Association of Lisp Users, Inc. (ALU)                  26 March 2009
Board Meeting                                          15:30 hours UTC
Minutes                                                Rev. 1

Meeting was held via telephone with the following board members
present, where (D) denotes Director.

Officers present:
	Ernst van Waning, Pres.

Directors present:
	Mason Bliss       Daniel Herring          Rich Hickey
	Kuroda Hisao      Jeremy Jones            Duane Rettig
	JonL White

President Ernst van Waning called the meeting to order at 15:30 UTC
with a quorum of eight directors present.

The next meeting will be held at 22:00 UTC on April 2, 2009, by
mutual agreement.

Upcoming issues to be discussed are: International Lisp Conferences,
ALU web site, and ALU membership.

The budget needs to be submitted to the board for review for errors or
omissions, before it is shown to the public.

Info at alu.org was dead for almost a year.

Didier Verna was the first recipient of the ALU cash award for best
paper at ECOOP in 2006.

One director thinks that email hasn't worked for making board
decisions, because nobody knows what no response means.  Suggestions
include using other tools like Assembla.  The core of the website
should be a wiki.  Communication is more important than a Lisp
showcase.  The ALU should build local communities in various places,
there are many ideas for inexpensive ways to help sponsor these
groups, including company sponsorship of groups.

Website -
Multiple and sometimes opposing views were expressed, including:
  - Rather than hiring professionals, invest in making existing
    contributor tasks easier.  Pay people who are already doing it;
  - Experience has proved that volunteers don't work well for time
    critical requirements;
  - Don't run servers, use other technologies like Assembla, Google
    Apps;
  - Use the best technologies available;
  - Using a Lisp based web server is important;
  - It is not important to serve static web pages in Lisp;
  - Virtual private servers;
  - Use multiple servers and implement strategic pieces in Lisp;
  - Use Lisp when it demonstrates some great benefit of Lisp;
Topic was tabled by agreement to external discussion.

Election of Officers -
President, Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary.
By acclamation, Rusty Johnson will remain Treasurer.
Ernst is willing to be president. He was elected by acclamation.
One suggested to use a private Google group.  It was pointed out that
someone has to run the mailing list manager.
The new board members will be added to the existing mailing lists
alu-board-only and alu-board.  J. Jones will ask to have them added.

Future Meetings -
The board meets first Thursday of each month at 22:00 UTC.
It was agreed to begin with April 2, 2009.

Miscellaneous -
One common request concerns the ALU wiki.  It should be a high
priority to get it back up.  R. Hickey will make some proposals for
hosting services.  M. Bliss will look into virtual private servers.
D. Herring will be unavailable for the month of May.  Request was made
for text agenda before the meetings so that the discussion can be
followed easier.  It was suggested to just type raw notes into IRC,
would help people who have trouble following the discussion.  Assembla
has some tools for this.  The ALU needs to be clear about memberships;
do we even want memberships?

The President leaves the directors with this simple question to
ponder: Why do you want to be a member?

The meeting adjourned by acclamation.

These minutes were transcribed from notes provided by Jeremy Jones.
The Secretary expresses his appreciation for those notes.

Peter Lindahl
   ALU Secretary