Version 1 — June 2023 — the Indico Community
Indico is an open-source Project which aims to simplify the management, discovery and archival of meetings and conferences using web-based technologies.
Its key principles are:
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User Experience - Indico aims to provide its users with modern, intuitive and accessible interfaces as well as with the best experience possible;
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Universality - Indico is a general-purpose event management tool which shall target as much as possible generic workflows and a feature set which is useful to the majority of its users;
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Extensibility - Indico provides a powerful set of programmatic and web APIs which allows plugins and applications to extend its functionality further.
In its broader sense, the Indico Community consists of everyone involved in using Indico and advancing its development. That includes developers, designers, translators, writers, system administrators, and end users, among others.
The Indico Community, in its narrower sense, and as meant in this document unless noted, consists of the set of institutions which run an Indico service. They may choose to be identified as such by registering in the Indico Community Registry.
The Indico Community Registry is a curated list of partner Indico sites who explicitly accept to be directly contacted by the Indico Team for community-coordination purposes. This includes:
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in the event of critical software vulnerabilities which require immediate patching;
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community-related surveys and initiatives.
Indico is a community-driven effort, governed by CERN for the benefit of the Indico Community in its broader sense. CERN strives to make Indico a collaborative, open and transparent project to ensure that everyone can contribute to and have their say regarding the direction the Project takes. Indico's governance model was designed to be lightweight and aims to strike a balance between agreed-upon processes and standards as well as individual motivations. The governance model is intended to enable participants to take on progressively larger and larger responsibility with support from the leadership.
This document defines different project roles and responsibilities, while establishing the decision-making process, and defines how people are appointed to the corresponding roles. Adherence to Indico's Code of Conduct is required from all involved parties.
Indico welcomes the engagement of Participating Organisations. Participating Organisations have a direct interest in advancing the open collaborative principles of the Indico community or related activities. Participating Organisations are a subset of the Indico Community and will be recognised on the Indico website. Participating Organisations contribute actively and significantly to the Indico project through code contributions, translations, community animation or public outreach.
Participating Organisations must make an upfront commitment and confirm their participation on an annual basis through an annual report and attendance at an annual Community Meeting either in-person or virtually.
Any requests to become a Participating Organization shall be addressed to the Product, Project or Community Manager and require the approval of the Consultative Board.
The Consultative Board is made up of representatives of institutions that make contributions of particular relevance to Indico. Such contributions can include code, support materials, community building, direct contributions of financial support to the project, and much more. Membership of the Consultative Board is obtained through invitation by CERN, among the personnel of the Participating Organisations, for terms of two years. Members of the Consultative Board are appointed directly - this means that in the event of an early departure from a role, there is no automatic replacement, and the appointment of a new member will be at CERN's initiative.
The Consultative Board is chaired by the Product Manager, or in their absence, the Project Manager, who, together with the Community Manager, are members of the board as well. Members of the same institution have the right to one single vote (i.e., maximum one vote per organisation).
The Consultative Board is a consultative body which provides advice to the Project and helps identify strategic and community priorities. The board will meet twice per year, in person or remotely. The latter may be called upon by the Project or the Product Manager on an ad-hoc basis, should the need arise.
This Governance Policy is open to re-evaluation by the community, through its bodies and roles, at any time. Any changes to this Policy will require the approval of the Consultative Board and are subject to the veto conditions outlined in the section "Decision Making" below.
The Project Manager, Product Manager and Community Manager make up the leadership of the Indico Community.
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Community Manager
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Appointed by the Consultative Board upon recommendation by any of the members (2-year term);
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Responsible for the community-based aspects of Indico, in particular interfacing with developers, instance administrators and other decision makers, and including the organisation of the Indico workshops, management of community-oriented tools and identification of synergies across sites.
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Product Manager
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Appointed by CERN;
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Responsible for Indico's overall vision and strategy as a software product as well as the evolution of its feature set, in Coordination with the Project Manager and the Consultative Board.
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Project Manager
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Appointed by CERN;
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Responsible for the day-to-day management of Indico's core application and plugins, as well as coordination of developments across the Indico Community in all its development sites.
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Consultative Board Member
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Appointed by the participating organisation (itself appointed by CERN based on its recent contributions within the Project, on a 2-year term);
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Responsible for representing that organisation on the Consultative Board, by providing advice to the Project and helping to identify strategic and community priorities.
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The Product Manager may revoke appointed roles of a member for reasons such as (but not limited to):
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lack of activity and/or lack of meaningful contributions;
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violations to the code of conduct;
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repeated infringements of the contribution guidelines for the Project.
The Product Manager must give a warning to the member to allow them to correct their behaviour except in severe cases. Revoking roles should be a last resort measure, and only serve the purpose of ensuring that Indico has a healthy community and collaboration based on its Code of Conduct.
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The Consultative Board should meet at least twice a year either in person or remotely. The Project or Product Manager shall chair the board and are also entitled to call for an ad-hoc Consultative Board meeting if needed;
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The Indico Workshop, whose aim is to foster exchange and present advances of the product to the broader community, shall take place at least once every two years (in person if possible, with remote attendance possible) and shall be organized by the Community Manager with the help of a Host Organisation approved by the Consultative Board;
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A Community Meeting shall be organized yearly, at the same time as the Workshop if there is one that year, either in person or remotely. In it, Participating Organizations shall provide updates on their sites and any developments made. The Community Manager shall chair this meeting.
The aforementioned bodies are tasked with the following decisions:
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Approving the road map for the following year, as proposed by the development team - last Consultative Board of the year;
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Deciding on the date and location of the Indico Workshop - Community Meeting;
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Agreeing on the allocation of resources from Participating Organisations to the Project, as well as the organisation of Project outreach activities - Community Meeting.
Consensus should be always sought in all formal and informal processes. If no consensus arises, a simple majority vote should be held. The Project Leadership (represented by the Project and Product Managers) has the power to veto any decision. All such vetoes can be challenged by escalation to the corresponding CERN hierarchy, who should seek the advice of the various members of the Consultative Board before taking a final decision.