RUSA Board Meeting Highlights, March 2, 2016

Attendees:  Debra Banks (b), John Lee Ellis(b),  Lynne Fitzsimmons(b),  Rob Hawks(b),  Spencer Klaassen(b),  Susan Otcenas(b),  Mark Thomas (b), Don Bennett (Website Committee Chair), Ian Hands (Website Committee)

Meeting started 5:08pm PST

1 Prior meeting minutes approval

  • Unanimous

2 January meeting highlights approval

  • Unanimous

3 Summary of RUSA Website Major Projects (Don and Ian)

The Website Committee updated the board on the results submission update.  The business rules have been clarified.  Permanent result submission is working, and Brevet results submission should be available soon.  Help was requested in clarifying the Fleche results submission details, as well as help for testing.

Clarification was requested on the website update goals:                                                  

  • Provide a content management system so more than one person can add and update content.
  • Transition the results and other RUSA data into a better database and rewrite the business logic in a modern fashion.

Response:

  • The content management switch is done.  Many of the site’s content pages are now in a content management system, which allows users to log in and write/edit content, add pages, update menus, etc.  There are more pages to migrate, but all the pages are wrapped into the new look and feel. 
  • There is still a staging environment, however, content changes are done in production (rusa.org) and folded back into the staging environment.  Caution should continue to be exercised about edit permissions for pages with dynamic content.
  • On the database side; it is not the same beast as the CMS at all.  There is a lot of undocumented code and processes. It was suggested that a meeting of all involved, including some users, to understand the whole context of where any one piece fits in, before redoing it. 
  • Tools being used are Bugzilla and Trello.
    • The Contact Us link in the website footer takes you to the page which allows you to submit a bug ticket via Bugzilla, a bug tracker.  It gets us away from email, which can be problematic to keep on top of.  Ian really wants bugs to come in via Bugzilla.
    • Trello is a work tracking tool, best for 2-3 folks working on a section of a project.  For larger efforts Bugzilla is preferred.
  • Adding volunteers to the web team – they are needed, but will defer this for awhile longer, as bringing on additional people and training them will slow the results submission effort.

4 Renaming Casa Grande region to Phoenix

  • Passed

5 Committee Documentation Wiki

The end goal is to have a centrally-accessible location for committee process documentation, independent of any one person.  Privacy and access needs shall be considered, as well as ensuring access for the changing cast of characters. 

6 Picking Up the Work Mike Dayton Was Doing

Various RUSA volunteers are picking up the work Mike Dayton was doing for the American Randonneur and awards, including:

  • Producing the membership mailing list,
  • Financial – invoicing for advertisements in the magazine,
  • New members and awards recipient content ,
  • Shipping new member handbooks to the membership chair, and
  • R5000 Award application.

7 2016 Master Plan

Deferred

8 Galaxy and Mondial Awards

The store does not break even on awards.  The Galaxy and Mondial awards are a significant expense, and it will be growing.  The Board reluctantly decided to charge for the awards, rather than have RUSA continue to bear the cost.

9 R5000 Award Costs

The ACP does not charge for the medal, but RUSA does incur some cost in shipping the medal to the individual recipients.  The question was should the medals be shipped without RUSA receiving payment for shipping? 

The current volunteer doesn’t know who has paid and who hasn’t, and he’d rather not continue shipping awards without known receipt of payment.  Follow-up in process.

10 RUSA Logo

Discussion to be held at the next meeting.

11 Next Meeting

April 6, 2016, 5pm PDT