1. Meeting overview and key information
Present
- Joel Addison (President)
- Sae Ra Germaine (Vice-President)
- Neill Cox (Secretary)
- Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
- Andrew Pam (Council)
- Jennifer Cox (Council)
- Jonathan Woithe (Council)
Apologies
- None
Not Present
- None
Meeting opened at 19:34 AEST by Joel and quorum was achieved.
Minutes taken by Jonathan.
2. Log of correspondence
- AWS Billing Statement
- Sports Connection Australia Grant Update
- Write the Docs Grant Proposal
- Business Activity Statement Lodged
- DrupalCon Asia Treasury Tasks
- Request for grant partner – Lyndsey Jackson
- Admin Team Subcommittee Update
3. Items for discussion
- Drupal South Subcommittee
- A revised community day budget has been sent to Council. Have approached 2023 sponsors. 3 of the previous 7 are committed. Positive overall reaction. $11.5k of the $18k budget target is covered. 2 of the previous sponsors have given positive feedback, and 1 more is keen (will decide by Friday). Venue has been good to deal with. Want feedback about the budget. Same venue as GovCMS (held the day before).
- Russell: feels the sponsorship budget is still a little optimistic. However, the notional discrepancy is covered by the profit, and current sponsorship is strong. As a point of comparison, in 2023 the total sponsorship was $13k.
- Free tickets will be available for holders of .gov.au and .edu.au email addresses. Will be capping the number of free tickets to ensure it doesn’t run away. 60% free is the target.
- Most revenue is from sponsors who want to get in front of attendees. Minimum attendance for venue costings is 80.
- Jenny: Will the cap on free tickets be publicised? Yes, it will be mentioned up front.
- The budget will be discussed and voted on by the LA Council.
- Drupal South: crunching numbers for this. Have had a sponsor session, but they are keen for something to happen. Budget still to be financed but final venue decision is yet to be made. Social function will move off-venue to save costs. Are aware that the number of free tickets (volunteers, speakers, sponsors) needs to be kept in check. Anticipate fewer volunteer tickets needed due to revised structure.
- Elections for Drupal committee in September / October. Comms to start around the end of August. 2 week nomination period in September with voting in October. Results to be known by the start of November.
- Splash awards will be repeated. Various options are being discussed about how this will be structured.The desire is to use it to get Drupal out there as a product.
- An “open careers in Drupal” session is planned for the second day, aimed at high school students and uni graduates. Sponsors and vendors are keen for this.
- Event committee settled in the next couple of weeks. Will finalise plans and present details at next month’s meeting.
- DrupalCon Singapore Subcommittee
- Schedule is out. 40 sessions over 2 days. 190 submissions received.
- Have 110 attendees confirmed including 40 speakers and 20 sponsor tickets.
- 4 months out, 22% ticket revenue target, 27% sponsor revenue target.
- Sponsor sales are lower than forecasted. Similar to other DrupalCons.
- Have 3 potential sponsors who are waiting for partner changes.
- $60k sponsorship sales. Expect to get to $110-120k
- Scholarship funding from DA: $10k. Question: any experience running a scholarship program? Sae Ra: it’s in the wording (get an amount to spend on whatever they need). Need to do something to ensure they’ll actually come. Evaluation will be on a merits basis. LA to send through the EO diversity scholarship form as an example, and set up a session to talk through it. A discussion about possible future conferences will also be held in that session.
- Minimum for venue costings is 250 people.
- Tentative plans are being put together for the 2025 conference. Have reached out to Nara in Japan. They are keen – the mayor has sent a letter. Concern that the team is running away with it, but there’s concern about whether the finances will allow another conference in 2025. Ticket sales have been good but sponsors not so, which is a cause for concern. Council will discuss this further.
- Jenny: consider shifting to a two-yearly event?
- Whatever is done, communication to the community and the sponsors is important so money can be allocated in sponsorship budgets.
- DA agreement: Michael will follow up. A DocuSign link is expected at some point.
- Kiwi PyCon
- Attendee numbers are good but not great. 250 for Sat/Sun. Highest since COVID.
- Sponsorship is dire. Have only 1 extra bronze sponsor since last update.
- Due to sponsorship fall-off, project $36k loss.
- Budget spreadsheet is reasonably up to date.
- Sponsorship to date is just under $30k. Budget was $60k at the lower end. IRD is in the budget as an expense.
- IIRD have acknowledged that there was a fraudulent loan, but they still claim the money benefited the organisation. Discussions are still ongoing.
- Sponsorship shortfall is consistent with other conferences.
- Conference is 23-25 Aug. Expectation is that most people intending to go have already purchased tickets.
- Joomla
- No updates.
- PyCon AU
- Call for sessions has concluded, offers have been sent.
- Flounder
- No updates
- LUV
- Elections planned for September.
- No further updates.
- WordPress
- Not much change since the last update.
- 70 tickets (21% of target) have been sold, 1 mini sponsor.
- Session Submission was extended by 2 weeks. 75 submissions were received for 26-28 slots. Speaker selection process has started. Speaker announcements to start in around 2 weeks. An increase in ticket sales is expected once speaker announcements commence.
