Dan's updates for the week ending August 7th, 2011

TPF

  • Our 2010 tax return has been completed and is now available for review.  We reported a $43,000 lost, which was mostly due to Ian Hague grant payments.   Major grant recipients for the year were Patrick Michaud ($7,716) and Dave Mitchell ($17,083).   Our only major sponsor in 2010 was cPannel, who donated $10,000 each for YAPC 2010 and YAPC 2011.  I began transitioning in as Treasurer around April of 2010.   That transition lasted most of the year.
  • Working with donor.com to address some complaints we've received about the donation process.   There are several legitimate issues that can be improved right now.   While I wish donor's UI was better, I believe the current system provides significant advantages in terms of security and flexibility over the previous system for both the donor and TPF.   While I'm open to the idea of a third option, I really don't have the tuits to work on that currently.
  • The checks from YAPC are finally being deposited!   The envelope had apparently arrived at the bank this Monday with two different postmarks on it, which tells me it must have been delivered incorrectly and then redirected.   If you wrote a check during YAPC, you should see it clearing the bank very soon.   I do regret the delay, but there was very little I could have done about it.

PPW
  • Only two months left until PPW starts.
  • Received two more sponsorship commitments this week.   Working with those sponsors to make sure they are happy.   We're close to being at the comfortable point.  One or two more could put us in the black for sure.

Other

  • Still not liking OS X Lion.   I posted one of my issues on the Apple support forum.  It appears to have become a very hot issue and has been attracting Apple's attention.  Will Apple improve it, or just call it "not a bug"?
  • Converting from screen to tmux.   Way more configuration options and more aesthetics.  Plus, scrollback works by default in the Lion version of Mac Terminal.

3 Comments

Thank you for starting to post about the financial status of TPF.

I just wonder why is this not on the official TPF web site?

What kind of complaints are people having with donor.com? I talked with Jim Brandt about it when they were first getting started and offered my company's services (http://plusthree.com) and he said he would get back to me if the donor.com thing didn't work out. I know TPF has had some changes in leadership since then and I'm sure the offer has fallen through the cracks.

But we do all kinds of fundraising web stuff, so let me know if you're still interested.

--
Michael Peters

Oh, if you want to contact me it's mpeters@ my company's domain :)

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About Dan Wright

user-pic I'm the Treasurer for The Perl Foundation and Team Leader for YAPC::NA. I have organized Perl events including 7 Pittsburgh Perl Workshops and two YAPC::NA's. In my day job, I'm the director of technical operations for pairNIC.com. I write code and I supervise a team of Perl developers.