2025-10-08 Council Meeting Minutes

1. Meeting overview and key information

Present

• Jennifer Cox (Vice-President)
• Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
• Neill Cox (Secretary)
• Jonathan Woithe (Council)
• Lilly Hoi Sze Ho (Council)

Apologies 

• Joel Addison (President)
• Elena Williams (Council)

Not Present

Meeting opened at 19:35 AEDT by Jennifer  and quorum was achieved at 19:56.
Minutes taken by Neill.

2. Log of correspondence

• Subcommittee update for PyCon AU 2026 – 22 September 2026 – Russell has responded to questions about possible future charity status. In summary we are exploring the possibility but there are no concrete plans
• Drupal Community 2025 bank and stripe accounts – Russell has responded clarifying which accounts Drupal subcommittee has access to
• Re: FW: Finalising catering contract – Discussion about EO2026 catering. Council CCd for information
• Deep Dive: Data Governance – mass email from OSI
• PyCon AU 2026: Request for payment + checking permissions to approve payments – Discussion about PyCon AU 2026 payments and ID requirements for Jack Skinner
• Re: sponsorship prospectus for 2026 edition – EO offering sponsorship opportunity to Canonical
• DrupalSouth Wellington budget – query as to progress on council considering the Drupal South Budget – Jonathan has responded
• Westpac 100 points ID confirmed for Jack Skinner – Completion of authorisation requirements at Westpac for Jack Skinner
• Science-y keynote options – Discussion about keynotes for EO2026
• Annual Report season – offer of help with the annual report from Sae Ra – Jonathan has responded
• Voting on DrupalSouth Wellington budget – on list motion to approve the Drupal South budget
• Amazon Web Services Billing Statement Available [Account: 103334912252]
• Fwd: Lodge your NFP self-review return [SEC = OFFICIAL] – NFP self review is due by 31 Oct 2025
• [EO2026] Rooms – discussion about the size and number of rooms available for EO2026
• Re: Post induction setup – question from Miles about previous transaction in the accounts allocated to EO2026 – Russell has responded
• Request for calendar invite for LAC for PyCon AU 2026 – request to add invitees to the PyConAU Subcommittee meeting invitation. Neill has actioned and responded
• Google sponsorship purchase order – Request for access to LA’s Ariba login. Russell has responded.
• Tonight’s meeting – agenda for EO2026 meeting of 7 Oct 
• subcommittee meeting 8th October – request from Steve for an earlier time. Jonathan and Neill have responded
• PyCon AU 2026 Update for 8 October 2025 – update from the PyCon AU 2026 subcommittee. Included in full below.
• Time of Council meeting tomorrow (Wed 8 Oct) – query from Jonathan about DST meeting start
• Recap of tonight’s meeting – summary of the EO2026 meeting of 7 Oct 
• Invitation to LA committee meeting – Request from Alexar for an invite to the subcommittee meeting. Neill has actioned.

3. Items for discussion

• Admin Team Update 

• • • Not a lot happening, prepping for end of year
    • FastMail invoice has arrived but is confusing. Steve will chase.
    • Everything else is ticking along. 
    • Looking to restart the ubuntu mirror after talking to Steven Hanley. SOme work to do before Canonical will recognise the mirror as a primary
    • Report form ANU network team – there are some weird issues to do with access to the Debian security archive which is not managed by LA but does use IP addresses that belong to us
    • Joel and Steve will reach out to Fastmail to clarify EO’s request for monetary sponsorship.
    • Steve will be in Montreal for the next meeting but should be able to join.

• Kiwi Pycon Subcommittee Update 

• • Ticket sales are a little less than half of the planned numbers. The good news is that more contributor and workshop tickets than expected have been sold.
  • Currently struggling with sponsorship. Talking to previous sponsors, but few have signed on so far. Currently looking like $30k below the worst case budget. Looking at what can be done to turn that around.
  • The schedule has just been announced which will help with ticket sales.
  • The organising committee is looking for ways to save money from the budget.
  • Catering is not yet locked in.

 

• Drupal Subcommittee Update 

• • Need a decision about the budget ASAP
    
• 
  • Income has exceeded projected costs
  • Russell has agreed that the Drupal SubCommittee can use profit from the Drupal Community Day as a donation to Drupal South as long as it is properly recorded in the budgets.
  • Next year the plan is to focus on students.
  • Julia, Simon and Jack will have a conversation about marketing.
• DrupalCon Asia

Hello Councillors, 

I’m sorry to say I can’t make it to the meeting tonight. 

I have however updated our usual slides with the latest information. We’re falling a bit behind on sponsorship and ticket sales. We still have some strong sponsors in the pipeline, but they’re getting harder to pin down. 

The treasure hunt has gone live and you can see more here. We’ve turned this into a paid event with a small fee, and also opened it up to non-Con attendees, provided one person on the team has a Conference ticket. 

