[iRail] Wrap-up General Meeting

Wed Jun 27 22:18:06 UTC 2012

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the interesting meeting today. I believe we have made some
really good progress on making 2012 an awesome year for iRail. Hereby I
also welcome Sacha as our new treasurer.

As also announced on the meeting with small tears in Yeri's (and mine a
little) eyes, we would like to thank Christophe Versieux for being a
great board member. After one year he will go back to being a general
iRail member who will still focus on the BeTrains applications. Sadly he
was excused from the meeting after having some difficulties on the road,
but on our next event, or during iRail Summer of code, we owe you a
couple of beers.

The write-up, thanks to Greet, can be found in the rest of this mail.
Thanks again to all of our members:

iRail General Meeting, June 27th 2012, FlatTurtle office (Brussels)

Present: Sacha, Laurens, Hannes, Jan, Dimitri, Wouter, Miet, Maarten,
Frederik, Yeri, Pieter, Greet
Excused: Christophe
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18h30
The meeting is opened.
Everyone introduces themselves and the project(s) they will be working on.

Financial status
Pieter explains the financial status of iRail npo, ingoing and outgoing
money.
Approved by all: Sacha, Hannes, Jan, Dimitri, Maarten, Yeri, Pieter

The DataTank copyright
The DataTank: transfer the copyright (at this moment GPL, open source)
from iRail to OKFN Belgium (where it's going to stay open source)? TDT
doesn't really have anything to do with mobility, more with open data in
general, and OKFN Belgium doesn't have any copyrighted projects yet, so
it might be a good idea. The copyright will still lay for 50% with the
author of the code, as is the case now.
In favor: Hannes, Dimitri, Maarten
Against: Yeri
Withdrawal: Sacha, Jan, Pieter
--> Not happening right now, we might revote on this later.
Idea to consider (Wouter): instead of transfering the rights, iRail
might share them with OKFN, so that both have an equal say.

Board members
Christophe is stepping down as treasurer and board member of iRail.
Voting for the release of Christophe as treasurer and board member of iRail:
In favor: Hannes, Jan, Dimitri, Maarten, Pieter, Yeri, Laurens
Candidacies for the position:
Sacha: has a financial background from his studies, he has been working
with iRail for a year now and is really interested in the workings of
the board, and he thinks he can be of added value.
Voting for Sacha as the new treasurer and board member of iRail:
In favor: Hannes, Jan, Dimitri, Maarten, Pieter, Yeri, Laurens
Sacha is voted in unanimously.

New iRail logo & campaign
http://vimeo.com/44822409
Miet presents the new iRail logo and the idea behind it. She also talks
about ideas for the campaign, but it is very idealistic so we will
probably have to reconsider it and see what we can realistically
(financially) achieve.
The ideology of the new iRail app, the community, travelling together
and being available at any moment --> bees always travel together, the
iRail mascotte is a robot bee, it's supposed to be a face for people to
connect with
Slogan: keep calm & travel on
New looks for the Facebook page, the Twitter profile, ...
Example of a poster
Buttons, posters, T-shirts, stickers, ...
The iRail 3.0 app is going to launch around February 2013, but first we
have to get the iRail logo out there and let people know who we are and
what we do, so that we can have a public to announce the app to; it will
be invite only at first (practical reasons), so we invite influential
people, they get a package with merchandising with their invitation
Zeppelin with QR-code, flying around in/around stations (Ghent, Antwerp,
...)
Playing cards with the iRail logo & slogan "keep calm & travel on"
between the spokes of the wheels, it will remind people of their childhood

iRail Summer of code
Goal: we are going to try to get a little bit of money and fund one
full-time employee in 2013 that is hopefully going to be accepted for
grants from the Flemish government; it is a project being worked on by
big companies (Mobile Vikings, Go Mobile, ...), about checking in and
knowing where people are, and iRail would work on the mobility part of
it. Apps like that of Viking Spots, Foursquare, Track, ... would be able
to work together without actually having to talk to each other.
Projects/sponsoring companies:
Go-Mobile: mostly funded by the NMBS, they are sponsoring us, Dimitri is
working on this project
FlatTurtle: sponsoring 2 students: Nick, Glenn (part-time) and Jens
(part-time)
The DataTank: Jan
iRail: 1 student is being paid as a buffer: Greet (part-time) and Miet
(part-time)
Mobile Vikings: 3 students: Jens (part-time), Lennart, Hannes
(part-time), Koen; they will be working on identity management,
data.irail.be
the city of Ghent: project Code 9000: 3 students: Sam, Lieven, Nicolas;
working on projects that are of interest to the city of Ghent; they are
going to the city hall, the IT department of Ghent, ... to talk about
possibilities, and at the end of the first week they will pitch all
their ideas before a jury, and then the city will choose 1-3 projects
that can be finished in 2 weeks, and in september they have to come back
for 1 week to process all the feedback
OKFN: sponsors 2 people (the winners of Apps for Ghent), 1 for 1 week
and 1 for 3 weeks
FirstSight:
Schoolkid: sponsoring 1 student to work with their data and enrich them
with semantic meaning so that they become more usable internationally
This is a total of 16 paid students, there will also volunteers and
other people present.
A code of conduct should be signed by all students, it has some clear
rules that students should adhere to, such as to use git, to be polite
to press people, ... If anyone breaks these rules, they will be
punished; a list of punishments is being made.
Students can be provided with a Go-Pass and/or blue bike if they wish.

The vision of iRail in the future
Become a broker for all the open data in Belgium?
Linked with that: name change? "iRail" is linked to mobility and trains
specifically, but we are about open data and not about mobility alone,
so maybe we should change our name.
If so, in what order do we do it? Change the name and the logo
simultaneously?
Maybe September is a good time to launch the new name (everyone starts
moving again).
Voting about the namechange:
In favor: Sacha, Jan, Dimitri, Maarten, Pieter
Against: Yeri, Hannes
New idea: we keep the name iRail for the app and change the name of the
company (because the company and the product shouldn't have the same
name, that's confusing).
Proposal: we organise a brainstorming in the second  week of July.

21h30
Meeting adjourned.

Kind regards,

Pieter
-- 
iRail vzw/asbl
+32 (0) 486/747122