Association of Lisp Users, Inc. (ALU) 25 March 2009 General Meeting 22:00 hours UTC Minutes Rev. 1 Meeting was held in Boston, MA, USA on the MIT campus at the Stata Center in room 32-123 with President Ernst van Waning, presiding. President Ernst van Waning called the meeting to order at 22:05 UTC The President gave his report. Financial Report - Treasurer Rusty Johnson could not attend, so the President fielded questions from the members. The question of the web site financial breakdown was answered by stating that the web site is currently administrated by Nick Levine of Ravenbrook, Ltd. One member remarked that he was a member once, but missed chance to sign-up again. The President responded that we need to improve. Another asked if there efforts to retain members and reach out to old members? The response was no, but that we want to do more than just organize the conferences. Is there a record of previous members? Yes. How many current members are there? The President pointed to the financial report and how many we had last year. The answer depends somewhat on how we define membership. If you pay dues or pay for a conference, then you're a member. We're a not-for-profit volunteer organization but we want to transition to full membership model. We also want to move from pure volunteers to having some commercial coverage. After a show of hands showing how many in the audience have never been to an ALU conference before this raised a hand of most of those present, a brief history of the ALU was provided explaining its roots in the Symbolics Lisp Users Group (SLUG), to the Lisp Users and Vendors conference (LUV), also known as the LUVFEST, after which the ALU was incorporated. Conferences are held following the ACM Program model. When one member pointed out that the membership seems low, one director explained that we want to expand, find a working model and recruit members. But, our primary mission is to organize the ILC conferences and we don't want to fail. One member suggested lowering the barrier to ALU entry. Let new members sign up for free but also have a supporting membership level. The same member asked how much do the conferences earn? The President again showed the financial report pointing out the relevant entries. The last conference cost attendees more and it made more than this year where fees are lower. Final comments: One agreed with the free sign-up suggestion. Another thinks $50 is too much. Look at the FSF $10/month model. Yet another thinks the current subscription level is good. One points out that choice is between growing the membership numbers or making money. The ALU board email address is provided for further comments. Election of the new Board of Directors Nominated: Kuroda Hisao, Jeremy Jones, Duane Rettig, Ernst van Waning, JonL White, Rusty Johnson, Peter Lindahl, Dave Cooper, Tim Daly, Rich Hickey, Daniel Herring, Mason Bliss. There was a motion to close nominations. It was seconded. The vote passed and nominations closed. Presentation of Candidates Ernst van Waning spoke for Dave Cooper. Heow Eide-Goodman spoke on behalf of Tim Daly. Having Rich Hickey representing Clojure in the ALU would be great. Daniel Herring wants to help out and work to consolidate the community and affect the decisions. Mason Bliss expressed his interest in membership expansion and member outreach and he has experience in these areas. He loves lisp but programs in Perl. More can be done but it requires a vision and a desire to execute. Duane Rettig, an employee of Franz, represents the vendor and tries to keep a balance between ALU and Lisp vendor activity. JonL White, Rusty Johnson and Peter Lindahl along with Jim Aragonnes are among the original founders of the ALU. Rusty, aka Donald, and Pete work with the government using Symbolics Genera and other platforms. Both are stable members of the board and keepers of the treasury. JonL stated that we can appoint them to the board. He wants to see them as active directors. Kuroda Hisao works for Mathematical Systems, Inc. Sixteen years ago he started a Lisp project as the only Lisper in the company and now has 8 full-time and 3 part-time workers from all over the world. He thinks he can contribute to the community from the business side. Ernst van Waning, has been programming lisp since 1982-83, teaching SICP and has been doing this alone. Attending his first Lisp meeting in 1997 and he thinks it's important to have a community for Lisp. He ran for the board and now is President. It's important that Lispers should feel part of a community and want to continue the work. JonL White has been using Lisp forever. He has been with the ALU since the beginning but at the time vendors were not alowed to be on the board. Users and vendors conference but sees vendors going away from Lisp and he is worried about the community. In 2002, someone was paid to do the first real conference. He's been active, runs ACM conference, has been Program Chair and so on 4-5 years ago and wants to get on the professional track. He likes to see Guy Steele on the Program Committee. Jeremy Jones, founder of MCL, worked on the IDE, did Dylan at Apple, founder of Clozure Assoc., and has been on the board since ILC 2007. He wants to make it easier to get into the community and help to learn Lisp, but there is more to do than the conferences. He is in favor of moving to a paid model to do work on the web site and other projects with the ALU board overseeing the work. It was expressed that more work can be done if the board is larger. Everyone on the list brings something different to the table and wonders if the membership thinks it should be smaller or larger? One member asked about voting versus non-voting board members. The following answers were given: the officers and President do not vote; the board appoints officers who do not vote; a consensus is required as the structure is based on not-for-profit organization rules for taxes; the board is elected here and some members may step down to be an officer; the chairman does not vote due to conflict of interest; the secretary and treasurer also do not vote; as to how many to elect, different stories may be found, but the by-laws say 13 members but we have limited the previous board to 7, it's up to you. [[ Secretary's note: Point of Information: For the record, the rules are thus: the ALU membership is to elect 8 directors. These 8 directors elect officers immediately following the meeting. A person may be a director and an officer at the same time. A quorum of directors is required at board meetings, and a majority of those attending is required for motions to pass or they fail. In the past, officers typically step down to allow more members to be appointed to the board of directors. As is usual, the chair of a meeting votes only to break ties. This past cycle, the President and Treasurer were directors as well as officers, but the Secretary was not a director. The number of directors can only be changed by an amendment to the By-Laws, which requires a majority vote of the membership, and specific notice of intent to amend the By-Laws given prior to the meeting. ]] A member moves for election of all candidates by acclamation. It was seconded. The motion is carried. The new board joined at the front of the audience. The board will convene immediately after and elect officers. It was asked what happens if the board losses a director. The response was that the board elects replacements. One member asked whether minutes of this meeting were being recorded, and if there are there previous minutes available. Heow Eide-Goodman raised his hand as the current recorder. Ernst van Waning stated that previous minutes are available on the ALU web site.. There was a motion with a second to adjourn. The motion passed. The meeting adjourned. The Secretary expresses his sincerest appreciation to Heow Eide-Goodman for graciously taking the notes from which these minutes were transcribed. Peter Lindahl ALU Secretary