TEI-C Business Meeting Minutes (Rome; Friday, 4 October 2013, 16:30-18:00)

1. Minutes, approval of last year's minutes
2. Board report (Elena)
3. Council Report (Sebastian)
4. Treasurer Report (John U.)
5. Elections results (Lou)
6. SIG Report (Sebastian)
7. Partner report (Martin W and Elena)
8. TEIJ report (Elena)
9. Next Members Meeting venue (Elena)

2012 Minutes

Call by Syd Bauman for approval of Last year's minutes , seconded by Arianna Ciula; approved unanimously

Board report (Elena)

• Biggest change resulting from recent Bylaws vote: number and composition of the Board: Reduction of board membership from current 8 to 5. Clarification of a relationship between Board and Council: Council now chooses its own Chair. For either body, if a Chair cannot be found by deliberations within that body, the other body will intervene to assist.
• Other major change in Bylaws: Institutional Hosts of TEI. Before, 4 hosts, each of which had a rep on Board.
  • This Host role has been scrapped, and substituted by a "Partners" role. Still seeking a good way to involve as much as possible those institutions that want to be involved; but so far has been decided only to cease the role of Host.
  • EP notes that this change is likely to have major implications for the makeup of the Board and Council; now the two bodies completely equal; no formal membership of Partners may cause some loss of Partner members because of loss of direct representation in the governing bodies.
  • (Note that it was always rather difficult to see any acknowledgement of Hosts; EP calls for ideas to "reward institutions that help the TEI-C" in ways that would be helpful for those institutions.)
• Another big change approved in the Bylaws ballot: allowing individual members/subscribers to vote for all officers
• Council is considered to be the most visible and important of the two bodies in its direct contributions to the TEI, with their efforts and knowledge.
• EP expressed another desire motivating these Bylaw changes: to try to give better value for membership: what can TEI do for you?
• Most of Board's time this past year was devoted to rethinking how we work, such that many other activities were sidelined somewhat.
• Plans for the future: Elena's proposals. Considering the results of several recent surveys (e.g., "How you teach TEI," undertaken by Michael Gavin, et al.; "How you learn TEI," by Elena's ; and "TEI in libraries," by Michelle Dalmau and Kevin Hawkins), Elena sees two broad themes emerging:
  1. More outreach with teaching materials, make TEI easier to learn, lessen esp. initial learning curve
  2. More tools, esp. for publishing. Although it's acknowledged that many can learn to encode, but it's not so easy to develop publishing tools. One possibility is TAPAS. We should determine whether it's really possible to make TEI life easier.
• Membership numbers: the current expanded slate of memberships is result of the recently noted decline in membership. Do we need more levels? lower levels? or a simpler membership model?
• re: Treasurer role. John Unsworth has been in place just over 1 year, with completely renewed online membership application and visibility. Elena acknowledges immense contribution of John to this end, and to acknowledge that this part of the Board's work is now in excellent shape. (Applause of the body in gratitude.)
• M. Demonet (?) notes the difficulty of having an institution required to pay -- just a technical problem. (Elena adds that contact address is often different from that of "interested party". Invites us to check whether at our institutions the appropriate person is addressed: important to keep communication channel open and up to date.
• Julia Flanders notes possibly familiar issue: membership records associated with personal email of member, so if person moves, or desires an individual membership, she is thwarted. Elena asks for more feedback of this nature, noting that our records have not been kept up-to-date.

