1. Meeting overview and key information
Present
- Joel Addison (President)
- Wil Brown (Vice-President)
- Neill Cox (Secretary)
- Sae Ra Germaine (Council)
- Marcus Herstik (Council)
- Russell Stuart (Treasurer)
- Jonathan Woithe (Council)
Meeting opened at 19:34 AEDT by Joel Addison and quorum was achieved.
Minutes taken by Neill Cox
2. Log of correspondence
- Email from OSI re: The vital role of Open Source maintainers facing the Cyber Resilience Act
- Email from OSI re: Updating contacts for OSI’s Affiliate Program
- Email from Kathy Reid re: FYI Response from Esther Payne on Mastodon in response to Bid Information Session – re safe conferences – Sae Ra has responded to Kathy, no further action required.
- March Activity Statement has been lodged
- FOSS4G SoTM Oceania 2023 Sponsorship Opportunity – council to discuss at next meeting.
- Email from Business Events Perth – EOI for running Everything Open in Perth. Council will respond.
- Email from Luke Carbis – insurance help for Sunshine Coast WordPress meetup group – Venue requires Public Liability Insurance with coverage of $20m AUD. The WordPress Community PBC only covers $2m (USD). As they are a sub committee they can use LA’s insurance
3. Items for discussion
- Consultation period for Russel Coker’s grant application for the purchase of two PinePhones to support the development of a FOSS phone (“FOSS on Mobile Phones”) has ended. See http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/grants/2023-April/000143.html .
- Motion to approve the grant request as outlined on the list with the requirement that the recipients submit a talk proposal on their achievements to the next Everything Open conference.
- Moved by: Sae Ra Seconded: Neill. Passed unanimously
4. Items for noting
5. Other business
- Drupal sub committee update
- Drupal South conference was last week, Wednesday and Thursday plus sprint on Friday. Despite earlier nervousness tickets sales improved at the last moment, hitting 168 which was around the mind point of the expected range. Tickets sales approximately 19k, having two conferences in the same financial year was a bit tough. Expecting a small profit once numbers are finalised which will be towards the end of the month.
- Catering, A/V and professional identity were a little more expensive than expected, but the conference ran smoothly with no issues.
- Positive feedback from attendees. Could possibly have seated more people for roughly the same cost. But the venue worked well for allowing face to face contacts. Sponsors were happy with their space. Keynotes went well, both from Kiwi speakers.
- Talks were recorded and will be posted to YouTube.
- A new event this year was the Splash Awards recognising four different categories. High production values (and a lot of volunteer work) for the award ceremony, which was well received by the community and appreciated by the winners. Followed immediately by a networking event.
- Planning is underway for Sydney which is expected to be a larger event. Also planning a bit of a changeout for the organising committee. Expectation is around 250, possibly 300 or even 350, but need to be careful about over engineering the conference and hence overspending. Sponsors are coming forward with some ideas for adding to the format of the conference, more interactive demos/workshops of sponsor products rather than just static advertising.
- There will be some sort of event run in parallel to the GovCMS event in Canberra, but with a distinct identity separate from GovCMS.
- Admin team update
- Meeting this Friday with FastMail to gauge what they can and can’t do. Certificate renewals next week. Conferences to use letsencrypt. ANU will need the admin team to move servers, which will involve downtime for the mirror as it’s a single machine, but the others should be snapshot and failover with no downtime. There is nothing too critical on the mirror and no downtime notification is necessary.
- Joomla sub committee update
- Not much to report, meeting times have changed. 15-20 people are attending regularly with a fairly stable core and a small number of new people who tend to come and go. Updates to the constitution are still being worked on and will be sent to LA when finalised.
- Possible event in November, but it is more likely that there will not be one this year. There will probably be some global events that the Australian community will be involved in. This will be an opportunity to market an Australian conference.
- Suggested that the Joomla community consider applying for grant funding for community events.
- The global Joomla community is looking at using github holopins to encourage involvement.
- Joomla Australia uses meetup for organising events, but is looking at transitioning to other tools. Zoom / Office Hours using kumospace. Currently using a hybrid model with face to face meetings in Brisbane and other community members joining virtually.
- PyCon AU sub committee update
- Richard is unable to attend in person but has provided this update:
- The CFP is completed, with 204 proposals submitted (including specialist track proposals). That was above the 176 proposals that the team had hoped for, which would have resulted in a 50% acceptance rate on 88 sessions (4 tracks x 3 days). It’s also almost exactly in line with Melbourne 2017, so it’s tracking with the team’s expectations of reductions in numbers (the running theory is proposals trend will be matched with tickets trend).
- Key dates from here:
- CFP open: Tuesday, 11 April
- CFP close: Sunday, 14 May AoE
- Program Review Phase 1 (anonymous): 22 May–4 Jun
- Program Review Phase 2 (anonymous): 5 Jun–10 Jun
- Specialist Track program selection due: 10 Jun
- Main program selection: 11 Jun
- Talk acceptances sent out: June
- Schedule published: early July
- Flounder sub committee update
- No representative in attendance.
- LUV – in future we will invite LUV to provide reports
- Neill will contact Alexar to invite them to come to the next sub committee meeting
- WordPress sub committee
- Sydney meetup continues to grow 20 to 25 people each month. Wil culled the meetup subscription down from 5,000 to about 1,000 but has grown since to about 1,700. Meetup working well for the WordPress community. This is helped by WordPress promoting it when users log in to their site administration pages.
- Outside of Sydney, meetup planning is progressing well in Perth, Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Adelaide and possibly Hobart .
- Wil has put feelers out for a WordCamp in Sydney and has had quite a few responses (12), much more interest than there was for an online Australia wide one. Wil plans to run an information session with a goal of holding an event in November 2024. WordCamp has strict requirements for cheap venues which constrains the possible venues. It will be a new organising team with Wil supplying experience.
- Sae Ra suggested considering libraries for possible venues as well as universities.
