Board Meeting - 08 Apr 2026

Attendees: David Askov, Ethan Espie, Nat Henry, Stephen Mangum, Stephanie May
Location: Seattle Climate Innovation Hub, 1215 4th Ave 15th Floor, Seattle WA 98101
Time: 5:00 pm

Meeting agenda

1. Mentorship program options
2. Meeting location
3. Website updates
4. Handling September/October meetings
5. Options for upgrading Slack
6. Assigned next steps

1. Mentorship program options

We reviewed a mentorship program call from the Cloud Native Geospatial Forum. This program is somewhat different from what CUGOS would offer: it is project-based and more closely tailored to geospatial software engineering, whereas CUGOS could offer a broader professional development program tailored to the Pacific Northwest.

We decided to bring this back up with our full group at the April CUGOS meeting. If we find a core group of mentors are excited to lead this program, we can proceed with a traditional mentorship program focused on geospatial professional development. Otherwise, we will aim for a “office hours” model where people can work together and ask career questions in a shared setting.

2. Meeting location

This question of a new meeting location has become slightly less urgent since former board member Keenan Ganz, who graciously reserves our monthly meeting space, plans to remain at UW at least through December.

Stephanie has reached out to the UW Geography program, and was told to inquire again in June. If a new space becomes available in fall 2026, we agreed to move into that new space early.

3. Website updates

Thanks to Matt Kenny, we added the current board as members of the CUGOS organization on Github.

We discussed issues with the current website and logged them on the Github repo. Issues included:

• Outdated content: for example, no new blog posts in about a decade, outdated member pictures
• Need updated instructions to edit pages

The website is built in Jekyll, which can be clunky to serve (requires a separate Ruby install). We discussed the idea of refactoring the whole website with a Javascript-based static website builder such as Astro. A Github issue was opened to discuss this. We will want signoff from the group before attempting a major refactor.

We also agreed to adjust Github permissions. Currently, any member can push a change to our public site via PR, which leaves open opportunities for vandalism.

Git and Github tutorial

We also discussed how the site contribution tutorial on our Wiki is outdated and contains broken image links. It’s also hard to find contribution instructions from the website front page and meeting page.

We agreed to update the contribution instructions, either on the Wiki or migrated onto our website. Stephanie pointed out that we should also create or update contribution and code of conduct documents in the Github repo. This goes for all CUGOS projects, including our website and Bboxfinder.

Stephen agreed to lead a call for volunteers to run an in-person Git + Github tutorial during our May meeting.

4. Handling September/October meetings

Nat has a new baby due in late August, so will be unavailable to run the CUGOS meetings in September and October. Stephen agreed to take charge of those meetings, including calls for speakers if needed.

5. Options for upgrading Slack

On our free Slack account, messages get hidden after 90 days. Ethan reported back his conversations with Slack’s corporate team: because we are a 501(c)6 professional organization, we are not eligible for free Slack premium.

We discussed options for resolving this. We could switch to a Slack alternative such as Discord or Zulip, at the risk of losing some current members. We are probably eligible for 501(c)3 status, but re-forming the group seems like overkill just for Slack access. With our membership size, a paid membership is probably prohibitively expensive. We lean towards keeping Slack due to likely attrition from any platform move.

Ethan offered to poll the group to determine popular options. Nat will reach out to our parent organization, OSGeo (a 501(c)4 foundation), to see how they handle Slack access.

6. Next steps

• Nat will put out a call for volunteers for some of our premier projects, including:
  • Website updates
  • Professional development mentoring program
  • BBoxFinder
• Stephen will put out a call for volunteers about a potential Git + Github tutorial next month
• Ethan will poll the group about our preferred messaging options as well as a summer Mariners outing
• Stephanie will circle back to UW Geography about a CUGOS meeting space in June
• Stephen will lead the September and October CUGOS meetings
• Nat will reach out to OSGeo
• All will start to address issues on the CUGOS website and Bboxfinder via Github, hopefully with more volunteer help starting later this month