1. Meeting overview and key information
Present
- Joel Addison (President)
- Jennifer Cox (Vice-President)
- Russell Stuart (Treasurer) [after 20:20]
- Neill Cox (Secretary)
- Elena Williams (Council)
- Jonathan Woithe (Council)
- Harrison Oates (Council)
Apologies
- None
Not Present
- None
Meeting opened at 19:37 AEDT by Joel and quorum was achieved.
Minutes taken by Jonathan
2. Log of correspondence
- Request for consideration for DrupalSouth Wellington 2026 student engagement – more discussion about DrupalSouth funds. We will need to arrange a separate meeting for this
- Re: Proof of account please – DrupalSouth need proof of account ownership for a sponsor. Russell has responded
- NZ GST payment – NZ GST payment due. The payment did not go through in time so there has been a late fee and interest added
- Request for formal event sponsorship for RSAA26 – Jonathan has notified RSAA26 that the council has approved their sponsorship
- Lodge Linux Australia Activity Statement January..March 2025 – our accountant has lodged the BAS
- Re: Everything Open 2026 YouTube videos? – query from Tim Hildred [Joel will respond]
- 90 Day Renewal Reminder 2026-08-07 – notice from Digital Pacific
- Payments for DrupalSouth cancelled – NZ vendors do not need to be paid until after the event. [DS will transfer funds back to LA so payment can be made via LA’s Wise account – in camera?]
- Fwd: Introduction- FY 2026 Audit of Linux Australia Inc – we are getting a new auditor
- [LACTTE] Request for insurance cover for a Perth Linux User Group event – request for insurance cover for an installfest from PLUG
- Listening, Learning, and Building Together at OSI – newsletter from OSI
- We’re Lowering Redbubble’s Payment Threshold 💸 – notification from RedBubble
- Can you loop us in with previous EO treasurer inbox? – request from Jack Skinner – Russell and Joel have responded
- A historical LA bank account to receive payments to – please 🙂 – request from Jack Skinner – Russell has responded
- Please add Owen to upcoming LA meeting – request from Julia Topliss to add Owen to the upcoming subcommittee meeting
- Re: Request for Payment Approval: PyCon AU – Sofitel Brisbane Central – from Nick Crouch – payment has been approved?
- PyCon AU update for 18 May 2026 – see below
- [LACTTE] Enquiry from Ctace Palasin via the Linux Australia Website Contact Form – enquiry about help getting started with Linux – Neill has responded
3. Items for discussion
- Drupal Subcommittee 7:35 pm
DrupalSouth Wellington conference has been run. Feedback survey is out, due this Friday. The feel of the conference was very positive. The spaces were more intimate than previous conferences, which added to the vibe. Initial feedback is that the program was strong and well received. Attendees were there right to the end. Sponsorship down around $10k compared to previous conference, but ticket sales were up about the same ($7k). Ticket price was dropped by around 20% for the NZ market due to a suppressed market.
The sponsor’s room seemed to work well. Traffic past the booths was consistent.
Redbubble quality was mixed according to attendees. This will be reviewed.
The professional event organiser takes considerable load off the volunteer event subcommittee.
Some invoices are still to be supplied. A profit will be seen but the amount won’t be known until all invoices are in.
This year’s conference was run with more hands-on involvement from NZ people compared to the last NZ conference. The steering committee had less influence.
There’s recognition that better documentation of DrupalSouth processes would be helpful.
- PyConAu 7:45 pm
Hi Council,
As always, slide attached and a copy in the shared drive for archiving (link).
Recently:
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- Program review is complete, proposal acceptances are almost all confirmed. We’re gearing up to finalise and send decline communications to all CFP applicants before publishing the schedule promptly
- Some extensive and thorough discussions were had in the past fortnight to ensure that talks about products and platforms used by our community are only accepted of a) by a user/customer/community member or b) by an employee if the organisation is sponsoring. We’ve increased the number of clearly marketed sponsored talks, but equally will be declining some that would historically have been ‘on the line’.
- We intend on publishing this draft blog post very soon to offer generalised feedback transparently and en-masse. We’re also offering declined speakers an opportunity to ask for feedback if they would like to improve on their talk submissions. We hope this is a time investment that pays off in next year’s CFP quality as well.
- Financial Assistance is now closed. We’ve allocated approx $4k of travel funding for speakers (a 60% reduction on initial budget). We have not yet communicated declines but its front of mind not to leave applicants hanging uneccessarily.
- Sponsorship:
- $38.5k remains contracted (no change) – primarily this has stagnated because my recent focus has been filling the early-in-funnel lead gen & initial proposals.
- $69.3k in ‘commited’ (an explicit ‘ok’ for the proposal, pending contracting and procurement). This is an increase in $39k since last update.
- $115k in discussion where we have a proposal with quantified value but are still waiting for budgets, or details, or iterations. This is +17k on last update.
- Total net increase of +$56k net-new deals (either verbally agreed or still negotiating) revenue since last update. This excludes several new leads after attending (and extensively working the room) at AWS Summit last week.
- We will likely run several staggered announcements in coming weeks that we’d like support from LA to amplify please and thanks:
- Announcing our schedule to the world. Potentially by end of week.
- Launching one day tickets & student tickets. Likely next week.
- Launching (quieter and more focused to teachers) our education pricing (same as enthusiast). Also likely next week.
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Still / remaining on our radar is:
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- Vendor negotiations to de-scope proposals and reduce costs where possible. Primarily in AV quotes.
- Resuming efforts to run a “Wear it Purple Day” fundraising T-shirt. Can was previously kicked down the road – so flagging for Russell’s eyes when I line up an email “soon”.
- If sponsorship recovers I would still like to prioritise our Regional Educators Grants first. I’m exploring a potential sponsorship approach to recognise a values-aligned sponsor to support this program.
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Sponsorship dealflow is recovering after a lot of hard work. I’m describing the budget as ‘recovering’ but its not over until at least the ink is dried.
Proposed agenda for Wednesday:
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- Clarify the situation w/ Ariba accounts and complexity for Google procurement (and how we can work better across LA sub-committees in future). I’ve noticed previous LA invoices have left ‘money on the table’ with PO budgets opened for other conferences.
- Highlight that we’ve currently onboarded to several corporate procurment portals (that will impact other sub-committees): Snowflake, Amazon/AWS, Meta, Google (Ariba).
- A few notes on successful sponsorship tactics (and some unsuccessful ones to share)
- Admin/awareness: payment approvals for our second venue deposit due next week (we’re able to fund from ticket sales! huzzah!)
- Questions from council
- (And if there’s time after questions I might mention our first confirmed keynote =D)
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Cheers,
Jack Skinner
Other points raised:
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- Difficulties with the Ariba platform need to be resolved. The current situation and confusion will continue to cause trouble when receiving sponsorship. Jack is working towards resolving the issues. There will be some tidying up required by LA. The end point is to have a single LA “buying department” and a single LA account that Ariba is registered to pay into.
- The first venue payment has been made, and it could be made out of revenue. This is a very positive sign.
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- Joomla Subcommittee 8:05 pm.
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- Budget will be finalised soon and sent through for approval.
- Budget has been updated with venue costs and we have increased ticket prices slightly to help cover the additional costs:
- Key achievements:
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- Call for speakers form set up on website last week, with one good submission received so far: https://joomla.org.au/joomladay-australia-2026/speak-at-joomladay-australia-2026
- Newsletter sent out last week promoting membership and JoomlaDay – resulted in 1 sponsorship enquiry, 2 new members and a handful of registrations of interest
- Regular posts on social media advertising JoomlaDay
- Sponsors prospectus in development.
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- Admin Team 7:55 pm
- Some email issues have been worked on and resolved. The combined effect of all these affected PyConAU mailouts.
- Domain name renewals are in process.
- All certificate authorities (CAs) are dropping the ability to use normal TLS certificates for anything other than web (https) services. For non-web TLS services a new type of certificate will be required. The changeover time is around two weeks prior to LA’s certificates needing renewal, so processes at the CAs will still be bedding down. Some breakages are therefore expected at the time of changeover.
- Mitigations for recent kernel vulnerabilities are in hand.
- Main web server upgrade is the next major job in the list.
- WordPress 8:10 pm
- No report
- Flounder 8:10 pm
- No report
- LUV 8:10 pm
- No report
4. Items for noting
- Joel has responded to a number of enquiries from subcommittees in the last few days. We are waiting for responses.
- DrupalSouth meeting scheduled for Monday 25 May 2026 at 19:00 AEST.
5. Other business
- None
6. In camera
- Two items were discussed in camera
7. Action items
7.1 Completed Items
7.2 Carried Forward
Meeting closed at 20:47
Next meeting is scheduled for 2026-06-03
