Hi everyone,
Firstly on behalf of the Council we hope that this message finds you happy, healthy and enjoying the holidays – but perhaps not so much the heat that is visiting upon much of the country – stay safe and cool.
This is our last communication for 2018, and there’s quite a lot to get through, so without further ado, our December update!
Declaration of election, Council positions available and call for Agenda items for AGM
It may be dry and boring for most people, but as an Incorporated Association, there are a few bits and pieces that legally we need to do to be compliant – and to govern effectively. Chief among these are the election of a new Council, as Council terms are 12 months, and expire in January. You can read more about nominating from Council on our new website;
https://linux.org.au/nominate-for-council/
Several Council members, myself included, are not standing for re-election, for various reasons. At the time of writing, we have zero (0) nominations for President or Vice President, and only two nominations for three OCM positions. Without these positions nominated and filled, Linux Australia Council as a team, and Linux Australia as an organisation, is less likely to be as effective as it has been in recent years. If there’s something you would like Linux Australia to be working on, now’s your chance to put up your hand and make it happen! Nominations close 30th December, make sure you nominate soon.
The election this year is being run through our new website. Specifically, it’s running a custom-written Voting module for CiviCRM – a previous email had the link to the open source code if anyone wants to inspect it.
We’ve done our best to bring over accounts from MemberDB and to merge duplicates, but if you can’t log in to the new website Member Area to nominate or vote, then let me know, or use the Contact Form on the website. We’ve still got quite a few inquiries to respond to, so thanks in advance for your patience.
Our wonderful Secretary Sae Ra has recently sent out information about our upcoming AGM, including a call for agenda items. Please let her know if there are any items you wish to be added to the agenda.
This year’s AGM also contains a proposed constitutional change. Our excellent Treasurer Russell has previously outlined the reason for the proposed change, and the method to suggest amendments. The election for this will be set up shortly in the Member Area of the new website shortly.
https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies/pull/38
New website and membership system
Thanks to everyone who’s already jumped in and had a look around, and for the feedback we’ve already received. We’ll be tweaking the website to respond to feedback over the next few weeks, and will gradually be adding more content, such as the Council minutes. Again, if you have any issues, let me know, or use the Contact Forum on the website to let us know.
If you have images available under a CC license that you would like to be featured on the site, let me know – we picked a few great ones – but we know there’s lot of great images out there of Linux Australia events, so let us know.
Equally, if we’ve used a CC image of yours, and you’re not comfortable with this, we’ll take it down.
linux.conf.au
There is still time to register! It will be awesome! Get on it!
Linux Australia sponsors Open Hardware Miniconf at linux.conf.au
The Open Hardware folks – Andy Gelme, Jon Oxer, and many others working behind the scenes, have something Very Special planned this year to celebrate 10 years of Open Hardware Miniconf. In order to both encourage diversity of attendance at OHMC, and to keep the price point around $AUD 100, Linux Australia has sponsored the OHMC up to $AUD 4k.
Call for bids for LCA2021 extended to end of December
We’ve extended the Call for bids for LCA2021 to, whelp, Sunday night! So if you’re thinking of making a bid, get in super super quick.
Again, very best wishes for the holidays,
Kind regards,
Kathy
