1. Meeting overview and key information
Present
- Joel Addison (President)
- Wil Brown (Vice-President)
- Neill Cox (Secretary)
- Sae Ra Germaine (Council)
- Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
- Jonathan Woithe (Council)
Apologies
- Marcus Herstik (Council)
Meeting opened at 19:37 AEST by Joel and quorum was achieved.
Minutes taken by Neill Cox
2. Log of correspondence
- PyConAU update: The team also sent out acceptances to folks chosen for the program. The draft conference programme has been published on the PyconAU website
- Elena Williams: Membership and Grant application – Jonathan has responded
- OSI: Now is the time to define Open Source AI
- Jay Boolkin: Linux Australia Grants Program Featured on Social Change Central
- OSI: OSI is launching their newest program – the Open Policy Alliance
- WordPress Meetup Group PL Insurance – Joel has sent the updated certificates to Luke
- Mike O’Connor: Bid 2024/2025 Everything Open – see items for discussion
- Drupal South: Batch authorisation request – Russell has actioned.
3. Items for discussion
- Everything Open bid from Mike O’Connor
Mike has a venue quote, which has been revised as per council’s advice, but may need further work. The quote includes venue A/V (projectors and microphones). The quote implies that no one other than venue staff will be able to work in the A/V space and no guarantees about recordings.
There is also a clause in the quote that seems to ban the use of wifi by attendees. May actually be meant to ban access points, but we will need to clarify the language. Most likely this has just been written by a non-technical person.
The catering component is still very expensive. It looks like the venue is relying on catering for revenue. Costs to the conference are partially dependent on how much delegates spend. Makes it hard to get a definite cost.
The drinks package is very expensive. It also makes assumptions about how many people will attend the dinner. An alternative would be for the conference to supply one or two bottles of wine per table and then people can buy their own. One concern of the council is that supplying too much alcohol may encourage bad behaviour. As it stands the drinks budget between the dinner and cocktail party are excessive. The current budget would mean losing money on dinner tickets.
The room costs at least do seem very reasonable.
It is slightly concerning that the bid team is still only Mike, although he does expect others to join.
Joel/Sae Ra will give Mike some assistance to negotiate with the venue over costs.
- Everything Open bid from Rob Thomas
We have a draft budget.
The venue costs are very low. Other costs are still a bit in flux and need to be nailed down. Travel to Gladstone may restrict the number of attendees and increase the costs of speaker travel.
4. Items for noting
- Council would like to make a decision on which bid will be accepted for Everything Open 2024 at the next meeting. The intention is to choose one of the two bids for 2024 and the other for 2025.
