January 13, 2021

Yellowbrick Advisory Board Meeting Held on January 13, 2021 from 2030-2200 EST via Video Conference Call. Kristen McIntyre presided as Chair, Larry Gray serving as Secretary and Edwin Schmierer as Treasurer. Minutes taken by Adam Morris.

Attendees: Rebecca Bilbro, Benjamin Bengfort, Kristen McIntyre, Larry Gray, Prema Roman, Edwin Schmierer and Adam Morris.

Agenda

A broad overview of the topics for discussion in the order they were presented:

  1. Welcome (by Kristen McIntyre)

  2. Fall 2020 Semester Retrospective

  3. 2021 Advisory Board Elections

  4. 2021 Budget

  5. Yellowbrick v1.3 Milestone planning

  6. Member Topics

  7. Additional Focus for the Spring Semester

  8. Spring 2021 contributors and roles

Fall 2021 Semester Retrospective

  • Rebecca gave a talk “Thrifty Machine Learning” and was highlighted by PyLadies Berlin (and they highlighted Yellowbrick!) on the 19th day of their 2020 [Advent Calendar Tweet Series](https://twitter.com/PyLadiesBer/status/1340321653839040513?s=20)

  • The entire team showed resiliency in the face of COVID-19 and being unable to meet in person by moving the project forward.

  • We closed 19 issues and had 13 open issues. We had 3 open PRs.

  • Approved PRs (Contributors): Rebecca and Ben approved 3, Larry approved 1, Michael Garod and @arkvei approved 1 each.

  • Summary of Fall PR Topics- Complete changelog since v1.2 can be found [here:](https://github.com/DistrictDataLabs/yellowbrick/pull/1110)

Main PR Topic Areas included: Yellowbrick1.2 release, Dependence Management issue [PR 1111](https://github.com/DistrictDataLabs/yellowbrick/pull/1111), update to Dispersion plot color and title, update to kneed algorithm, added FAQ on wrapper, third party estimator wrapper, adjustment to top_n param for feature importances. We also addressed a public/private API bug in [PR 1124](https://github.com/DistrictDataLabs/yellowbrick/pull/1124)

Board Shout-outs

  • Ben for his constant contributions to the project

  • Rebecca for her rapid response to issues all Semester long.

  • Adam for meeting the 1000 mark for Social Media Followers (@scikit-yb)

  • Strong user interactions with the library: 2300 downloads per day and 60,000 per month!

  • Robust package evidenced by low number of issues being opened over the Semester.

  • Kristen, Larry, Edwin for “surviving the 2nd worst year”

2021 Advisory Board

Nominations for officer positions for the 2021 Yellowbrick Advisory Board were revealed and voted upon. Before the reveal, Kristen McIntyre, Larry Gray and Edwin Schmierer provided an overview of the roles.

Nominations for Chair: Rebecca and Ben nominate Prema Tony nominated Ben Result: Prema was selected with all Yay Votes

Nominations for Secretary: Rebecca and Ben nominated Prema Kristen nominated Adam Result: Adam was selected unanimously

Nomnations for Treasurer: Rebecca, Ben and Larry nominated Adam Prema nominated herself Tony nominated Edwin Result: Kristen was selected unanimously

2021 Annual Budget Update

In January, we approved our budget for the year, which totaled $271.48 . Since we have 9 advisors for this year, the dues totaled $30.17 per advisor although we are waiting to see if new members join the board which could lower the per person due amount. Thank you to everyone for paying your dues on time!

  • In our January meeting, it was noted that if someone had something they’d like to add to the budget, we could put it to a vote the next semester.

  • We will likely have a little extra since a large portion of the stickers cost was intended for PyCon stickers.

  • The Treasurer, Edwin, provided an update that we needed to approve the budget.

  • The group discussed and decided removing stickers from the 2021 budget due to COVID-19 and the lack of in person events (previously cost $133.50 and paid for by Rebecca. Thank you Rebecca!)

  • The board decided to reallocate this sticker money towards buying small thank you gifts for developers who make significant contributions to Yellowbrick.

  • Ben suggested that we add an additional item to the budget Add cost for gifts to Reviews and Contributors* - such as coffee and a YB branded T-Shirt. This is to show the YB spirit of Gratitude. A budget of $750. We have two potential sponsors (detailed below)

  • Proposal 2 lines of budget: Board gifts 8 of us - Create budget $320 External Funding, External Gifts paid for partly by board dues/external funding:

    1. We voted to split these 2 lines items into separate voted - Unanimously Support

    2. Vote only external funding for Board gifts - Unanimously supported

    3. Vote to remove Sticker budget and put back into budget for external gifts - Unanimously supported

    4. Vote to remove Nathan from Board Roster

2021 Annual Budget

Description

Frequency

Total

Paid for By

Name.com domain registration (scikit-yb.org)

annually

$17.98

Ben

Read the Docs Gold Membership

$10 monthly

$120.00

Ben

Yellowbrick Conbtributor gifts

annually

$133.50

Kristen

$271.48

  • Advisors pay their share (dues) to Kristen via Venmo. Kristen sent her Venmo handle and QR Code via the group’s slack channel. Dues are payable by March 1, 2021.

  • Since we are reaching out to potential new board members, we will delay the collection due date since we do not the final total number of board members and everyone’s retrospective dues.

  • Budget for appreciation gifts to to contributors. We will have 2 buckets of money, one for gifts for contributors and one that is board-funded to get a gift for board members.

Description

Donation

POC

Kansas Labs

$375

Ben

District Data Labs

$375

Tony

$750

Yellowbrick v1.3 Status Updates/Milestone Planning

Status Update: The issues that are part of this milestone can be found [here:] (https://github.com/DistrictDataLabs/yellowbrick/milestone/16)

Milestone planning:

  • We need to ensure 0.24 Scikit-Learn Compatibility (Scipy 1.6 issues) * to help deal with this * pip sklearn dependency 0.23 (current)

  • We need to research PEP517 and how to implement “pip install -e .” See how python is now dealing with python packaging.

Ideas for next Administrative Projects:

1.) Release a User Survey on Twitter

2.) Content Marketing through Twitter

3.) Prema to review backlog

Member Topics

  • Kristen suggested exploring incorporating pip dependency resolver:In its January release (21.0), pip will use the new dependency resolver by default. The documentation gives a good overview of the new changes and guidance on how to respond to the new ResolutionImpossible error message.

  • Kristen recommended replacing the iris dataset with other datasets in ours documentation.

  • Changes to sklearn.utils for Sklearn Private/Public addressed in API [PR 1138] (https://github.com/DistrictDataLabs/yellowbrick/pull/1138)

  • We decided to pass on participating in Google Summer of Code (GSOC)

  • There was discussion of adding new board members such as Michael Garod, Molly and Matt Harrison.

  • Semester focus on Marketing & Outstanding Issues & PyDistrict

  • Try to get users to tell us how they’re using YB such as COVID research and viz

  • User Survey

  • Board unanimously support to add new members. Adam and Prema to reach out to Molly, Matt and Michael to ask them to join the board.