We’re working hard to try and secure some final sponsors. We know from last year that most of our registrations will come at the very end: For Singapore, we went from 130 to 250 ticket holders in the last 6 weeks so hopefully we will see a repeat here. 

Apologies again I can’t make it tonight! 

Mike

• Joomla Subcommittee Update 

Hi all,

I’ve had bit going on outside work these last few weeks and don’t have much of an update for this evening, so sending my apologies.

As far as updates go, Terry the other account signatory has completed his induction etc, so the bank account and Stripe are set up, but we’re yet to spend any money 😊

Work is continuing on the Joomla AU website revamp and we should have the memberships live next week.

I’ll be at next month’s meeting in person to provide an update.

Cheers

Nathan

• PyCon AU Subcommittee Update 

Still waiting on payment from a few last minute sponsors.

Good attendance with excellent diversity.

Currently looking at roughly $5k loss.

Attached is an update ahead of tomorrow night’s LAC meeting.

A copy is provided here, and all updates & docs for Linux Australia remain here (good for a bookmark 🙂 ). [Links removed in published minutes]

While the update is looking backwards, I wanted to share a few “looking forward” points:

We’re aiming to finish assembling the core team by month end (October)

We’re intending to have a published “Call for track organisers” in time for Kiwi PyCon at the end of November

We’re intending to have an updated ‘full’ 2026 website in time for that call for tracks.

Additionally (admin, primarily for Russell’s benefit):

We’re aware of an unreconciled PayPal transaction in Xero; Pete has forwarded from Russell’s email. We’ll get that reconciled in due course

We’re mindful that the currently shared budget spreadsheet does not have actuals yet. Thats our top priority to be on top of now.

• We’re in the middle of updating a/the budget spreadsheet with a clearer feed of actuals. Our budget will then show actuals (feed of costs already incurred, sourced from Xero) + projections (payment milestones, contracted commitments etc). Changes will be made additively of course, but we’re working on it in a copy for now (just in case). I’ve exported the budget (as approved by LA) to PDF for historical purposes too.

We noticed a miscalculation in Fixed Costs that did not include the Financial Assitance grants in the total costs. ‘Fixed Costs’ tab has been updated to amend this (specifically the sums in I24, J24, I58, J58) . Total impact is ~$5k which does not affect our P&L position in either budget scenario and is something for us to navigate in April next year pending sponsorships.

Speak tomorrow!

Cheers,

Jack

• Jack and Russell will discuss the tax situation with Stripe payments
• Jack has expressed some concerns about PayPal’s reputation for freezing funds.

 

• WordPress Subcommittee Update

• • No update received
• Everything Open Subcommittee Update 
• • SSC has accepted 30 talks and 9 tutorials with 14 backups,plus 5 keynotes
  • Sponsorship is progressing, but it’s slow going.
  • Catering contract has been signed
  • Call for volunteers closes on Friday. Look to have sufficient volunteers
  • First keynote announcement planned for Monday 13/10
  • Early bird ticket sales close on 17/10
  • Alexar may have some sponsorship leads
• Flounder Subcommittee Update 
• • No update received
• LUV Subcommittee Update 
• • Recent activities:
    • Software Freedom Day
    • Linux Regional Summit
    • Visited the Ballarat Tech School
  • Planned Events:
    • Linux Town Hall meeting with a focus on the end of Windows 10 support
    • Started a series of weekly events focussing on Linux and AI
    • Encouraging user groups in the APAC region to attend LUV events
  • Alexar has questions about insurance – has asked for a copy of the insurance papers so that he knows what cover is available for LUV events.
  • Team members:
    • Alexar is the public face of LUV. 
    • Sophie is treasurer and secretary 
    • Terry is regional contact 
    • Simon helping with workshops, particularly cyber security
  • Looking at setting up the infrastructure to support future activities
  • Currently going through a rebranding exercise to become Linux Victoria

4. Items for noting

• Jenny has spoken to Sae Ra about the Annual Report. At this stage Jenny and Elena have it in hand, but they will discuss it with Sae Ra and ask for help if needed.

5. Other business

• Meeting Times
  • Joel has proposed moving the meeting back by 30 minutes 8:00 PM AEDT
• Voting on DrupalSouth Wellington budget

The on list motion passed. The budget is approved.

The motion was:

ON LIST MOTION: Linux Australia accepts the DrupalSouth Wellington 2025 organising committee as a subcommittee of Linux Australia, and authorises the expenditure on the budget submitted with their proposal.

Proposer: Russell Stuart

Seconded: Jonathan

Motion Passed by a majority of the council.

6. In camera

• One item was discussed in camera 

7. Action items

Jonathan will let Julia know about Council’s approval of the Drupal South budget.

7.1 Completed Items

7.2 Carried Forward

Meeting closed at 21:12

Next meeting is scheduled for 2025-10-22 at 20:00 AEDT (UT+11:00)