[Linux-aus] Minutes of Council Meeting Face to Face, 2nd-3rd March 2013

[Kathy Reid]

Hi everyone,
Please find below the minutes of the Council Face to Face meeting held 
last weekend,
Kind regards,
Kathy


  Minutes - Linux Australia Council Face to Face

2nd-3rd March 2013, Quest Docklands, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Meeting opened 0950hrs 2nd March

Present: Mr Joshua ‘El Presidenté’ Hesketh, Mr Hugh Blemings, Mr 
François Marier, Ms Kathy Reid, Mr Clinton Roy, Ms Bianca Gibson, Mr 
Josh Stewart
All Council members were present and quorum was achieved.

For clarity, Mr Joshua Hesketh is referred to as El Presidenté.
It was noted that this was against his will. El Presidenté’s wishes were 
overriden by majority of the Council.


    Action item summary

  * ACTION: Whitelist the members for the council email list so that we
    don’t have to spend time moderating the Council email list
  * ACTION: Kathy to get in contact with James Iseppi to figure out how
    we get the LCA signup sheets into MemberDB.
  * ACTION: We would like for subcommittees to have a spiel on their
    website for people UPDATE from Kathy: This was around the
    Subcommittees having something on their website to promote Linux
    Australia membership - for instance where say WordCamp runs, we want
    WordCamp to have a link for people to sign up for Linux Australia
    membership.
  * ACTION: Kathy to check the constitution and make a decision and
    approve foreign members if required.
    ACTION COMPLETE - The constitution does not prevent foreign citizens
    being members of LA.
  * ACTION: MemberDB needs to handle expired members. On the expiry
    email that goes out, make it VERY CLEAR that it won’t remove people
    from mailing lists, and tell people how to remove themselves.
  * ACTION: MemberDB needs functionality for emailing members
  * ACTION: We need someone to do announcing/posting to lists
  * ACTION: Kathy to chat with Peter Lieverdink and James Polley to
    identify way forward for making amendments to MemberDB to facilitate
    the expiry process
  * ACTION: El Presidenté to import information into mailman from
    MemberDB or vice versa. This action is postponed until members renew
    their membership to avoid annoying people.
  * ACTION: MemberDB changes required to automate things. Until we have
    that functionality in MemberDB, ensure all new members are added to
    the announce mailing list manually.
  * ACTION: Kathy to add the manual workaround to process documentation
  * ACTION: Get a CSV export from Zookeepr from web team James Iseppi to
    add to announce mailing list.
  * ACTION: Someone to add a statement to the mailing list subscription
    page around proper conduct on the mailing lists.
    http://lists.linux.org.au/listinfo
  * ACTION: All Council members to become more familiar with the
    constitution https://www.linux.org.au/constitution
  * ACTION: Clinton to finish AGM Minutes
  * ACTION: Once the AGM Minutes are finalised, someone to work with
    John Ferlito and Terry to submit to office of fair trading
  * ACTION: Someone to ensure Ghosts is being organised, currently with
    LCA2014 Perth team
  * ACTION: Set dates for the linux.conf.au 2015 bid process and execute
    the bid process by end of March. Now’s the time to start asking
    questions and start reviewing, shortlisting and selecting.
  * ACTION: El Presidenté to update the email that is sent to
    Subcommittees regarding reporting to advise that the information is
    made public on the Linux Australia webpage.
  * ACTION: Follow up expressions of interest with potential
    subcommittees to get them to formalise their actions and possibly
    submit formal subcommittee formation requests.
  * ACTION: Clinton to let LCA2014 know that it would be a good idea to
    have a ZooKeepr keeperer.
  * ACTION: El Presidenté to send credit card forms to Westpac
  * ACTION: Kathy to organise business cards for Council members
  * ACTION: Clinton to review previous grant request submissions to get
    a better feel for which requests were approved and which ones were
    denied to identify trends.
  * ACTION: Francois to reimburse Leon Brooks for opensource.org.au
  * ACTION: Steven Walsh to delegate this domain to linux.org.au
  * ACTION: Josh and Francois to communicate with the Sydney Joomla
    group and request a budget, and clarify that Linux Australia events
    keeps the profit from events that are run under Linux Australia’s
    auspices.
  * ACTION: Josh and Francois are to request a budget from Tim Plummer
    and the Sydney Joomla Day team
  * ACTION: El Presidenté to chase monitoring mailing list for Alistair
    Irvine
  * ACTION: Clinton to speak with Shaun Nyquist to gather more details
    about Shaun’s Vietnam travel grant request.
  * ACTION: Mail needs to be redirected to Kathy. Kathy to send John
    Ferlito her address.
  * ACTION: Kathy to talk to Peter to sort out MemberDB initial email so
    it points to the right website for members to change their password.
  * ACTION: Kathy to talk to Peter about Google Analytics
  * ACTION: Website refresh and hackfest. Will this be high value? Defer
    until we know what other action items are on our list.
  * ACTION: Kathy to upload the Stakeholder Mapping drawing
  * ACTION: The Media and Communications Subcommittee Charter needs to
    be reviewed by Council, then the interested parties should propose
    to Council to form the Media and Communications Subcommittee
  * ACTION: Set up mailing list for Media and Communications
    Subcommittee. Clinton to be the point of contact, Kathy to be on the
    mail list also
  * ACTION: Get photos of Council Members
  * ACTION: Photos of Council Members to go up on web page
    http://linux.org.au/council
  * ACTION: We need an FAQ for dealing with journalists and put it on
    the website
  * ACTION: We need to build a stakeholder picture of journalists to get
    a better picture of what they do, which area they work in. Would
    this be a good thing to outsource to a PR company?
  * ACTION: We need to understand what the community reads - there is a
    touchpoint here with the upcoming member survey. What do members of
    the open source community actually read. What do our prospective
    members read?
  * ACTION: Kathy to set up list of journalist and media contacts
  * ACTION: Clinton to create a list of LUGs/tech mailing lists



El Presidenté welcomed delegates and opened the meeting.


