[Linux-aus] Council Update - March 2010

Thu Mar 24 00:02:46 EST 2011

Welcome to what will hopefully be a much more regular series of council
updates. These are now what used to be called President's Reports. The main
reason for the name change is so that anyone from the council can send one to
help spread the work load around.

If you have any general news or update on a project you are working on that
would be of general interest to the greater Linux Australia community then
please send a quick email to council at linux.org.au and we will endeavour to
include it in future updates.

# LCA Ghosts

The LCA Ghosts event was held on the last weekend of February in Ballarat.
Ghosts is designed for the next LCA team to be able to outline their plans to
members of previous LCA teams in order to receive feedback and ask questions.

We spent a productive two days of discussion and I'm already looking forward to
LCA in Ballarat next year. Ballarat is an exceptional Australian regional
center and I think the experience will have some strong parallels with Dunedin
which was an exceptional venue.

# LCA201

The formal request for bid proposals has just been sent out. We would again
like to encourage prospective bidders to make their intentions know so we can
give them support in terms of sample documents, budgets and advice. Even if you
are thinking of bidding for 2014 or 2015 it is well putting in a first go now.
It is very rare that a team is accepted on its initial bid. If you are thinking
about doing this then please email any questions to council at linux.org.au.
http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2011-March/018699.html

# Council Face to Face

The council met this past weekend (March 19–20) for its first Face to Face
meeting of the year. These meetings are designed to allow the council to meet
together and discuss plans for the coming year. This meeting we also set aside
some time to actually work on policies and procedures rather than just talking
about things! The meeting minutes will be sent in the next few days.

# Policy Work

As mentioned, a lot of time at the Face to Face was spent discussing various
policies that the council has been working on.  We will be sending drafts to
the community for review over the next few weeks. Rather than send them all in
one go and have 10 discussions all at once we will be sending them out one by
one. Once we haven't had any discussion on the most recent policy for a couple
of days we'll send the next one through. The first policy in relation to
sub-committees has already been sent and we'll send the rest according to the
following schedule.

  * Sub-Committees
  * Values
  * Donations, Grants, Financials
  * Diversity
  * Anti-harassment
  * Lists / planet

# Treasurer's report for 2010

Treasurer Joshua Hesketh posted the 2010 Treasurer's Report to the linux-aus
list for comment (http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2011-March/018696.html).
A motion to approve this report and an auditor's report (currently in
preparation) will be moved at a Special General Meeting when the audit is
complete. The auditors report is a new requirement for associations with more
than $250k of revenue.

# ADA Copyright Forum

On March 4, Michael Carden represented LA at the Australian Digital Alliance's
copyright forum at the National Library in Canberra. The ADA
(http://digital.org.au) is an organisation made up of cultural institutions,
universities and individuals from all over Australia, united by a common desire
to reform government policies around copyright and intellectual property
licensing. It may be that LA's values are sufficiently aligned with ADA for LA
to become an ADA member.

# Sub-committee policy available for review

Linux Australia is starting to audit subcommittees and teams to have an
up-to-date and specific list of who is involved in what.
http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2011-March/018702.html

We are currently looking for feedback on our new policy
(http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/SubcommitteePolicy) and would also like members
of teams to begin to fill out this form
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Ctte/ListOfTeamsAndSubCommittees

# Donations and grants

Linux Australia will be making a $5000 donation to the Ada Initiative as
program development funding. http://adainitiative.org/

# Community news

* Google Summer of Code (a misnomer for this hemisphere, but still open to
  students in Australia!) is gearing up to take applications for 2011. Mentoring
  organisations have been announced and students should be talking to them now.
  Student applications are open from March 28 to April 8.
  http://code.google.com/soc/

* The PyCon AU (Sydney, August) Call for Proposals is presently open:
  http://pycon-au.org/2011/conference/proposals/

* On March 25, the venerable Sydney Linux Users Group will vote on a motion to
  wind up their incorporated association and become a subcommittee of Linux
  Australia, for more information see their announcement of an Extraordinary
  General Meeting: http://lists.slug.org.au/archives/announce/2011/03/msg00000.html

* The Ada Initiative is running a census designed to “take the temperature” of
  women's participation in open communities. Their goals are to learn what
  projects women are working on, and how women are treated in each community. The
  census is open to anyone, not only women, and closes March 29.
  http://adainitiative.org/projects/census/

# Next edition

To submit news, including community news, to the April Council news, please email council at linux.org.au

Cheers,
Linux Australia Council

-- 
John
Blog                             http://www.inodes.org
LCA2012                          http://lcaunderthestars.org.au