October 2019

Meeting Date: Oct 15

Meeting Time: 11 AM US Pacific - other time zones

Meeting Location: Remote

Virtual: Zoom Meeting Link Meeting ID: 282 821 949 - local dial in numbers

AGENDA

CALL TO ORDER

CHANGES TO THE AGENDA

APPROVAL OF MINUTES
September 2019 Minutes

REPORTS

Executive Director Update for October 2019

Key Metrics (Sept):

• Members: 2,800
• Momentum: 643.3K visitors to websites in Sept (1.4K increase to 2018)
• Money: (Draft financials will be available around the 20th)
• Operations
  • 100% of Service Desk tickets closed within SLA
  • 87% of Non-Funding tickets were closed within SLA

Global Conferences

We successfully hosted two Global Conferences in a short three week window. Many thanks to everyone for making the events a success - and especially Emily and Sibah from staff. The DC event hosted 723 attendees and AMS has 513. We are working with accounting to get a final P&L for both events. I do expect the end profit to be less than budgeted, but as we have been stating we are also closely watching expenses so the net profit should be closer aligned with our budget. I have already provided the final survey results from attendees. As previously noted, over 90% of attendees for both conferences would recommend the event to others.

Planning is already well underway for 2020. SF contract has been signed and the Dublin contract is on the Board call agenda for today. Budgets have been developed and a more proper project plan should be complete for both events in the next few weeks. Both conferences together are budgeted to generate over $1,200,000 in profits for the Foundation. Also of note is our migration to a Program Team and away from the local chapter model for the event program. We are completing the final details on that change and will share details soon.

Projects Summit

Staff have been collecting feedback and discussing the best setup for these events. As part of the 2020 Operating Plan, we will be recommending TWO events that host five projects each hosted in Winter and Summer. We elected for this format primarily to reduce the risk of a bad initial design that we correct for 2H20 and to offer two geographies for project volunteer convenience. We intend for projects to self-nominate with a work plan and goals for the Summit. If accepted we would offer travel grants for up to 5 contributors to each project. Others would be allowed to attend but we would make it VERY clear that these are contributing events - not suitable for spectators. Our expectation is that each of these events will cost approximately $75,000. Emily is sourcing locations for the last week of February in Cancun in Mexico.

Website

Work continues to get the website launched. Our current target launch continues to slip. There have been a variety of factors: delays in assistance from GitHub, slow pickup and migration work by Projects and Chapter leaders (only 97 leader have signed up), and we are rethinking our launch plan. We will likely engage the firm recommended by Chengxi to assist with our migration and follow on SEO support. Our search and backlink ranking - especially given the scope of our content - is too valuable to try to do inhouse. This change alone will move our launch date to early December. The site is ready for Chapters and Projects to migrate their pages and some have already done so. In addition to this work, Dawn and Mike have been working on the Policies/Procedure content which is posing some challenges. Finally we plan to contract our some commerce form work for the new site which includes Donations, Membership, and Events. Our expectation is this migration will improve the user experience and lower our costs.

Preparing for 2020

I have been working on the 2020 Operating Plan and Budget. Generally there will not be wholesale changes but likely incremental new projects like the Projects Summit and our plans to pilot AppSec Days. I intend to present both of these work items for the Boards review as early as the next Board meeting. My goal is that our Budget is approved NO LATER than the November call.

Board Elections

We will be announcing the results of the election tomorrow. As of this morning that have been 496 votes cast.

Trademark

The EU PTO rejected our application for OWASP. I have approved an additional work item with counsel to respond with additional evidence of prior use and distinctness. We expect news on that filing before the end of the year. There haven't been any other updates on our other filings as of today.

OLD BUSINESS

NEW BUSINESS

COMMENTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, AND OTHER BUSINESS

ADJOURNMENT

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Old Business

All active board proposals are listed here

New Business

Resolved that the OWASP Board of Directors authorizes the Executive Director to sign an agreement with the Dublin, Ireland Convention Centre with a projected financial commitment of 150,000 EUR to host Global AppSec Dublin in June of 2020.

All active board proposals are listed here