1. Meeting overview and key information
Present
- Joel Addison (President)
- Wil Brown (Vice-President)
- Clinton Roy (Secretary)
- Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
- Jonathan Woithe (Council)
- Neil Cox (Council)
- Lilac Kapul (Council)
Apologies
None
Meeting opened at 19:35: AEDT by Joel and quorum was achieved.
Minutes taken by Clinton.
2. Log of correspondence
None.
3. Items for discussion
- Dave Sparks speaking on behalf of the Drupal group. Thanks the council for the budget review. Have signed the contract for the venue. Sent first invoice off to Wil and Russell. Wants to double check the procedure to get them paid via mail. Announced the conference dates on mail and social. Sent out sponsors requests, got the first two sponsors signed up. Call for Papers is out, got some submissions from that; got member of the committee hunting down keynote speakers. Looking at opening up ticket sales next week. Joel will talk to the insurance company to make sure they’re covered. Russell complements Dave on the budget. Question on AV quote, seems to only be for hire of the equipment, not for labour of the equipment. Dave and Wil point out that that hire does actually include labour. Jonathan points out there are two av quotes, one is for PA systems in the room, one is for recording. Seems to be some confusion about whether or not talks are being recorded, Dave will get back to us on that. Joel mentions the need to work out the account signatories. Lilac asks about the low number of estimated student tickets, Dave responds that that’s from historical data. Lilac asks about coffee level of sponsorship, and the networking sponsorship; and how those sponsorship levels compare to the costs; the coffee costs provide coffee throughout the event, the networking sponsorship just covers the networking event. Mentions the idea that sponsors can have their own events. Lilac questions the lower room hire, based on food costs; this is fairly standard across venues.
- Steve speaking on behalf of the admin team. Not a lot to report. Mail migration has not happened. Steve is fairly sure he’s on top of everything, is looking forward to the help of the linux australia community in finding any mistakes he’s made. A new subcommittee person for TasLug. A bunch of invoices for domains and the like to be sent to Russell. A particular website needed some special handling, and that’s handled now. Needs to get back to PyConAu about DNS requests. Lilac asks Auda sent out member survey. Steve responds that Sarah (ex Pres) is on the committee, and is furthering goals. On dot au domains, we currently have done the right things to claim the domains, now need to wait for the timeline. LA is the only group to make a claim so far, we need anyone who has a entitlement claim to withdraw. Steve talks about opensource.org.au, entitlement claim from a few individuals. Steve thinks we should reach out to some of the entitlement claims, at least for some of the organisations, at a future point in time.
- Patrick Jackson, Nathan Morrow, speaking on behalf of Joomla. Had a number of people pull out of the committee at the start of the year. Had to restart the documentation for the constitution and code of conduct. Will have an MoU document ready for the LA council to look at in the next fortnight. Had their monthly virtual meetings continue, some physical meetings in Brisbane, have to look for new venues in Melbourne, and find a new coordinator in Sydney. Nathan says the virtual groups work well, as they can bring all people across australia together as one group. Probably a core group of ten or so, plus another fifteen irregulars. Had a talk on Gitlab at the last virtual meeting. Hoping to grab a speaker or two from europe do the time zone shuffle to speak at an australian virtual meetup. Lilac asks if there’s been consultation around the constitution and CoC, Patrick replies that this is their first real attempt at formalising the group, so they’re just cribbing off LA’s documents. Lilac asks what topics the group is looking for from speakers, it’s more about planning ahead more than a few days before, from Patrick. Lilac asks how much cross over there is with the Drupal groups; there is some: the problems are the same, if the specific software solutions are the same. Lilac asks about future conference plans; Patrick responds that they’re not looking right now, but would probably reach out to drupal south/wordpress groups to share the planning a bit. Wil offers to help to find speakers from the wordpress community. Nathan notes that there are beginning to be more shared plugins between the two platforms. Joel asks about a Melbourne conference; they haven’t even selected a year yet, probably late in the year though, October/November.
- Russell Coker speaking on behalf of flounder. Nothing exciting to report, continuing on the same track which is OK but not great. Main thing he wants to fix is the small number of members, only about a dozen. Has called for volunteers to help out, has had a few nibbles. Joel offers to use LA social accounts to advertise events. Lilac asks demographics about members and future topics. Russell has been looking at the security architecture around linux, version updates for packages, patching tools; none of which is particularly exciting, but grouped together could be a useful talk. Russell says one of the main points is to provide interaction between the speaker and the audience. Pretty much older, male group. Lilac offers to help with attendees and speakers. Russell used to run sprints, has tried in flounder.
4. Items for noting
- Paper.li subscription is coming up for renewal on Aug 7. Plan is $99 per year. This is what generates tweets for us on a regular basis, relatively small cost for something that gives us some content automatically. Council members to review what the service gives us and discuss further on list.
5. Other business
- OSGeo Oceania and the Pacific Geospatial and RS Council have contacted us (via Jonathan) asking if we would like to sponsor the Pacific Geospatial Conference in Suva, Fiji in the week of 28 Nov 2022. Prospectus is at https://osgeo-oceania.org/pgc2022-sponsorship/ .Jonathan speaks on it. Not quite sure why he’s been given it (suspect it’s due to past contact). LA was asked to sponsor the same conference in 2021 and this was declined: council members felt that the connection between OSGeo and the LA community wasn’t strong, even though OSGeo are doing a lot of good work for open technology. The 2022 conference has a broader focus, however. Council members to review the information given for the 2022 conference, form opinions and the decision will be made at the next council meeting. Questions can be sent to the mailing list.
