1. Meeting overview and key information
Present
- Joel Addison (President)
- Sae Ra Germaine (Vice-President)
- Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
- Neill Cox (Secretary)
- Andrew Pam (Council)
- Jennifer Cox (Council)
- Jonathan Woithe (Council)
Apologies
- None
Not Present
Meeting opened at 20:05 AEDT by Joel and quorum was achieved.
Minutes taken by Neill.
2. Log of correspondence
- Oracle Linux & offerings | Increase Security and Reduce Cost – Neill has sent the EO2025 sponsorship prospectus
- Re: US Tax Paperwork Questions – Query from Joe Chin re sponsorship of DrupalCon Singapore
- Request for approval of >$5k invoice – request for approval of payment for the PyConAu sprints venue
- Steering Council Update / PyconAU 2025 Update – update from Clinton about PyConAu 2025 and the PyCon Steering Committee – Joel has responded
- WordCamp Brisbane 2025 subcommittee – discussions about WC Brisbane
- PythonWA funding opportunities – email from Ben Fitzhardinge about possible support o PythonWA
- Fwd: Welcome to Write the Docs Australia 2024 – update about the Write The Docs conference that was run in Melbourne on Nov 28 and 29.
- Approval for final venue balance invoice – the final payment for the PyconAu main conference venue has been approved.
- Introducing DrupalSouth Committee Chair – Julia Topliss – Russell has done the onboarding for Julia and Margery Tongway (Drupal SC secretary)
- Re: Please set me up with DrupalSouth stuff please – more onboarding discussion between Russell, Julia and Margery
- Should Linux Australia have a BlueSky account? – after some discussion Kathy Reid has setup a bluesky account for Linux Australia
- [LACTTE] Grant Application from Kylie Willison for Open Laptop Project – grant application from Makerspace Adelaide
- Grant Application – budget for the Makerspace Adelaide grant application
- Request for approval on >$5k invoice – payment of the Next Day Video invoice for PyconAu has been approved
- Amazon Web Services Billing Statement Available [Account: 103334912252] – invoice for $7.44
- Grant Report from Write the Docs Australia – report from Felicity Brand on the conference. Jonathan has responded.
- Driving Open Source Forward: Make Your Impact in 2025 – Newsletter from OSI
3. Items for discussion
- Drupal South Subcommittee
Dallas is an apology
- Canberra Community Day
Went well. Had a great community vibe. Even the bad feedback was good.
Overall a fun day – sold the last 30 tickets on the last two days.
Had a bigger presence at the GovCMS event this year.
GovCMS ran a BoF centered around contributing back to Drupal. Gained a new contributor from that.
70% of attendees indicated they would attend again.
Keeping attendance free for APS attendees was a good decision.
Ready to start planning for next year. Will be hard to make it even better next year.
.
- Melbourne 2025
Currently looking at a loss of $59k. Early days for ticket sales. Expect to turn a profit if currently expected sponsors sign up and ticket sales match expectations.
In a fairly good position thanks to the work of David and Michael.
Ticket prices have been raised, but there has not been any negative feedback.
Currently a little focused on Singapore. When that wraps up the organisers will be able to focus on planning for Melbourne.
Want to get new people into the Drupal ecosystem. Will be reaching out to educational institutions with discounted tickets if sponsorships allow.
Some minor issues with transactions. Russell is assisting with sorting out the spreadsheet. Confusion seems to be caused by changes to accounts.
Russell has rarely seen such a clear financial statement from a conference.
- DrupalCon Singapore Subcommittee
- Starts on Monday.
- It has been quite a ride.
- Huge amount of community buzz.
- 212 people have bought tickets. 49.8% are at their first Drupal event. This is much higher than other conferences.
- Sold out of exhibition space. Hit the target of 100 people weeks ago.
- Have tried very hard to bring in new sponsors. Created new sponsorship opportunities. Particular outreach to Japan and India which has brought in another $25k. Still looking at a $18k loss.
- One final maybe, the contract has not yet been signed but an invoice has been raised.
- Without the LA “tax” it’s only a 3k loss.
- Apart from the budget everything else is looking really good.
- Russell has asked for confirmation of the final large invoice. Mike will check and confirm that it is correct.
- There is a spot in the calendar for DrupalCon Japan – will LA back that given this year’s experience? LA cannot guarantee anything at this point, but is willing to consider it.
- Kiwi PyCon / Python NZ
- Now looking forward to 2025. Chelsea will likely be the chair for 2025.
- There was one missing transaction – a refund from Germany in Euros. Has now arrived.
- Venue – waiting on confirmation for mid November dates
- Preparing first meeting to plan budget
- 2024 – the budget was on point except for sponsorship which was overestimated by $30,000. The goal is to make sure the budget will work even with the same reduced sponsorship.
- Saving money by changing AV providers. Setting the lowest expectation to what was received this year.
