Meeting agenda robot

[Ian Jackson]

Bdale Garbee writes ("Re: Meeting log for 2008-12-17"):
> That's a really interesting idea.  On general principles, I would use such
> a thing.  Are you up for drafting some sort of specification the current
> board and officers could review to see if it's something we agree would be
> an improvement in process?  If it made doing the right things easier and
> didn't overly burden folks with process details, it could be a genuinely
> good thing for SPI.

Here's a draft:

 * Data structure maintained is
    For each meeting:
     - Meeting date
     - Whether the meeting is forthcoming or past
     - List of agenda items, which have a title (normally
       the Subject line of some email)
     - Each agenda item may have zero or more draft resolutions
       or zero or more formal reports, each of is
       a message-id of an email on spi-general; normally emails
       in the same thread (done by Subject line) are counted as
       the same agenda item.
     - Because reports may exist on the agenda before a draft
       is available they have a `report name' too (see below).
   Also maintains a list of reports to have by default, so that
   a new meeting cycle starts by default with a Treasurer's report
   and perhaps some other report(s).

 * Scans incoming emails on spi-general.
   If you put some magic keyword at the beginning of one of the
   first ten lines of the body,
      FOR BOARD MEETING - DRAFT RESOLUTION
      FOR BOARD MEETING - REPORT - FINANCIAL
   perhaps, it treats the thread that your email was posted
   to as an agenda item and adds your email to the list
   of documents.

 * Web interface for Board members (nominally Secretary's job,
   but other members should be encouraged to be proactive
   particularly when there is a short window for actions to
   be confirmed):
     - enter date of next meeting
     - add/remove a proposed report from the agenda
         in advance of the report being available
     - manually link/unlink a previous email to an agenda item
         as a draft resolution or as a draft report
         (eg if it wasn't really a draft resolution, or
         conversely if the magic keyword was misspelled)
     - merge and unmerge agenda items
     - manually add emergency agenda items
     - manually add secret agenda items (these show up as
         `[confidential business; please see ...]')
     - manually add notes to parts of the announcements
     - indicate that the meeting is about to start and
       to send the final agenda
     - cancel a meeting (makes it `past' and therefore
       inactive without sending any emails)

 * At the following times
     - entry of meeting date
     - T-14
     - T-10
         sends announcement to spi-announce with current
         draft agenda and instructions for adding items
         to agenda
     - T-7
         sends announcement to spi-general and spi-private
         containing current draft agenda and instructions
         for notifying the Board of any mistakes
         (Secretary and board members should proactively
          fix up any problems in these two days.)
     - T-5
         sends announcement to spi-general containing
         final agenda listing all non-emergency business
         but still possibly with placeholders for reports
     - T-2
         sends announcement to spi-general containing
         final agenda listing all non-emergency business
         including all reports
     - T-0
         when Secretary says meeting is to start, sends
         final agenda listing all business (and makes
         meeting be `past')

 * Also of course agenda on web page.

Personally I would like to see reports 7 days in advance if for no
other reason than that it would make this simpler.

What if there are two forthcoming meetings in quick succession ?


My implementation language of choice would be Perl (or perhaps Python)
but I'm happy to use something else if that would make
co-maintainership with th4e Secretary and others, or interoperability
with the rest of the website, easier.

Do we already have an https server and user management system that I
can piggyback on for the `board members' part ?

If this meets people's rough approval I can write a set of quick hack
code and set some test instance up on my own colo.

Ian.