1. Meeting overview and key information
Present
- Joel Addison (President)
- Wil Brown (Vice-President)
- Neill Cox (Secretary)
- Sae Ra Germaine (Council)
- Marcus Herstik (Council)
- Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
- Jonathan Woithe (Council)
Meeting opened at 19:31 AEST by Joel Addison and quorum was achieved.
Minutes taken by Neill Cox
2. Log of correspondence
- 08/06/2023 Grant Application for Django Girls Canberra
- 15/06/2023 Enquiry about LA membership application approvals
3. Items for discussion
- Grant Application for Django Girls Canberra.
Community consultation ends tomorrow (22 June) and their timeline is tight. Council could discuss the application tonight so the decision can be ratified quickly tomorrow. It is unlikely further community feedback will be received in the next 12 hours.
Being run by the same group that runs the Canberra python meetup. There has been limited community feedback (Kathy) but that was positive. The proposal is a good fit for the community grant concept.
Motion: Barring negative community feedback, the below motion is approved.
Moved: Neill Cox
Seconded: Marcus Herstik
Passed unanimously.
Motion: That the grant application to help fund the Django Girls Canberra event to a value of $525 be approved.
Moved By: Jonathan Woithe
Seconded: Sae Ra Germaine
Passed unanimously.
4. Items for noting
- Sae Ra had a chat to Rod Thomas about Gladstone, Sae Ra will also talk to Mike O’Connor about Adelaide.
Gladstone are looking at the week before Easter 2024, which may result in a cheaper rate. Gladstone are offering considerable support.
5. Other business
- Drupal sub committee update
Reconciling bank accounts for Drupal South. Busy with planning for an event in Canberra. This time it will be in partnership with GovCMS who are having a mega meetup. There will be a Drupal South Community Day. There will be code sprints, but also other topics covered. Survey going out this week to see what sessions the community wants.
Budget < $10k, some sponsors lined up already, largely Canberra locals who couldn’t sponsor Drupal South in Wellington.
Date and venue looked in for Drupal South in Sydney. Final date to be announced once everything is finalised. Venue costs are higher post pandemic and no deals are available, but hopefully ticket prices will not be impacted.
Question about non refundable deposit – does LA cover that or will the sponsor/Drupal South have to. Response from Councils is that LA will cover it.
The post event survey normally gets about 60 to 90 responses but the most recent one has only had 20. Some concern is that using MailChimp has very low deliverability. The Drupal committee is looking at options for improving engagement. LA has found LinkedIn an effective channel.
Can LA provide an operational budget to cover things like a more effective mail delivery system. LA should be able to provide this as part of the event budget. LA may be able to provide email addresses for the committee in the future.
- Admin team update
Certificates have been renewed for linux.org.au.
Had a meeting about fastmail stuff (Nicola has left fastmail but has handed us over to the CEO). Looks like it will provide about 90% of what we’re after, but we will have less visibility of mail delivery issues, which will need to be handled through support tickets. May also have less control over domain level blocking.
The admin team would like to migrate email to a new platform in September. Fastmail seems to be the best option. Good support, good community engagement, open source and are offering us free hosting. There is an argument to be made that actually paying for email hosting would create a clear commercial arrangement, but FastMail would be unlikely to benefit from not treating us properly. We would still look for a contract or something similar to outline the relationship to protect both sides.
Debian 12 has been released but will probably wait for 12.1 before upgrading.
Ongoing discussions with ANU about moving servers to a different rack.
- Joomla sub committee update
The Joomla team are unable to attend, but they are working on the updated constitution, and awaiting some planning to be completed by the Joomla Events team on some upcoming activities that they will be promoting.
- PyCon AU sub committee update
Neill failed to send an email to PyconAU so no update this month. Action item for Neill – sort out a proper mail merge for the subcommittee invites.
- Flounder sub committee update
- LUV
Alexar called in as LUV’s representative and we discussed the relationship between LUV and LA.
LUV as a subcommittee has an obligation to report to LA on a regular basis, and for example to provide a list of the office holders of LUV.
LUV and LA have not had communication for some time, and we both need to reconnect and make sure each organisation is supporting each other.
Neill will speak to Alexar to try and answer his questions about this process.
- WordPress sub committee
Concentrating on the local user groups. About 75% have now reactivated. Four have permanently shut down.
Pencilled in November 2024 for WordCamp. There looks like about 20-24 people interested in helping to organise. A quote has been received from UTS and others are being sought.
