Meeting agenda robot

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.