From president at linux.org.au Thu Apr 12 17:24:12 2018 From: president at linux.org.au (Linux Australia President) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2018 17:24:12 +1000 Subject: [Announce] April update from Linux Australia Message-ID: Hi everyone, Hope everyone had a great Easter break. How is it April already? We're back with another edition of what's-the-LA-Council-and-broader-community-been-up-to for your reading pleasure. linux.conf.au Ghosts meeting Last weekend, several previous Conference Directors of linux.conf.au and key core team members met with the Christchurch linux.conf.au 2019 team to do a formal handover and knowledge sharing session. On behalf of the Council, I'd like to extend a huge thank you to David Bell, Stephen Walsh, Steven Ellis, Cherie Ellis, James Polley, Joel Addison, Michael Davies, Michael 'LT' Ellery, Joshua Hesketh, Andrew Ruthven and of course the LCA2019 team, so ably led by Steven Sykes and Lisa Sands. 'Ghosts' is a vital part of helping deliver a safe, well-organised and world-class event. https://lca2019.linux.org.au/ Linux Australia Face to Face meeting This weekend, Linux Australia Council is converging in Melbourne for two days to do our regular face to face meeting. Face to face is a great way to help ensure an effective and efficient Council by building strong relationships, providing space for robust debate and formulating concrete action plans. The key topics we'll be discussing are * budget review (we're midway in our annual budget) - are our projections correct, and should we adjust any budget items? * policy review - especially in light of new Data Breach legislation * key projects - such as MemberDB and website renewal * relationships and stakeholders - which organisations should we building closer relationships with, how our existing relationships are faring and what actions we should be taking next. * Funding request from Drupal Association - we've been asking to contribute to Drupal Association's fundraising activities * Linux Australia event progress review - where we check on progress of LA events and consider post event reports * to determine what continuous improvement actions we need to take.? * Consideration of which functions, if any, we should move to paid outsourcing. Social media is high on this list - no one on Council or Media Team has time to do it justice at the moment. Linux Australia Grants program 2018 We're very close to opening this year's Grants Program. We're going to slightly alter the application process this year to allow the community to provide feedback without having to subscribe to the broader linux-aus mailing list. If you want a recap of the Grants we made in 2017, the best place to read up on them is our 2017 Annual Report - https://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux-aus Internet Freedom Hack We're delighted to be sponsoring Internet Freedom Hack, which happens on 20-21st April in Melbourne and Brisbane. Internet Freedom Hack is a community event that brings technologists with a passion for digital rights together for a weekend to build things that advance the cause of internet freedom. On Saturday, special guest presenters will deliver talks and facilitate conversations with renowned digital rights experts across Australia. Registration is now open at: https://internetfreedomhack.org/ Or follow the hashtag #DefendingTruthHack at https://twitter.com/hashtag/DefendingTruthHack?src=hash WordCamp Sydney WordPress fan? Who isn't? In Sydney? WordCamp Sydney 2018 is in early planning stages. Keep updated at; https://2018.sydney.wordcamp.org/ Pycon AU Pycon AU, led by Katie McLaughlin, will be opening #CfP soon. Get your Python talk proposals warmed up! http://2018.pycon-au.org/ auDA Last year, you'll recall that I called for the resignation of the then-Chair of auDA due to concerns about transparency of operations. We continue to watch with interest the changes at auDA, including anticipating the findings of the recent government review of Australia's .au domain management - https://www.communications.gov.au/have-your-say/review-australias-au-domain-management. Keep up to date with auDA news at; https://www.auda.org.au/news/ Branding update, Membership Platform and Website refresh You might recall that we launched our branding update at our AGM at LCA2018 in Sydney. We've gradually rolled our brand out to most of our digital channels - except the website - but if you find an old Linux Australia logo that needs a coat of paint, do let us know. I'd like to give a special mention here to Janet Hawtin for her previous work on the old Linux Australia logo. It served us well for over a decade. We have engaged AgileWare to provide detailed quotes for CiviCRM on WordPress, hosted on our infrastructure. I have also requested AgileWare to quote on a voting module to replace MemberDB, to facilitate elections. Updates as work on this front progresses. We're in the early stages of planning our Website refresh, and again if you'd like to have input - what works, what doesn't, what you'd like to see etc, we'd welcome your feedback. At this point, I'd like to give a big shout out to Peter Lieverdink and Joshua Hesketh, who