1. Meeting overview and key information
Present
- Jennifer Cox (Vice-President)
- Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
- Neill Cox (Secretary)
- Elena Williams (Council)
- Jonathan Woithe (Council)
- Lilly Hoi Sze Ho (Council)
Apologies
- Joel Addison (President)
Meeting opened at 08:02 AEDT by Jenny and quorum was achieved.
Minutes taken by Neill
2. Log of correspondence
- 2025-02-15 Re: [LACTTE] Is it time to shut down the HH LA Subcommittee? – Jonathan has responded
- 2025-02-01 – NSW Fair Trading Annual Return has been submitted – by Russell
- 2025-02-01 – Fwd: [APNIC #5872438][LINUXAUS-AU] – APNIC Membership Renewal – Invoice Attached – Russell has responded
- 2025-02-03 – Tax Invoice #1797722 – Please Do Not Reply – Invoice for renewal of opensource.org.au domain
- 2025-02-03 – Domain renewal prices – Question to the admin team about reconciling domain renewal prices and invoices.
- 2025-02-03 – Westpac Authorisation Changes – Discussion between Russell and Joel about updating Westpac users
- 2025-02-02 – Amazon Web Services Billing Statement Available [Account: 103334912252]
- 2025-02-03 – Fwd: confirm 5eb0dcf9acbc751ef8de9b6d6ed48d50f2f79c83 – Wil Brown notifying council that the unsubscribe function for some LA lists use http instead of https – Joel and Steve have responded
- 2025-02-03 – Expenditure Request – Stickers – request from Sae Rae for funds to print stickers for the Melbourne DDD Conference – responses from Jenny and Jonathan
- 2025-02-04 – Linux Australia Induction – Arranging an induction for new council members
- 2025-02-06 – Get ready to vote for OSI’s board of directors in 2025 – notification about upcoming elections
- 2025-02-09 – Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply – renewal notification for opensource.org.au
- 2025-02-09 – Thank You for Your Payment – Please Do Not Reply – receipt for renewal of opensource.org.au
- 2025-02-12 – Job ads for linux tech – request to post a job ad – Neill has responded
- 2025-02-15 – Upcoming Domain Renewal Notice – Please Do Not Reply – Another renewal notification (?)
- 2025-02-15 – Upcoming changes to Bitly’s Terms of Service – Bitly is going to start inserting ads into their free service
- 2025-02-15 – MoU between WCS and LA for WordCamps – Wil Brown points out that we need to address distribution of profits in the MoU – Joel has responded. The matter does not seem to be resolved yet
- 2025-02-15 – That secret number – Miles Goodhew confirming his control of the eocbr2026@gmail.com account
- 2025-02-15 – Everything Open 2026 bid for Canberra – updates from Miles Goodhew about progress of the EO2026 bid and a request for last years budget
- 2025-02-17 (and other dates) – You’ve made a sale – …. – several notifications from Redbubble about sales
- 2025-02-17 – [LACTTE] ASIC Form 490 has been submitted – Russell has submitted the required notification to ASIC about the changes in council membership.
- 2025-02-17 – OSI Board nominations: last day – Notification that nominations for the OSI board are closing
- 2025-02-19 – Invitation to OSI Affiliates Town Hall – Notification from OSI
- 2025-02-19 – we received two calendar invites to an OSI Town Hall
- 2025-02-20 – Payment for your PO Box is due soon – Notification from Australia Post that we need to renew or PO Box before 2025-03-31
- 2025-02-21 – Participate in our small business survey – Invitation from the NSW Small Business Commissioner to participate in a survey
- 2025-02-23 – [LACTTE] Social media from DDDMelbourne yesterday for sharing – Kathy Reid informing us of social media posts about DDD – Joel has responded
- 2025-02-25 – Incorrect PO Box renewal fee – Australia Post notifies us that they made a mistake in their last email
- 2025-02-25 – Purchase Approval Request DrupalSouth Schwag Fwd: Invoice INV-54994 from PROMOTION PRODUCTS PTY LTD for DrupalSouth c/o Linux Australia Inc. – Request for payment of invoices for Drupal South – [I believe Russel has deal with these – confirm?]
- 2025-02-25 – Fwd: EO2026CBR Schedule – Miles Goodhew has sent us the proposed schedule for organising EO2026
- 2025-02-26 – Re: Re ID of Organisation with Westpac – Correspondence between Russell and Westpac about arranging ID for a NZ resident.
to 3. Items for discussion
- Drupal South Subcommittee (Dallas and Vladimir)
- Julia is unable to attend but has sent a report: Linux Australia reports
- Begins in just UNDER 2 WEEKS
- Budget is on track
- Current profit 5235 vs target of 15k. Definite improvement since January
- Currently 13 paid sponsors.4 Unpaid (being chased)
- Challenges: experiment with a new client seminar – invite only for key sponsors and contributors to talk about emerging trends. There hasn’t been much interest, so the committee is now coming up with a backup plan.
- Perhaps LA could help promote it on social media.
- Will make a call by the end of next week as to whether to continue
- Switching bank accounts makes life a little difficult – government departments in particular struggle with bank account changes.
- Getting a Westpac Australia account is difficult for a NZ resident
- Key achievements: Uptick on financial recovery compared to last year
- Would like to see more income coming from sponsorship in future
- LA Help: Increased promotional support – mailing list / mastodon / budgetary advice
- Drupal South may run in NZ next year. They have a list of venues
- Russell: Bank account – auditor says we have too many bank accounts. More bank accounts means increased work on treasure and auditorIf necessary we can move transactions from one account to another (for example for government departments payments – would be a problem if it was a lot of transactions but a few won’t be a problem)
- DrupalCon Singapore Subcommittee
- Singapore update:
- A huge success all came together in the end
- 253 attendees from 35 countries
- The contribution day (sprints) had to turn many people away – much higher participation rate.
- No negative feedback from post event survey
- The food was so good that someone crashed the event.
- Some late bills have come in, but the event still made a profit.
- The council recognises the effort put in by the organisers to turn around what was looking like a bad financial situation.
- Japan:
- Nara November 17-19
- 29% of all new Drupal developers are in Japan
- Large participation in Singapore from Japan (10% of total attendees – many self funded)
- Good support from Nara, both government and community.
- Large population (20 million) to draw from
- Looking to keep the price down for the conference – Nara is much cheaper than Tokyo would be.
- Have found a venue which seems well suited and relatively cheap with good accommodation options.
- There is a backup venue in Chiba (near Tokyo)
- Budget is for 200 to 300 people – confident that they can at least match the Singapore numbers.
- 30K likely 67k very likely 41k ready to sign – no refusals, but some no responses. Min target 167k
- Plan to run the conference budget in AUD, except for ticket sales. This will hopefully avoid some tax complications.
- No video recording unless they meet the medium budget.
- Drupal Association has committed to two more events with Linux Australia and will then re-evaluate.
- Without LA’s support the only other option would be to engage a private company to run the event.
- India is the next target location. Will be very different.
- Russell: Are Autommattic likely to return?
Answer: Apparently they are keen to return.
Russell: We seem to need to register if we make >100K ticket sales from Japanese attendees, but this needs to be clarified.
Answer: No way we will hit that number. May be problematic to actually turn away Japanese attendees, but perhaps we can find other ways.
Elena: Will visas be an issue?
Answer: Expectation is that it will be similar to SIngapore – attendees from India, Pakistan and Indonesia may need a letter from the event. Others should b fine - Would like to make an announcement on 29 March at DrupalCon Atlanta and open ticket sales at the same time.
- Singapore update:
- Kiwi PyCon / Python NZ (Chelsea and Danny)
- Budget has been submitted – Neill found it all a little confusing.
- Russell hasn’t been able to review the budget properly – will do so in the next few days.
- Chelsea says the budget is quite pessimistic. Has the possibility of reducing catering costs if necessary.
- Decision needed as soon as possible. Any delays may affect sponsorship. Two weeks is a problem. Council will try and address it sooner.
- Joomla (Nathan)
- Budget status (if applicable): Not currently planning an in person event, focussing on completing the sub-committee setup.
- Key achievements since last update:Notified last Joomla user group meeting on 11th of February that nominations for subcommittee positions were open.
A timeline for elections to be established in the next week with formal notification via email together with a closing date for nominations to current members of the Joomla AU mailing list. - Any concerns?
A little unsure what comes first, the chicken or the egg. We want to have elections but can’t take paid memberships without access to the bank account so wondering what the process is for that.In reality I’m not expecting a flood of nominations and the subcommittee will likely be a combination of myself, Stuart Robertson, possibly Patrick Jackson and Terry Pollard, the current main organisers.I believe Stuart and I are still set up for bank account access and while we don’t have great plans to spend the surplus money from the last event, it may help with some setup costs. - How can LA assist?See above.Russell has said we can give the Joomla subcommittee access to strip and a bank account to allow collecting membership fees. Russel will deposit the Joomla surplus from last year into the bank account.Can’t give Joomla access to strip for the full year at the moment.
- PyCon AU (Clinton and Peter)
- Two PyCons 2024 and 2025
- Benno reported on 2024 at the last meeting. The final financial result was a modest profit. PyconAU 2024 is now officially closed.
- 2025 – Early days, no approved budget yet.
- Seeking quotes from venues, assembling a core team. Will send through a budget in the next couple of weeks.
- Most like in September.
- Russell: Why not the same venue? Answer: They’re expensive so looking for alternatives.
- Neill to put Peter and Miles in touch with each other,
- Flounder
- LUV
- WordPress
- Everything Open 2025 (Mike O’Connor)
- Mike O’Connor – attended but we will catch up with him for a closing report later.
- Everything Open 2026 (Miles Goodhew)
- Early in the process
- Carlos is assisting with the venue and gets the main venue for free
- Three lecture theater style areas and three class rooms on the ground floor, plus 5 or so rooms on the 1st floor
- Budgeting on 250 to 300 people.
- 14 people on the core team at varying levels of commitment
- 21st to 23rd January 2026 – last weekend of school holidays
- A proposed schedule for organising the event has been sent to the council
- Venue is free, but will need to cater for lunch and morning and afternoon tea. Lunch is necessary because of a lack of nearby venues. Have to use the UC caterer for everything.
- 7 quotes for penguin dinner options from $33k to $50. Will probably pick something in the middle.
- One transport quote of $7000 for hotel transfers. Will seek some more.
- Requests:
Template budget for Carlos and Arjen – Russell will look for one to send. - Neill will arrange to put Miles in touch with Peter, Jack and Nick
- Admin Team
- Nothing to report. Currently in a holding pattern
- There was a change freeze for the election. There are other times (particularly when the larger conferences are active)
- Some planned upgrades coming up – need to apply patches and updates to the website.
- May have found a donor to provide brand new replacement HDD. Have been offered 12TB of storage.
- No changes to the budget.
- AUDA / Domain directors have charged us for the opensource.au holding registration.
- No progress on actually getting the opensource.au domain. The expectation is that we will need to maintain the defensice registration for the foreseeable future. The cost for that is around $20/year
- Planning to go ahead with a face to face meeting in Brisbane in late April or May.
- Julian (who is looking to rejoin the admin team), Steve, Joel and along with a potential new member will meet to discuss future plans.
- Russell: We are paying fastmail over $1,000/year which was not the arrangement we signed up for.
Steve: Sae Ra is chasing up why this happened. Not resolved yet. Steve will also chase this up.
4. Items for noting
- Fastmail – if we can’t resolve the cost then we may have to find an alternative provider.
- Approving subcommittee budgets is a matter of comparing the budgets supplied with last year’s results.
5. Other business
- DrupalCon Japan 2025Budget:
[NC]: I have some concerns about the DrupalCon license fee – 30% of profit? What exactly is the Drupal Association providing in return? Is it just the use of trademarks? They seem to be taking a large chunk of money for little work or risk. - DrupalCon Singapore
- KiwiPyConBudget:
[NC] Found the conservative case a bit confusing, but I gather it’s taking the highest expenses and lowest attendees?
- WordCamp BrisbaneBudget: wcbne25-proposedbudget
[NC]: Some concerns about Automattic – we at least need to resolve the MoU
6. In camera
- One item was discussed in camera
7. Action items
- Neill: Put Miles and Peter in touch with each other.
7.1 Completed Items
- Jonathan to respond to the Health Hack Committee
- Neill to confirm email invitations to subcommittees for the next meeting.
- Neill to draft a template for subcommittee responses – done by Joel
- Neill to respond to Katie’s question about conference P&Ls
- Neill to follow up with Russell re the $14K of office expenses at KiwiPyCon
7.2 Carried Forward
- All council members to review the DrupalCon Singapore/Japan, KiwiPyCon and WordCamp Brisbane proposals.
Meeting closed at 22:11 AEDT
Next meeting is scheduled for 2025-03-12 at 20:00 UT+1100 (AEDT)