- Want to keep the option of striking out lunch catering. Will still cater morning and afternoon tea.
- May need to raise ticket prices
- Approach sponsors in January.
- Open tickets sales in April – this will allow a decision about changes to catering and ticket prices once there is an indication of what sponsorship will be like.
- The changes to AV will save $10k, Catering $10k, and raising ticket sales will hopefully bring in the last $10k.
- LA is happy overall with 2024. It was obviously a challenging year but LA is positive about running the conference again in 2025.
- Joomla
- Have decided to put the next event off until the second half of 2025.
- LA has not made any progress on the subcommittee yet. Joomla have provided the signatories to LA.
- PyCon AU
- Peter is an apology due to a cold
- The event was a success.
- Tracking to return a $6,000 profit.
- Some issues with leaks in the sprint venue.
- Appreciated LA’s flexibility on the budget, especially for catering.
- Starting to look at 2025.
- Peter will chair 2025. Neillwill take over as treasurer.
- Discussions beginning about 2026.
- Also looking at how to maintain state between conferences.
- Flounder
- Have continued to have monthly meetings
- Attendance is relatively low. Would like ideas about how to attract more participants.
- Attendees have a good time and learn useful things
- Not just Australian attendees.
- LUV
- Nominal membership of thousands.
- Actual attendance is much lower.
- Annual BBQ is coming up which will be used to try and motivate people to attend.
- Elections are coming up.
- Suffers a bit from the invisibility of Linux nowadays – gone from “cool tech” to “background radiation”
- Major expense is meetup. Maybe it’s time to consider dropping that.
- WordPress
- WC Sydney was good. Attendees enjoyed it, particularly the networking.
- 248 attendees. 181 actual ticket sales. Higher than expected sponsorship. 130% higher than expected.
- Drama around WP Engine and refunding their sponsorship.
- Currently around $3,000 profit after the LA “tax”
- The spreadsheet says there should be about $5,000 so that needs to be reconciled.
- Definitely made a profit though.
- Speaker videos are published.
- Mostly 4 or 5 start reviews. A single one star review
Feedback WordCamp Sydney 2024 Attendee Survey (Responses)
- Wil will be assisting the WC Brisbane event.
- Had a good number of new speakers.
- Will do a pst event review after Christmas
- Will produce a public budget for transparency
- Everything Open 2025
- 47 days to the conference
- Managed to sign on about $68,000 of sponsorship which is $7,000 more than expected.
- Ticket sales are a bit lower than expected.
- The organising team don’t have as many contacts in Adelaide as expected.
- Sa Rae is reaching out to an old LCA contact.
- Still trying to contact a missing speaker.
- Purplecon
- Conference is complete
- Financial reconciliation is complete
- There will probably be a purplecon next year if enough organisers can be found.
- Made a loss of around $864? Russell will confirm that the transactions have been entered correctly because he sees a profit.
- Admin Team
- Maliming list migration is underway (again). Want to get that done before elections are called.
- What’s happening with the election? Sae Ra is finalising dates and will let Steve know either tonight or tomorrow.
- EO2025 should be an opportunity to meet the new admin team candidate.
- Still chasing the registrar about opensource.au which is still marked as contested.
- GoDaddy has a service to broker purchase of domains – costs $130. Unfortunately drop.com.au are a domain squatter and will probably ask for an excessive amount for opensource.com.au
- Admin team reimbursements have been received.
4. Items for noting
- Grant application from Makerspace Adelaide
A decision will need to be made at the next meeting.
It is a significant amount of money.
- Write The Docs
- Well run
- Good catering
- There was live illustration, but not shown at the conference.
- Attendees had a good time.
- Well with sponsoring.
- Repeated acknowledgement of Linux Australia as a sponsor.
5. Other business
- Joomla Subcommittee
A budget has been provided. It’s fairly basic, but that’s because they don’t have much in the way of income or expenses.
Motion: That Linux Australia accepts Joola Australia as a Steering Subcommittee and accepts their budget for 2025.
Moved: Joel
Seconded: Neill
Result: Passed unanimously
- PythonWA
While at PyConAu Neill met Ben Fitzhardinge and spoke to him about possible ways Linux Australia might be able to support the PythonWA user group. I thought I had suggested infrastructure – banking, insurance, hosting – rather than direct financial support but I may have mentioned the grants program.
- Draft minutes for the following meetings are online in draft format for review. Neill will publish them in the next few days:
- 2024-07-03
- 2024-07-17
- 2024-07-31
- 2024-08-14
- 2024-08-28
- 2024-09-11
- 2024-09-25
- 2024-10-09
- 2024-10-23
- 2024-11-06
- 2024-11-20
6. In camera
- No items were discussed in camera
7. Action items
7.1 Completed Items
7.2 Carried Forward
Meeting closed at 21:46 AEDT
Next meeting is scheduled for 2024-12-18 at 08:00 AEDT (UT+1100) on jitsiobjects