Technical Council Report (Sebastian Rahtz standing in for James Cummings)

• Sebastian presents from prepared Council Report
• Reminder of membership of Council: currently 12 members, but that number is impacted by change in bylaws such that the number of members is reduced to 11.
• Council believe that a particularly important change was that individual members now allowed to vote
• Council now has a SIG Coordinator
• Council has roughly 2 face-to-face meetings per year: last September, last April, and meeting again this November.
• Guidelines releases since last Members Meeting:
  • 2.3, 2.4, 2.5
  • planning new 2.6 release after meeting in November
  • open question: are these coming too often?
  • Now using new facility in Oxygen editor to automatically update schemas after an update
  • Review of major changes:
    • whitespace handling
    • defining a way to use shorthand for @key
    • responses to bug reports, etc.
    These sound obscure, but they are important, and they take time and genuine discussion; will be more as time goes on.
  • Council relies heavily on feedback from community
  • TEI-C Stylesheets -- many releases since the last MM; now hosted on GitHub (moved from Sourceforge)
  • Future work: (review of both near-term and longer-term development work)
  • TEI Guidelines: reminder that these are member-developed; SR notes new system for submitting bug reports, feature requests; asks to provide details, examples, explanations, etc.
  • SIGs are another major source of changes.
  • Notes that all TEI-C mailing list archives are publicly available.
  • End of formal report. Questions:
    • Syd asks whether bribing of Council is a venue for change; SR notes that it's been tried, but doesn't work. Notes source of his own fantastically tropical shirt in evidence.
    • Elena notes great difference between the work of two governing bodies.
    • Julia Flanders asks whether TEI seeks to actively partner with individual people or institutions, or whether it might be considered -- although it has happened in the past. Is there a way to publicize e.g. grant opportunities that could benefit the TEI?
    • EP notes that we have done some work on building relationships with e.g. DARIAH. As for collab tool development -- hasn't happened recently, but certainly can and should

Treasurer's Report (John Unsworth)

• Refer to prepared budget spreadsheets
• This was the first full year of JU's acting as treasurer, also first year of Wild Apricot software implementation. A lot of new things this past year, but not sure that everything works perfectly. (Notes a few instances of double charges -- usually the result of a time-out on the web form. JU will always refund these.)
• Problem of email address as unique id; current system is hard-wired into this system. So if you want to participate in two capacities, you need two email addresses.
• JU will use "Group" feature of electors -- all institutional members are "bundles" -- basically a multiple of the individual rate -- and 5 individuals can be registered in that institutional bundle, and the electors among them can be identified. JU hopes that by next election this will be worked out. Was an attempt to do this during the current election, but was not completely successful.
• Presentation of budget (FY 2012).
  • Although this still a work in progress, JU notes that categories and amounts seem to be correct.
  • One big difference: beginning this year, this is the first time that TEI-C is the banker for the conference.
  • In overall terms, the balance increases substantially (between $15K and $25K) each year. JU encourages board to find productive ways to spend that balance, to maintain our status as a non-profit.
  • Our goal is to spend more money on Council than on Board, and FY 12 met this goal.
  • The 2012 Members Meeting cost about $26K, and current will probably be about the same
  • Some new savings this year: JU works for free; host fees which are no longer paid.
  • One area we haven't spent much on, but could do more with: work groups and SIG grants.
  • Biggest expenditures of the budget in 2012: Members meetings, Council, and Board.
  • TEI-C is a passthrough for funding. Beginning this year, on the ADHO model
  • This represents a partial report of current FY 2013, because our fiscal year is a calendar year
  • Conference related expenses moved to separate sub-account
  • Membership income so far this year $53K
  • Bank account is relatively flatter this year than it was last year: Income vs. expenditures: $73K income, $53K expenditures. About $37K of the balance is kept in a renewing CD which does not make much money; JU views this as a closeout fund, reserved in case TEI-C ceases operations.
• Questions/concerns
  • Syd Bauman: We worry about amassing too much money, yet we have been working on the assumption that we should work leanly, but perhaps this should be reconsidered.
  • John responds: hard to say now how our membership income will look going forward. Addition of individual membership; cessation of size-based institutional membership, beginning of self-identified membership level. JU would like to see a steady balance of ca. $150K, but would encourage Board and community to spend more to promote activities of TEI e.g. through workgroups, SIGs, SIG grants, tool development. Invites community to submit ideas. We can't do everything, and should of course be conservative, but we should be doing much more.
  • Elena adds her thanks again for managing conference expenses. Again acknowledged through applause. Fabio (as Local Organizer) adds his thanks as well.
• John adds mention of another feature of the new membership system: it can be used to advertise, register, and take payment for events held by community members. This will allow those to give discount to TEI members.
• Motion to approve Treasurer's Report (John noting that we don't actually have a budget yet) made, seconded, and unanimously approved.

