SGB 2021 General Updates

Hello Community Members,

In keeping with precedent (SGB 2020 General Updates) and in the interests of transparent governance, SGB will be posting monthly updates here regarding our discussion points, ongoing work, and approved motions throughout the year.

The SGB members for 2021 are:

SGB meetings are currently held every Monday 2:30-3:30 PM ET.

  • Anyone can request to join SGB meetings to discuss specific items
  • Email either one of the members or the whole SGB at board@mc-stan.org. Feel free to tag @SGB on relevant Discourse discussions.

Thank you,
Stan Governing Body

6 Likes

SGB Updates - January


This month we finalized the transition to the new SGB board and have made progress on several fronts, including:

  • Code of Conduct: revisions/edits are being made with really amazing work by @stevebronder and @lauren.
  • Google Summer of Code 2021: we are working with NumFOCUS and developers to submit some project proposals and hopefully participate in this year’s google summer of code. See here for info/updates as we make progress.
  • Budgeting: we have started looking at different ways of potentially lowering operating costs.
  • StanCon 2021: Still much to do here, but we took some early steps in thinking about planning, timeline, etc.
5 Likes

SGB Updates - February


High-level summaries of discussion/work for this month (no particular order):

  • StanCon 2021 → StanConnect: after some exploration and consultation with previous StanCon committee, we decided to replace StanCon with a StanConnect series. Generally, feedback on this idea was positive: StanCon mini series.
  • Google Summer of Code 2021: Stan applied to become a mentoring organization under the NumFOCUS umbrella. We proposed three projects for prospective students: design-docs/proposal_main.md at master · stan-dev/design-docs · GitHub
  • Work related to drafting governance modules and voting procedures.

SGB Updates - March


High-level summaries of discussion/work in March (no particular order):

  • StanConnect 2021: After positive feedback, a draft of the general structure/funding/logistics/possible hosting platforms, etc was finalized by SGB.
  • Google Summer of Code: Stan was accepted as a mentoring organization by Google. Made some efforts to market our proposed projects and attract students.
  • Received feedback and continued work on drafting language of voting procedure and governance modules: https://discourse.mc-stan.org/t/a-proposal-of-stan-governance-modules/21385.

SGB Updates - April


  • StanConnect: formally issued call for proposals, proposals were reviewed and approved. So far, we expect to have 5 StanConnect sessions between August - December on topics ranging from ecology and biomedical applications to model validation and cognitive science. At some point we’ll gather the details all in one place and post on discourse.
  • Governance modules/voting: continued work here. Adjoint ODE vote was an interesting test case and SGB was generally happy with how it went procedurally.
  • Formation of Stan Gathering: Stan: The Gathering, Weekly meetings you can join, Thursdays 11 am EST
2 Likes