prearations for it signifiacntly earlier than we did this time.
- Our outreach and kit development work should continue on the side
- Our weekly Monday sessions are planned to be more structured, so members have the choice between doing their own thing and following a structured event, such as a talk by a member or guided activity.
- Members have expressed concern about HackMD as a tool due to the coding-oriented nature of it and it's poor mobile interface. We are hoping to try using google apps (docs or slides) for editing collaberative notes. The committee may decide they prefer using HackMD for their minutes, but minutes will be available to members in a nicer format (details are currently to be determined)
- Sorting out a Google drive folder should be done for weekly presentations
- Tyler
- Is leaving and that means we are loosing all the knowledge he has from running the summer school for several years
- We need to start early and work together to make up for this
- We'd like to do a 'practice run' of the summer school if we can to find all the issues we would otherwise miss
- Is leaving and that means we are loosing all the knowledge he has from running the summer school for several years
- "Sourcebots" has been confusing as a brand. It should become the brand for summer school volunteers only.
- Software bus factor
- we don't understand sr-comp
- we might have to use a whiteboard for scoring, unless we can find out how it works
- we don't understand sr-comp
- Joyce
- has money for guest speakers and pizza, which we should try and make good use of over freshers
- if we can ask her to send emails about our freshers events we'll be more likely to get more new members
- Sponsorship
- Anton is trying to organise some sponsorship
- Freshers
- last year wasn't good
- planning
- leaving freshers to 'get on with something' without providing structure to tasks is alienating
- we do need to have projects on the go to encourage people to join, but they need to be better structured than before
- marketing. We would like to have for freshers:
- roll up banner
- fabric table banner
- leaflets
- business cards?
- make them memorable (an unusual shape is a good idea)
- online presence, is lacking and confusing (which URLs are we using at the moment)
- consolidate around
- https://roboticsoutreach.org/ for outward-facing stuff and
- https://kb.roboticsoutreach.org/ for inward-facing stuff
- consolidate around
- our slack is still at https://sourcebots.slack.com/ which should become SRO.
- events
- the saturday hackday event was good last year (playing with the outreach kit)
- we want to put on a number of short talks about specific things we do (so freshers get a good idea of what sorts of things they could do if they join)
- j5?
- the camera board?
- the pi power hat?
- Dan also has future worlds contacts, maybe we could inclued some stuff from them?
- Git and GitHub
- git repos are not nice at all for non coders, particularly those that are set up for a Linux build environment
- we'll keep our code there, and maybe other things that need version control but we will move away from using it for other things. Things like writing documentation should at least have a more user-friendly option (maybe WYSIWYG, or stick with WYSIWYM but make the compilation happen automatically)
- GitHub is still the best project management tool we can find. We tried Trello and didn't feel it did what we need. The tasks repo is likely to stay as our way of tracking tasks, but we want to find a way to make it less intimidating (either find a pretty frontend for it or go a good job of teaching people how it works)
- git repos are not nice at all for non coders, particularly those that are set up for a Linux build environment
- SRO/SR relationship
- we want to work with the SR kit team committee
- Having a prearangement that SR have the kit, and that it becomes available for smallpeice saves us maintaining our own kit and still lets us use it
- we do some development, and take prototypes to SR trustees to propose additions to SR kit
- agreements need to be made and written down and made avaiable to all members, but should not be made as formal contracts
- we want to work with the SR kit team committee
ACTION POINTS¶
- 2 EGMs, 1 for constitution changes and one for committee position re-election
- Write an email to potential sponsor