have both given considerable time and energy to our web presence over the last decade. Thank you. That's all for now, but as always we warmly welcome your feedback, comments and questions. Kind regards , Kathy -- Kathy Reid President Linux Australia 0418 130 636 president at linux.org.au http://linux.org.au Linux Australia Inc GPO Box 4788 Sydney NSW 2001 Australia ABN 56 987 117 479 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ctudball.opensource at gmail.com Sat Apr 14 16:21:25 2018 From: ctudball.opensource at gmail.com (Cameron Tudball) Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2018 16:21:25 +1000 Subject: [Announce] 2018 Linux Australia Grants Program Message-ID: Linux Australia is once again delighted to announce the availability of $AUD 35,000 for open source, open data, open government, open education, open hardware and open culture projects, as part of the organisation?s commitment to free and open source systems and communities in the region. Last year the Linux Australia grants program funded open hardware workshops for kids, an open source genomics platform, events at local hackerspaces and much more. These are documented in our 2017 Annual Report . More information on the grants process, including information on how to apply for a grant, is available at: https://linux.org.au/projects/grants Note that this year grant submissions will be discussed on a separate mailing list, rather than the standard linux-aus mailing list. If you are interested in following along with the grant process or providing feedback, feel free to subscribe to the mailing list here: http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/grants Please share this announcement with colleagues, projects and community members who may find it of interest. Feel free to contact the Linux Australia council if you have any questions or would like to privately discuss anything around the grants process. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From president at linux.org.au Mon Apr 30 19:07:14 2018 From: president at linux.org.au (Linux Australia President) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2018 19:07:14 +1000 Subject: [Announce] Almost-May update from Linux Australia Council Message-ID: Hi everyone, As part of our ongoing commitment to strong communication, please find below an update on our current activities. Pycon AU #CfP now open Love Python? Please consider submitting a talk to the Pycon AU #CfP http://2018.pycon-au.org/speak/ Internet Freedom Hack We were delighted to sponsor Internet Freedom Hack over the weekend of 20-21 April. See all the action via the hashtag #DefendTruthHack: https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%23DefendingTruthHack&src=typd 2018 Linux Australia Grants Program now open https://linux.org.au/projects/grants Join the grants@ mailing list if you wish to review / have feedback on Grant Applications - https://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/grants Council Face to Face Council met for our Face to Face meeting in Melbourne over the weekend 13th-15th April. The Minutes will be available in due course, however, the highlights include; * We conducted an organisational SWOT analysis to know what to focus on - no surprises - it raised issues of volunteer capacity, sustainability, areas we need to address with policy, and platform renewal * We reviewed the organisational budget, and made the decision to run at a loss in 2017-2018 - primarily due to investment in new membership and website application platforms. We considered whether to curtail spending on the Grants Program to reduce the loss, but given our cash reserves felt that it was the right thing to do for the community to run at a deficit for just this year. We expect to have less expenditure in 2018-2019 and will draft a 2018-2019 budget towards August.? At this stage we project a loss in 2017-2018 of around $AUD 88k. This seems quite large; it is based on expected returns in current conference budgets and our expected expenditure on replacing the current website and MemberDB. * We reviewed our stakeholder relationships; as one of several possible partnerships we intend to become an organisational member of the Open Source Initiative in the next few weeks * We reviewed event progress on several in-flight events, and considered the relationship between events and Linux Australia, and decided to better document the services we provide to auspiced events to aid in understanding the benefits that Linux Australia provides * And decided that we need to do a 'stocktake' of our current non-event Subcommittees to ensure that we have the right structures to support the effective running of the organisation My sincere thanks to Cameron, Sae Ra, Russell, Hugh, James and Cherie for giving up a weekend to work on Linux Australia strategic planning. That's it for now, as always your feedback, comments and suggestions are warmly welcomed. Kind regards, Kathy -- Kathy Reid President Linux Australia 0418 130 636 president at linux.org.au http://linux.org.au Linux Australia Inc GPO Box 4788 Sydney NSW 2001 Australia ABN 56 987 117 479 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: