Association of Lisp Users, Inc. (ALU)                  03 December 2009
Board Meeting                                          22:00 hours UTC
Minutes                                                Rev. 0

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

Officers present:
	Ernst van Waning, Pres.	 	Rich Hickey, V.P. (D)
	Rusty Johnson, Treas.		Peter Lindahl, Sec.

Members present:
	Tim Daly (D)		Kuroda Hisao (D)
	Duane Rettig (D)	JonL White (D)

President Ernst van Waning called the meeting to order at 22:08 UTC
with a quorum of five directors present.

The next meeting will be held at 22:00 UTC on February 4, 2009, by
mutual agreement.

The minutes of the October 1, 2009 board meeting were discussed.
T. Daly moves to accept the minutes.  D. Rettig seconds.  The motion
passed without dissent.

Old Business and Committee Reports

= Website & activated communication lines ALU <-> Lisp community.
   Results on ALU-discuss
   Pending subscriptions to ALU-members: reactions to "Some time ago
     you have registered on the mailing list ALU-members.  Until
     recently this list had hardly any traffic.  Can you tell us the
     reason you registered?":

   "I have been programming in C/C++ but recently starting using
    LISP. I am doing most of my current development in LISP in the area
    of AI and expert systems.  I joined this list to be able to get
    more information relating to LISP."

   "There's nothing on purpose actually, just because I'm the
    co-founder of CLUG (China Lisp User Group, currently only 4
    members) so I decided to subscribe to the mailing list to get
    informed (if there's any).  Though I can get almost all the
    information about lisp from Planet Lisp."

   "Well,for the reason to register on the list ALU-members,I should
    say first,I love Lisp language.  As we know,ALU is the biggest
    organization in the world.  It is honored to become a member.  And
    there are many things we can do in ALU.Sharing and communication is
    perfect."

= Next ILC -- where & when?  Suggested so far: Tokyo, Kyoto, Montreal,
   Pittsburgh (CMU)...  Ask others: extended board, ALU members (ILC
   visitors), Lisp community.  JonL White mentioned the possibility of
   co-locating with OOPSLA in Montreal in 2010.  The values of
   extending the deadline for bid proposals was discussed.  JonL White
   will submit a suggestion for a revised deadline.  E. van Waning will
   resubmit the announcement with the revised deadline.

= Status roundup ILC09 -- Recap
   Financial report received 2009-10-15; ILC09 lost $1370, which has
   been reported to ACM.  Status roundup General Chair?  Status roundup
   Program Chair?

   Dan Weinreb (2009-10-14):
    (2) Get the proceedings into the ACM Digital Library.  I filed the
        final paperwork with the ACM a few weeks ago.  Adrienne
        Grisceti at ACM HQ has assigned us an ISBN number.  As far as I
        know, Guy Steele is supposed to take it from here; I have not
        heard from him about it since 9/28.  I'll ask him how it's
        going.
    (3) Get the videos read in and hosted somewhere.  I have asked many
        people for advice about how to do this, and I have a bunch of
        answers, which I have to look over and digest.

JonL White provided that ACM "in-cooperation" status means the ALU can
post conference material without ACM approval.  ACM "sponsored"
entities cannot.

Guy Steele is busy now, but reports that he will be moving forward
sometime soon.

Dan is working on getting the videos hosted.  He has possession of the
tapes and has agreed to forward them where they are needed.

= Job descriptions;
   - Librarian
   - Membership Secretary

E. van Waning and P. Lindahl will propose formal job descriptions for
these two positions for review by the board.

= Get an estimate of Nick Levine's efforts to maintain ALU site
   Before we really start moving ALU content to a Franz hosted machine,
   it is reasonable that we pass along to Franz an estimate of how much
   effort has spent maintaining the ALU site.

There was lengthy off-topic discussion due to misunderstandings of the
intent.

= Obtaining hardware for new Bibop and make final agreement with Franz

   Maybe Franz has a spare machine, maybe we must buy one, at present
   this is unknown.  JonL is most active here, perhaps he knows more.

JonL White thought E. van Waning was on point on this.  Ernst will
contact Jans at Franz to see where we need to go next.

= Moving ALU-stuff from Ravenbrook to Franz
   When the above is done, we can start to move the content under
   Nick's custody to Franz.

= Videos & Audios of previous ILCs & where to publish
   JonL brought this point up some time ago.  We have lots of material,
   not only from ILC09, but also of previous ILCs.  Many would like to
   be able to access this material.  Some of it is available at
   (http://www.international-lisp-conference.org/2007/
               ~1b62751f542c716f7354c5d5~/speakers),
   but most of it not.  Most important for ALU is that speakers give us
   their consent to publish and we find a good place to publish what
   can be published.

= Membership Definition
   We have been chewing on this since ILC09.  AFAIK, Jeremy was the
   last one to shine his light on defining what a member is (looking at
   the by-laws) and what a member may expect of ALU and what ALU may
   expect from its membership.  Administrative things following from
   that must be incorporated in tasks of our Membership Secretary and
   possibly other Board Members.  Membership probably entails fees.
   Given the definition of a member it is worthwhile to find the way to
   remind members to pay up with the least possible effort on our side.

= Structure of WWW.ALU.ORG
   Tim is looking at its structure, the previous board has discussed
   the contents of a new website at length and nothing substantial
   happened so far -- the site isn't even up to date.  To be fair, IMO
   this is not work that board members should do all by themselves.
   Rather, the board should lead activities that improve the site.
   This means that the ALU board should have a clear idea of what it
   wants (possibly after discussion with members), otherwise I am
   afraid nothing will happen.  Let us find out how we are going to do
   this exercise in cooperation.

   If we have a clear idea, maybe this idea can be realized by ALU
   members (perhaps with some benefits for members spending effort),
   maybe by student web designers, maybe both.  One thing is clear to
   me: the content should be written by Lispers, enough nonsense has
   been written about Lisp by non-Lispers.

   A webmaster would be a desirable function at least to keep the site
   up to date.

T. Daly reported his recommendations for adding a blog format whereby
new and existing technologies can be thrust into the momentary
spotlight to enlighten the Lisp community about what is new.

= ILC11
   Making progress in the issues above will have consequences for the
   organization of ILC11 in the sense that we will have and have had
   more communication with our members, that members may be really
   involved in some ongoing projects, and so on.

   A more formal thing is that an understandable way of succession of
   board membership (exit of old board members, entry of new ones)
   seems like a good idea to me.

= ALU Continuance of Operation Plan (COOP)
   Tabled.

New business

= None

JonL White moved to adjourn.  T. Daly seconded.  The motion passes.

The meeting adjourned at 22:59 UTC.

Peter Lindahl
    ALU Secretary