From president at linux.org.au Thu Oct 11 18:32:06 2018 From: president at linux.org.au (Linux Australia President) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2018 18:32:06 +1100 Subject: [Announce] Linux Australia October Update Message-ID: <6b43a49a-a721-c978-3022-7181c3d74e0e@linux.org.au> Hi everyone, It's been another jam-packed few weeks on the Linux Australia front, and we're delighted to provide you with an update on all our activities. Upcoming events WordCamp Brisbane, October 27th-28th, QUT Gardens Point https://2018.brisbane.wordcamp.org/ Preparations are in full swing for WordCamp Brisbane later this month - follow along at #wcbne. Massive congrats to Dion Hulse and the team for what's shaping up to be another excellent event. DrupalSouth, December 3rd-5th, Hotel Realm, Canberra https://drupalsouth.org/ The DrupalSouth website is now live, and looking splendid! Follow along @DrupalSouth. Big ups to Chris Skene, Owen Lansbury and the team for all their efforts. linux.conf.au 2019, January 21-25th 2019, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand https://linux.conf.au Registrations are now open, and Miniconfs are live! Follow along @linuxconfau and #lca2019. Hugops to Steven Sykes and Lisa Sands and the team as it hits the final stretch. Recently held events PyCon AU 2018 Sydney PyCon AU 2018 Sydney was a huge success, and our biggest PyCon AU to date. All credit to Katie McLaughlin, Katie Bell, Lilly Ryan, Russell Keith-Magee and Jack Skinner for a well-executed event. Dates and venue are already locked in for PyCon AU 2019, in Sydney and you can stay up to date at https://2019.pycon-au.org/ https://www.itnews.com.au/news/geoscience-australia-hunts-for-water-thieves-from-space-511546 ^^ bit of a write up on one of the outstanding presentations HealthHack 2018 Brisbane HealthHack Brisbane in September saw researches, students and healthcare professionals come together to create opensource-licensed solutions for public health benefits. Congratulations to team 'Auslan party' who created a visual recognition machine learning application for recognising sign language. Amazing work Gareth Moores and team! https://rcc.uq.edu.au/article/2018/09/health-hack-winners-create-australia%E2%80%99s-first-data-set-recognising-auslan Call for bids, linux.conf.au 2021 The call for bids for linux.conf.au 2021 is in full swing and you can get more info at: http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/announce/2018-August/000286.html Meanwhile, preparations for linux.conf.au 2020 Antarctica are in full swing, although some plans are currently on ice while we wait for the NBN to be connected (too harsh??). Joking, the s3kr17 2020 team are doing an outstanding job in their early planning. Linux Australia website and membership database renewal The Council - and Admin Team - have been attending training on CiviCRM recently as our website and membership database renewal project starts to take shape. Big thanks to Justin Freeman at Agileware for delivering training on a Saturday so more of us could attend. Those who run events or have other content on the existing website can expect an email to proofread the draft content before it goes live. The Voting module that has been developed as part of this work for CiviCRM will be open sourced, and is likely to be of benefit to several nonprofit groups. Other Council updates We've recently clarified our obligations to PyCon Software Foundation with the PSF Board, and now have clarity on what these area. We'll be working through these with the PyCon AU 2019 in due course. We were part of a coalition of digital rights groups that collectively criticized the proposed Exposure Draft of the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Bill 2018 (the Assistance and Access Bill). In summary the draft legislation comes without appropriate safeguards, and taken as a whole, is a retrograde step for technology policy in Australia, while eroding long-established civil liberties while providing no evidence of additional security benefit. https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/consultations/Documents/new-america%27s-open-technology-institute.pdf Work has been initiated to review whether the existing $AUD 11 per attendee "LA tax" imposed on events auspiced by Linux Australia to yield recurring revenue is sufficient to cover costs associated with merchant fees, banking fees, accounting fees and insurances. This work is also assessing whether there are more equitable models available, such as a percentage of revenue, which factor in the different scale of events run under a Linux Australia auspice. At the auDA AGM on 27th September, Linux Australia voted by proxy via Mr Peter Tonoli (many thanks Peter) to adopt the constitutional changes proposed. While we still hold some concerns about the equity of the reforms - which essentially mean the abolition of the previous Member and Demand Classes, and a single Membership tier, with a "Nomination Committee" determining Board appointments, we feel that it is a step in the right direction for stronger governance of auDA, and the restoration of its reputation as our national domain name administrator. If anyone in the Linux Australia committee would like more information on on the call for nominations for the Nomination Committee, please let me know. The next tranche of discussions pertaining to auDA will be around the proposed implementation of direct registration in the .au namespace. Our Treasurer, Russell Stuart, has been very busy with end of financial year work - our financial year ended September 30th. My personal thanks to Russell for his tireless efforts to ensure our books are balanced, and that Subcommittees follow processes which reduce risk, make clear expectations and allow us to discharge our financial responsibilities as an incorporated association. Russell and I will be meeting face to face later in the month to draft a 2018-2019 budget, which will then be reviewed by Council and put to the membership for feedback and commentary. Council Elections 2019 Nominations and voting on Council elections will open in late November. If you've ever considered nominating to be on Linux Australia Council, or would like to again, now is the time to start considering your nomination. We have position descriptions available with more information on the expectations and commitment of each role at; https://github.com/linuxaustralia/position-descriptions Being a Linux Australia Council Member provides you with additional professional development, the ability to influence decisions and Australia's open source community, and provides exposure to governance, accounting and decision making practices. It's a challenging yet professionally rewarding experience - and we're always open to chatting with people who may be considering nomination. Next actions Our next actions will be focused on getting the new website and voting system live, so that we can hold Council elections in late November / early December. We also have a lot of accounting work to do to produce our end of year financial reports, and production of our Annual Report which will be tabled at our AGM in Christchurch in January. So, plenty to keep us all out of mischief!! As always, your comments and questions are warmly welcomed. Kind regards, Kathy, Cam, Sae Ra, Russell, Cherie, James and Hugh -- 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: