2025-12-03 Council Meeting Minutes

1. Meeting overview and key information

Present

• Joel Addison (President)
• Jennifer Cox (Vice-President)
• Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
• Neill Cox (Secretary)
• Jonathan Woithe (Council)
• Elena Williams (Council)

Apologies 

Not Present

• Lilly Hoi Sze Ho (Council)

Meeting opened at 20:05 AEDT by Joel and quorum was achieved

Minutes taken by Neill.

2. Log of correspondence

• Requesting transfer of funds to Kiwi PyCon ANZ AUD Account – Russell has responded
• Re: [LACTTE] Request for insurance cover for a Perth Linux User Group event – Joel has responded
• Re: [LACTTE] Linux Australia Inactive Member – correspondence re cancelling a membership. Neill has responded.
• Requesting transfer of funds to Kiwi PyCon ANZ AUD Account – Russell has responded
• treasurer@everythingopen.au – Arjen not receiving email.  Russell and Joel have responded.
• 2019-2021 PO BOX paperwork – Joel has responded to Julien
• Linux Australia’s 2024/2025 auditLinux Australia’s 2024/2025 audit – Russell has requested that the auditor start work on 2024/25 audit
• Probleme with Ubuntu Manager–kernel version 6.8.0-87-generic, ubuntu 24.04.3LTS – Jonathan has responded
• Important: Scam Messages Requesting Account Verification – notification from RedBubble
• Fwd: Linux Australia’s 2024/2025 audit – email from Russell asking various subcommittee treasurers to tidy up some loose ends in Xero.
• Authorisation for Kiwi PyCon Transaction Exceeding $5000 – 2025-11-26 – Russell has responded
• Fwd: Can you post the JC Guzman announcement to social media? [Internal EOCBR26 email]
• On-campus accommodation for core team [Internal EOCBR26 email]
• Several notifications from RedBubble about EO2026 merch sales.
• Access to PyCon AU 2025 stripe account – request from Jack Skinner for access to stripe to finalise PyConAU 25 books in Xero –  Russell has responded 
• Finalising PyCon AU 2025 accounts – Discussion between Jack Skinner and Russell about finalising the PyConAU 2025 financial position.
• Status of subcommittee reports for LA Annual Report – report from Jonathan on the status of subcommittee reports for the Annual Report. Still waiting on  Kiwi PyCon,  Admin, Flounder and LUV
• Catering selections – part 1 – Morning/afternoon tea [Internal EOCBR26 email]
• Catering selections – part 2 -Penguin dinner [Internal EOCBR26 email]
• LA third party maintenance – Wednesday 3rd Dec – notification from the admin team of planned maintenance that will affect LA’s servers’ internet connection.
• Tuesday 2-Dec’s Everything Open meeting agenda  [Internal EOCBR26 email]
• .au Licensing Rules Review for auDA – notification from Sae Ra that auDA are doing a licensing rules review.
• Amazon Web Services Billing Statement Available [Account: 103334912252] for $7.47
• Membership subscription page/invoice and a couple of questions – questions from Nathan Morrow for Russell about payment gateways for Joomla.org.au membership
• Tonight’s meeting update. [Internal EOCBR26 email]
• Apologies – Julia is unable to attend tonight’s subcommittee meeting
• PyCon AU 2026 update for 3 December 2025 – Update from Jack Skinner on PyConAU2026
• Amusing spam:
  • Invitation to join the Illuminati Order of Poseidon

3. Items for discussion

• Kiwi Pycon Subcommittee Update (20:05 AEDT)

• • 190 attendees over three days
  • Financials significantly better than expected
  • $2,000 – $4,000 loss after LA taxes
  • Community success. Two days of great talks
  • Took a lot out of the organisers who are going to take a break next year
  • Will be looking for new organisers
  • Joel thanked the organisers on behalf of the council, and acknowledged the good result – it may be a loss, but it is still a good result and the result of a lot of work.
  • KiwiPycon has a new budget spreadsheet for Russell to look at. It may be a better way of tracking profile and loss.
  • While the organisers are thinking of leaving a bit of a gap before the next conference they are already planning to communicate with possible future sponsors.

• Drupal Subcommittee Update (20:10 AEDT)

• DrupalCon Asia

• • Final budget not yet complete
  • 214 people
  • Post event survey overwhelmingly positive
  • Suspiciously few things went wrong
  • 50% of attendees from Japan
  • A local Drupal association has formed.
  • Currently wrapping up the final invoices.
  • Final update in February
  • Michael is resigning from the steering committee.
  • A new chair and two new members will be elected.
  • Next event in India in 2027, but need to get local sponsors to step up and commit. This hasn’t happened yet.
  • The Pune group runs a 250 person event for AUD4,000 so the economics are quite different.
  • No event in 2026.
  • The treasure hunt only had 36 people in 14 teams b ut it was a wonderful community event. Check the flickr stream!
  • Michael had a lot of fun putting the event together but will never do it again (a lot more work than expected)
  • These two events (Singapore and Japan) have had a major positive effect on the Drupal community in Asia.

• Joomla Subcommittee Update (20:15 AEDT)

• • Most of these details are in the email to Jonathan for the annual report
  • Have an event planned for next year in Melbourne.
  • A membership form has been set up. Will be made live this week before the meeting next Tuesday.
  • Still some work to do on the backend.
  • Work on the website is ongoing, probably won’t be launched until next year.
  • Question about qualifying as a NFP in Victoria. LA is qualified by the ATO nationally so there should be no problem in Victoria.

• Admin Team Update  (20:20 AEDT)

• • • Not a lot to report
    • Still poking at Russell Coker’s complaints. Russell would like zero spam. Steve is not sure that this is possible. Now down to 1 – 1.5%. Some tightening can still be done but at some point valid email will be rejected.
    • The annual report is nearly done.
    • Expense claims in progress
    • Budget is almost complete
    • Steve will respond to Russell at some point.
    • Some disruptive maintenance about to start. Steve will be monitoring and will report any problems.
• PyCon AU Subcommittee Update (20:25 AEDT)

• • 2025

• • • • Basically done.
      • Annual report sent in
      • Jack has tidied up the accounts.
      • The last thing to do is the PSF grant accountability report.
      • This is Peter’s last meeting
      • Joel thanked Peter on behalf of the council.

• • 2026

• • • Full team has been filled

• • • Ticket sales are continuing, no major sales effort has been made yet.

• • • KiwiPyCon has recommended that members attend Brisbane.

• • • Will there be an upcoming events page in the annual report? Answer – no. The annual report will focus on the past year.

• • • There will probably not be another subcommittee meeting before the election. The hope is that the new council will be up and running by early February.

• • • PyConAU 2026 would like to have a banner at EO2026.
      

• WordPress Subcommittee Update (20:30 AEDT)

• • No report

• Everything Open Subcommittee Update (20:35 AEDT)

• • The financial situation is similar to last time. Currently looking at a $10,000 profit.
  • Merch is online at RedBubble. T-shirt design is done.
  • One more keynote to announce. 
  • Signed sponsorship contracts are coming in. Most are now signed.
  • Working on getting volunteers and speakers to finish registering on the website so dietary requirements can be communicated to UC.
  • Moving to a weekly meeting cadence. Notionally three more this year, but the 23rd will probably be fairly casual.
  • Speaker and keynote gifts are being finalised.
  • Currently 107 registrations, including speakers, organisers and volunteers.
  • At this point EO is past the break even point.

• Flounder Subcommittee Update (20:35 AEDT)

• • No report

• LUV Subcommittee Update (20:35 AEDT)

• • No report

4. Items for noting

• Membership backlog:
  • Emails have now been sent to all pending/awaiting approval members who have applied since January 2025. There are another 105 applications dated from between November 2021 and December 2024. [Joel suggests checking for obvious community members and declining the rest. Neill will come up with a nice way of telling them to reapply if that are still interested
  • 28 new members have responded and been approved. I’m waiting on a reply from 77 others.
  • CiviCRM reports 1003 current members.
  • Daniel Pocock has applied for membership – council will not approve this application

5. Other business

• NFP papers have been submitted to the ATO
• Annual report submissions from subcommittees are nearly completed, the remaining ones should be submitted by Sunday.
• Subcommittee policies need to be clarified and then enforced – this is a job for the next council but we should begin preparations. We probably need a register of subcommittees and other affiliated organisations.
• AGM will be held during Everything Open – probably on the first evening of the conference which will be a Wednesday night. 
• The election should be called by  When do we need to call the election?

https://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/announce/2024-December/000373.html

Secretary to send reminder for membership on the 10th

Dates:

• 22/12/2025 – 3/1/2026 Nominations open
• 5/1/2026 – 13/1/2026 Voting open
• 14/1/2026 Last meeting of current council
• 21/1/2026 AGM (in person at EO2026)
• 28/1/2026 First meeting of the new council.

6. In camera

• Two items were discussed in camera

7. Action items

7.1 Completed Items

7.2 Carried Forward

Meeting closed at 21:53 AEDT (UT+11:00)

Next meeting is scheduled for 2025-12-17 at 20:00 AEDT (UT+11:00)