1. Meeting overview and key information
Present
- Joel Addison (President)
- Sae Ra Germaine (Vice-President)
- Neill Cox (Secretary)
- Andrew Pam (Council)
- Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
- Jonathan Woithe (Council)
- Jennifer Cox (Council)
Apologies
Not Present
Meeting opened at 19:36 AEST by Sae Ra and quorum was achieved.
Minutes taken by Neill
2. Log of correspondence
- Fwd: DrupalCon License Agreement [Needs review by LA council, esp VP and Treasurer]
- The data debate: AI training datasets are the bone of contention [discussion of an Open Source AI Definition]
- Tax Invoice #1717290 – Please Do Not Reply [receipt for renewal of slug.org.au and taslug.org.au
- [Announce] Linux Australia’s 2024 Grants Program is now open
- Date error in grants webpage shown when not logged in to the website [closing date in the Grants Program Announcement was wrong, but has now been fixed by Jonathan. It was evidently a WordPress glitch.]
- Re: Payment to Acquamarina Hotel – DrupalCon Asia
- linux-aus post from yifei@zhan.science requires approval [Grant report]
- Grant Application from Jonah Sullivan for Canberra Python User Group
- Grants Program now posted to website and socials – please do share [From Kathy Reid promoting the Grants Program]
- Enquiry from Felicity Brand via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form [invitation to sponsor Write the Docs Australia 2024]
- [LACTTE] Moving forward with 2024 Grants program [after accepting some suggestions from @lloy0076 the PR has been merged and the new policy is in effect]
3. Items for discussion
- Drupal sub committee update
Things are ticking along. Big question is building out the Melbourne conference. Ongoing saga, some difficulties settling on a final venue. Two on the short list.
RMIT
Suspiciously affordable catering, good for a community venue, but lots of little rooms spread over several levels, but not much common space or vendor space).
ACME
Is the preferred venue but is more expensive. Good facilities and AV. AV could be improved from the last few conferences. The catering is very expensive.
Sae Ra suggests that there is some common space at RMIT and the food options and location are very good.
Both venues depend on support from sponsors. A slide deck has been prepared by Michael for an upcoming sponsors webinar. Both venues need more sponsorship than last year and may need higher ticket prices.
Sponsorship and Costs
There is a list of more companies to approach for sponsorship, from outside the Drupal market.
There is the possibility that the conference will run at a loss, which will mean reconsidering whether to run in Melbourne or finding other ways to reduce costs, or accepting a loss. It’s possible that the conference may not run at all this year.
Per attendee costs up by about 30% over the last three years and sponsorship down by about 10%. If sponsorship increases then that would allow more activities, but otherwise the conference may need to be more focused on a community program rather than growing the market.
A separate discussion between the Drupal Subcommittee and the LA Council about these issues might be a good idea.
GovCMS have asked about running another event in Canberra. Costs would be around $5,000 to $10,000. It would be good to bring that cost down a bit. No guarantee that last year’s sponsors will return for the next event.
Drupal South is preparing to run an election for their committee.
Drupal Asia
Everything is going very well. Sessions are open until 8 July, 50 have been received so far. Early bird tickets are on sale. Everything is on track. The two outstanding issues are paying the venue and sorting out licensing for the Drupal brand.
Planning for the next Drupal Cons is starting. If Singapore goes well then the hope is for Japan in 2025 and India in 2026.
- KiwiPyCon
Large overlap between the committees for Python NZ and Kiwi Pycon. Python NZ are sorting out issues left over from before.
For KiwiPyCon the website is 99% complete. Financial assistance program complete. Volunteers are nearly complete. Communication channels have been set up both for the conference and the wider community.
The only things left to do before the conference is pushing ticket sales and sponsorship. Ticket details are pretty much complete so purchasers should have all the information they need to make a decision.
Danny has received his invitation from the bank and has confirmed that he has access through the app.
There is space for Linux Australia banners as LA is a phoenix sponsor. Just need some banners. LA doesn’t believe that there are any banners in NZ currently. LA will provide money and designs to print banners.
Ticket sales are as usual expected to come in at the last moment. Currently there are 116 attendees. The record for a Kiwi PyCon is 235. The venue capacity is 360. Expecting to exceed 200, and hoping to get to 360. Workshops will probably sell out at 50 participants.
15 people were rejected for financial assistance. 8 people were accepted, 3 of them being speakers.
Sponsorship has been lower than expected. Early commitments from Google and the PSF. Sponsorship is currently at about 50% of what was expected, but there are still potential sponsors to follow up.
Python NZ are seeking an arrangement with the NZ Tax office, but it has not yet been decided.
- Admin team update
SSL certs are done (expired last week)
Domain names have been renewed (taslug, slug and a few others). We will continue to receive reminders even though the domain have been renewed
An upgrade to a more recent mailman 2 is planned for Friday which allows migration to a new server. Mailman 3 may happen later, but is not even in the planning stage until after than mailman 2 migration is complete.
Disks need to be replaced in the VM hypervisors, but will need to be coordinated with the call for papers for EO2025. Disk swap will probably happen in August. In the meantime any critical VMs will be migrated to a secondary server.
SLUG has a very old VM that needs to be upgraded. If there is a SLUG committee they need to be involved in this process.
Steve will be an apology for next month’s meeting due to travel.
- Joomla sub committee update
No update
- PyCon AU sub committee update
Some confusion with MCEC. The invoiced amount was too low. This has been corrected but the invoices are not going to the PyConAu organisers but to Joel instead.
- Flounder sub committee update
Monthly meetings are still happening. Nothing of particular to note, but a grant report for the PinePhone work has been submitted.
- LUV sub committee update
Online meetings have declining attendance, but the in person meetings are still well attended. Possibly two online and one in person meetings per month are too many.
The plan is to hold elections in August or September. Meetings will likely be rationalised after the election.
- WordPress sub committee
Ticket sales have opened and 30 tickets have been sold, including 4 sponsor tickets, even without a program being announced.
34 speaker applications have been received. Speaker applications close on 2 July. Quite a few international applications.
Money is starting to arrive from sponsors (about 28000 plus 15000 from WordCamp global) 5 sponsors soi far with another two or three possibilities to talk to. One sponsor is interested in providing travel assistance. The sponsor will handle the financial aspect with the Wordcamp committee assisting with selecting candidates.
The AV company and Saturday evening social venue have sent in invoices to lock in dates.
- Everything Open 2025
The pandas at Adelaide zoo will probably be replaced with new ones which means that the Penguin Dinner venue will probably not be available.
Two volunteers Thomas Sprinkmeier and Charelle Collette (Speaker Coordinator).
Joel and Sae Ra will organise a planning meeting for next Wednesday.
- purplecon
No update
4. Items for noting
5. Other business
- Admin access to LA mailing lists – Sae Ra will provide passwords to Neill
- Everything Open Session selection Committee
6. In camera
- No items were discussed in camera
7. Action items
- Sae Ra and Russell to review the DrupalCon Asia licence agreement
- Jonathan to respond to Felicity Brand
7.1 Completed Items
7.2 Carried Forward
Meeting closed at 21:10
Next meeting is scheduled for 2024-07-03 – 7:30pm AEST / 7:00pm ACST
