1. Meeting overview and key information
Present
- Joel Addison (President)
- Wil Brown (Vice-President)
- Jonathan Woithe (Council)
- Neil Cox (Council)
- Lilac Kapul (Council)
Apologies
- Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
- Clinton Roy (Secretary)
Meeting opened at 19:35 AEDT by Joel and quorum was achieved.
Minutes taken by Jonathan.
2. Log of correspondence
- No correspondence received.
3. Items for discussion
- Sponsorship request from OSGeo Oceania and the Pacific Geospatial and RS Council for the Pacific Geospatial Conference in Suva, Fiji in the week of 28 Nov 2022. Prospectus is at https://osgeo-oceania.org/pgc2022-sponsorship/. A decision on this was deferred last meeting to give council members a chance to familiarise themselves with the material.
- Will: What the conference is doing is interesting. It is Open enough to warrant us taking a look. The greatest concern is that the conference is not focused on Australia/NZ, and Linux Australia first and foremost represents the open technology community in Australa and New Zealand. Is the conference connected enough with Australia/NZ for us to be involved?
- Joel: We have interacted with the OSGeo people before. Joel is not strongly in favour. That’s not to say that what OSGeo does isn’t good, but the potential return for LA and the benefit to our community is hard to see. We are also in a “no revenue” year, which requires prudent use of funds.
- Neill: Is the conference close enough to our community to warrant a contribution from Linux Australia?
- Jonathan: is thinking similarly to Joel. OSGeo is doing good work with this conference. However, is the connection to the open technology communities in Australia and New Zealand enough to justify contributing money to the conference?
- Lilac: has similar thoughts to others. The conference is interesting and worth considering further, but it’s not clear what form that should take. Another way of viewing the sponsorship is as a way to promote more international collaboration across the wider Pacific region in the area of open technology.
- Joel: it is appropriate to promote the conference on our social media channels, but he is not convinced we should be contributing money at this stage.
- Lilac asked whether we will exhaust our sponsorship budget this year. Joel doubts we will, but in the current climate having a money buffer might not be a bad thing. Alternatively, we could, for example, provide funds to groups around Australia to bootstrap activities as we emerge from the pandemic (whatever that might mean) – something that has a greater connection to our community than the OSGeo conference in Fiji.
- Due to the absence of Clinton and Russell, a vote on the sponsorship was deferred to the next Council meeting. Jonathan will send a message acknowledging receipt of the request and letting OSGeo know that we are considering it.
- Updated communication policy
- A draft has been placed in the g-drive. Council members who have not had a look should do so and provide comments. Joel will then raise a motion on list to accept the new policy.
4. Items for noting
- No items raised.
5. Other business
- Miles joined the meeting at 19:35 to provide an update on the finalisation of LCA2022.
- Trying to chase down Kambri. Nicole Short doesn’t work there any more and the phone number is disconnected. It seems that the local office which was running Kambri has closed, with all management now handled by the Sydney office. Miles will follow up with the managers in Sydney to see if we can get any deposit back. The deposit paid was $13k. When the in-person conference was canceled they offered $7k cash or $13k value. Thus we may get $7k back, but more than likely we’ll get nothing since the original deposit was non-refundable and we’ve already received a number of concessions along the way (such as shifting the deposit first to 2022, then to the canceled watch party).
- Miles has a shed full of LCA stuff. There are 6 boxes, around 2 cubic metres of things in total. Mikal Still has disposed of anything he had so there’s nothing more to add.
AI: Joel will talk to Steve to see if he wants any of it. Everything else will be sent to Joel.
- Distribution of volunteer badges. Miles has addresses for most of the volunteers. He is happy to post these out. He was wondering if LA has an Australia Post account and whether that would be of use in this case.
AI: Joel to clarify the situation with the Australia Post account and pass this on to Miles. Miles will then post the material to the volunteers in whichever way is deemed easiest.
- LCA2022 Google account: Joel and Neill have the password.
- Reimbursement to Miles to be finalised when the postage is done.
- OpenHardware team will be contacted by Joel to finalise their remaining issues.
