Date: 2015-04-13

Location: Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas NV

Members Attending

• RE:Vision Effects, represented by Pierre Jasmin
• GenArts, represented by Gary Oberbrunner
• Sony Creative Software Inc., represented by Dennis Adams and Chris Dolan
• Imagineer Systems, represented by John-Paul Smith and Boris Yamnitsky (Boris FX)
• BlackMagic Design, represented by Vivek Vedagiri, Fu Qian, and Steve Roberts (Fusion)

Observers Attending

• Jim Tierney, Digital Anarchy
• Josh Davies, Andrea Wake, FXHOME
• Todor Fay, NewBlue, Inc.
• Ralf Tanger, FraunhoferLutz Goldmann, Imcube Labs
• Scott Johnston, Stereo D
• SGO, represented by Roman Dudek

Minutes

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Meeting brought to order. Quorum present.

Re-appointment of Directors: Gary, Pierre, and Peter Huisma are willing to continue. Motion made to re-appoint them, motion seconded, vote taken, motion passes unanimously.

Discussion of accounts:
As of year-end 2014, the Association has £6,898 in its bank account, with expenses due within 12 months of £844, leaving a current net asset balance of £6,054 and zero current liabilities. Major expenses in 2014 were £1,868 for the new web site, and £552 for accountant fees.  We had a surplus of £1,172 for the year.

Currently 10 paying member companies, one non-paying open-source member. Companies will be billed annually. Vote taken, accounts approved.

The OpenFX API continues to gain plug-ins and hosts.
Bruno wrote 5 new example code samples (now on github) and programming guide. Please feel free to contribute more samples, help improve the guide, or create unit tests.
Website has been updated.  Pierre re-organized the list of feature suggestions. Some discussion of the state of the sample code and that unit tests would be helpful. Natron offered to update the C++ wrapper. Some discussion of creating validation tests that would catch errors in plug-ins and/or hosts. Proposal made that we create a framework for a validation suite. Vote to spend association money on this, passed.

New members since last meeting:

• Imagineer Systems (which is now part of Boris FX)
• BlackMagic Design (which now includes Fusion),
• Quantel.

Companies present that would like to join (please start joining process):

• NewBlue
• FXHOME
• Digital Anarchy.

Discussion to create “director in residence” position so there is a backup ready to take on director responsibilities in case someone needs to step down. {After the meeting is was noted that this position is called "Alternate Director" in the Organisation papers.} Vote taken, approved. Pierre suggests Dennis, Dennis accepts.

Discussion of why it’s a UK company; what about making it a US company? It would take a fair amount of work to do so (articles of incorporation, etc.) — leaving as-is for now.

Discussion of creating a sponsored OpenFX Stack Overflow tag. Chris Dolan took action to look into this.

Discussion on how to deliver updates to the specification (e.g., 1.4, 1.5). Currently we’re limited to 2 updates per year, typically around December and June, but this could be adjusted. The website has been updated and previous discussions migrated to the new items.

Discussion of how to move specification additions forward (there have been many additions suggested that have stagnated). Suggestion made that each item gets a working group that makes regular (e.g., monthly) status reports to the member mailing list. Items that don’t get a working group get removed from the backlog. General agreement on this. Pierre said that each items has a “subcommittee” field that can be used for the working group list (you need to be logged in to make edits to the wiki).

Discussion of “what is ready for 1.4?” with goal of getting it done this summer; decision made to follow up on mailing list.

It was noted that multiple recipients are possible at each company on the member mailing list, but standards update notifications can only go to one address (so use a mailing list on the receiving end if you need multiple people to receive these).

Discussion of forward and backward compatibility as we move forward in versions. The group needs to ensure that plug-ins and hosts supporting different versions continue to work together. As long as each side checks for suites this should continue to work.

Meeting adjourned.