- No new sponsors, but a couple are interested in the gold level. Presently sponsorship sales are at 73% of target.
- Travel grant: had 5 people apply which was disappointing. One was local in Australia. 1 grant has been offered to a speaker. May do another round.
- Considering opening a room for unconf activities.
- Everything Open 2025
- Next venue payment is due. Need to get this done by 26 August. Joel to action.
- The alternative venue for the dinner is not large enough so it won’t be pursued.
- 3 people have expressed interest in helping, with a fourth tentative enquiry. Mike to follow up. A meeting with these people is to be arranged.
- Mike has just returned from travel and will be able to pick things up soon.
- Regular organiser meetings will be held Wednesday evenings in the off week from LA Council meetings.
- Purplecon
- No update
- Admin Team Subcommittee
- Lists are ready to cut over. Just need to make a time.
- EO VM migration off server with failing NVMe hasn’t happened yet. Need to plan this around papers.
- EO email shift to Fastmail can happen at any time. Steve will look into setting this up. The switch will result in downtime of around 30 minutes. It can be planned for late one night to minimise impact. Email volume is not high so the effect is not expected to be substantial.
- Operation of backups to be reconfirmed prior to VM migration.
- Acquisition of replacement HDDs is taking a while to avoid batching.
- DKIM issues are expected to be mostly solved once all lists are on Fastmail.
- An enquiry has been received about LA providing resources to set up a FOSS cloud provider so community members can spinning up mastodon instances and similar. Steve has asked for more detail about the hardware they expect to need. No response has been received yet; Steve will follow up.
- Drupal South Community Day
- MOTION: That Linux Australia accepts the budget for the Drupal South Community Day 2024
Moved by: Joel
Seconded: Sae Ra
Result: 7 for, 0 against: motion passed
- Write The Docs Grant Application
- Feedback received to Council expressing concern about overlap with other LA conferences.
- MOTION: That Linux Australia accepts the grant application from “Write the Docs Australia” for a “First Draft” sponsorship of their 2024 conference worth $1500.
Moved by: Joel
Seconded: Neill
Result: 7 for, 0 against: motion passed
- auDA Administrative Changes Consultation – closes 19 August
- Joel will scan for any changes which affect .org.au.
- Due to time constraints it may be difficult for anyone on the Council to write a formal response by the due date.
- Lyndsey Jackson – grant proposal
- Sent to LA Council this evening.
- Lyndsey is looking at a Federal Government grant which requires a Not For Profit (NFP) body attached to the application. The application is due tomorrow. The need for a NFP was not realised until today.
- Andrew notes a potential conflict of interest.
- Under the terms of the grant, the lead organisation would have to be Linux Australia. LA would therefore take responsibility for accepting the money and signing the agreement with the government.
- If the grant were to be awarded, the group would most likely become a subcommittee of LA so administration of the grant can follow established processes. This detail can be finalised in the event that the grant is awarded.
- The grant will provide up to 80% of the project’s expenditure. Question: where will the other 20% of funding come from (which can be in kind). Lyndsay has already obtained this as “in kind” contributions (approximately $42k).
- Reservations were expressed about how rushed the decision needs to be.
- Lyndsey joined the meeting to facilitate the discussion.
- Question: would Lyndsey be open to the group becoming a subcommittee of LA if the grant were to be awarded? Yes.
- Question: does LA have any financial obligations under the grant? Lyndsey is confident that she has the financial side covered. This is backed up with the budget spreadsheet which has been prepared in support of the application.
- Question:the program is run primarily by young people who would receive some monetary compensation for their time as contractors. Will these payments incur associated costs such as workers compensation levies and insurance costs? The young people will need ABNs because they’ll be treated as contractors under the terms of the grant. The other details are not clear at this stage, but any such expenses are expected to be paid by the project rather than LA.
- MOTION: That Linux Australia enters into an agreement with Lyndsey Jackson and We Collaborate to partner with them on the Federal Government Maker Projects – Community STEM Engagement grants 2024 application.
Moved by: Joel
Seconded by: Jonathan
Result: 6 for, 0 against, 1 abstain. Motion passed.
- Joel to liaise with Lyndsey to facilitate the grant submission.
4. Items for noting
- No items tabled.
5. Other business
- No items tabled.
6. In camera
- Four items were discussed in camera
7. Action items
- Joel: Setup meeting with Mike Richardson about outreach funding models. Share Everything Open application form.
- Joel, Sae Ra: scan auDA changes for anything which might affect .org.au domain holders.
- Update is to sunset old policies so they are replaced by the current licencing rules. The new rules apply to any domain that is registered or renewed today, so would naturally happen over time regardless. Nothing stands out of note from a brief read through.
- Joel: liaise with Lyndsey Jackson to submit the Federal Maker grant application by 15 Aug 2024 at 17:00 UT+1000.
- Grant was filled out and submitted by the deadline.
7.1 Completed Items
7.2 Carried Forward
Meeting closed at 21:28
Next meeting is scheduled for 2024-08-28 at 19:30 EST (UT+1000)