Elections results (Lou Burnard)

• Elected to the TEI Board of Directors (1 seat to fill for a 2-year term): Elena Pierazzo
• Elected to the TEI Technical Council (6 seats to fill for 2-year terms): Fabio Ciotti, James Cummings, Stephanie Gherke, Martin Holmes, Paul Schaffner, Peter Stadtler
• Elena notes that next year, for Board elections, there will be 4 seats to fill -- 2 serving 1-year terms, and 2 serving 2-year terms -- in order to establish the new, smaller size of the Board as mandated by the change in Bylaws.

SIG report (Sebastian Rahtz)

• Refer to prepared report
• The point of SIGS is not for the Council to tell them what to do, but rather to support what they want to do. Role of Council is simply one of coordination (primarily by Chair of Council).
• Special mention of newest SIG: Computer-Mediated Communication. Using TEI for new forms of e.g. social media communications.
• In addition to formal ways to start a new SIG, Sebastian notes the best way is to start a discussion in public

Partner report (Elena Pierazzo)

• HumaNum (formerly ADONIS) - has done lots of good outreach to francophone community
• Oxford: allowing Sebastian to work for us; to support teaching activities (Oxford Summer School)
• The fact that we no longer have partners means that we ourselves will have to contribute to work on e.g. tool building. Elena proposes:
  • Asking Council to do 1 release per year (instead of the current 2), in order to focus more on tool-building and teaching materials.
  • Partnering with TAPAS (i.e., investing money to provide service to members .
  • More stylesheet development
• Elena reminds us of the results of survey "How do you learn TEI" -- 60% believes TEI should invest more money in teaching materials; 80% believes we should invest more in publishing tools; preference among the two expenditures more evenly divided. But Board cannot ask Council to do this; only the community can ask. Elena asks for feedback and open discussion:
  • Sebastian argues against inclusion of tasking Council with preparation of teaching materials, as being outside its current mandate and working style.
  • Arianna notes that there are already people teaching TEI; can we start by identifying these people, then gather their materials. EP notes that we have asked many times for volunteers, which attempts have fallen flat.
  • Syd seconds Sebastian's misgivings about asking Council to engage in teaching. But we might consider offering student bursaries to existing courses.
  • Elena notes that the question is a political one: do we really believe that the only way is to have people attend a course, or should we consider creation of more materials.
  • Fabio notes that these schools are mostly in US and UK; could we promote teaching of TEI in other places? One of the main issues is to promote use of TEI outside Anglo-American context; funding could would help with both issues.
  • Sebastian notes that current schools (e.g. Oxford) are not endorsed by Board / Council in any way.
  • Michelle Dalmau: many in the community take existing materials (e.g. WWP workshop slides) and modify them. Could there perhaps be a reconvening of the Education SIG, ask them to survey those existing materials
  • Francesca Tomasi from Bologna: offers a tool often used with students: TEI By Example. Sees it as an excellent environment for teaching, a good model: examples, descriptions, exercises, editing/validation tool. EP notes that this requires some intervention/mediation, but acknowledges that it could be improved. STill notes that it was developed very independently from the TEI-C, then offered to TEI-C.
  Board will discuss on Sunday these good ideas: teaching, publishing tools, etc. But someone should still volunteer to re-convene TEI teaching SIG, etc.

TEIJ report (prepared by Susan Schreibman, presented by Elena)

• Refer to TEIJ report
• Expression of special gratitude for Kevin Hawkins (confirmed by applause) who stepped down as managing editor of TEIJ

Next conference venue (Elena)

Still uncomfirmed as of meeting time; hoping for a confirmation and announcement within days.