    1. Confirm accuracy of previous minutes of meeting 14 Feb 2013

Moved as correct by El Presidenté, seconded Bianca, passed unanimously


    2. Review of previous action items


      Moderation of requests to ctte at linux.org.au

ACTION: Whitelist the members so that we don’t have to spend time 
moderating the Council email list


      Document travel agency details

UPDATE: Documented on wiki, complete


    3. Items for discussion


      Round table with blue sky vision thinking for Linux Australia

The vision and activities the Council want to be working on this year 
include;

  * Becoming more than just Linux and being the organisation that
    represents open technology
  * Becoming more involved in lobbying the government on open technology
    issues
  * Supporting user groups and facilitating development and growth there
  * Extending the grants program and doing better outreach in this space
  * Enabling user groups and people to do cool things
  * Making Linux Australia more relevant to people who are not currently
    members - and extending our reach beyond our current community
  * Encouraging outreach to younger people and universities to get
    people interested in Linux Australia who might not otherwise want to
    be involved. This also involves supporting other organisations that
    are doing cool stuff, and including officially endorsing some
    efforts by other organisations.
  * Increasing our public profile and public voice - and be consulted
    more on open technology issues.
  * Fight against software patents and TPPA
  * Better representing member needs - including running a member survey
  * Better defining the member lifecycle and targeting action at
    different points in the lifecycle
  * Run excellent conferences, but make sure the conferences don’t
    conflict.
  * We want to do better communication with stakeholders and the
    stakeholder environment


The Council discussed the particular skills and attributes they bring to 
the table and the roles they would like to play within the team.


      SWOT Analysis

Council undertook a SWOT analysis of strengths, weaknesses, 
opportunities and threats to help guide and prioritise actions for the 
year.


      Memberships

Discussion was held around how new members are approved.
ACTION: Kathy to get in contact with James Iseppi to figure out how we 
get the LCA signup sheets into MemberDB.
ACTION: Subcommittees to have a spiel on their website for people
Discussion was held around whether people who are not Australian 
citizens can be members of Linux Australia?
ACTION: Kathy to check the constitution and make a decision and approve 
foreign members if required

Discussion was held around cleaning up MemberDB. Points raised included 
the lack of consistency between mailing lists and MemberDB, and 
downsides of expiring members such as a reduced membership base.

DECISION: It was decided that MemberDB would be cleaned up this year by 
running an expiry process.


      Membership tiers

Discussion was held around whether Linux Australia needs different 
membership tiers, possibly with paid memberships. There is no current 
financial imperative to do this. Council was also mindful that if people 
pay money to be a member of Linux Australia they will have higher 
service expectations. The key reason for paid memberships would be to 
allow people who want to make more of a contribution to be able to do 
so. General consensus that paid membership tiers are not required at 
this stage.

MOTIONmoved by El Presidenté that we;
1. Have a single free membership tier
2. That memberships are expired/renewed annually via an online mechanism 
before 1st October in accordance with Clause 4(e) of the Constitution
Seconded by François, carried unanimously

It was noted that we need to ensure that we make memberships ‘inactive’ 
rather than removing them entirely in case membership data is completely 
lost. Are there privacy principles that need to be upheld. This may need 
to be researched in more depth. It was noted that this will require some 
MemberDB changes.

ACTION: MemberDB needs to handle expired members. On the expiry email 
that goes out, make it VERY CLEAR that it won’t remove people from 
mailing lists, and tell people how to remove themselves.
ACTION: MemberDB needs functionality for emailing members
ACTION: We need someone to do announcing/posting to lists
ACTION: Kathy to chat with Peter Lieverdink and James Polley to identify 
way forward


      Mailing lists

It was agreed that there should be more correlation between MemberDB and 
the mailing list. Any new member gets subscribed to la-announce - they 
can unsubscribe and still be a member of LA. We need to ensure everyone 
is a member to start with and then can unsubscribe if they want to be. 
We discussed whether we should just have an la-members mailing list 
which is consistent with MemberDB, but this created more overhead.

It was agreed that we need a method to contact all members that is not 
mailman dependent, and that we need to audit the mailing list and ensure 
that every current member in MemberDB is on the announce mailing list, 
and ensure that all new members are subscribed to the announce mailing 
list, and that members may unsubscribe from mailing lists.

ACTION: El Presidenté to import information from mailman to MemberDB or 
vice versa
ACTION: MemberDB changes required to automate things. Until we have that 
functionality in MemberDB, ensure all new members are added to the 
announce mailing list annually
ACTION: Kathy to add the manual workaround to process documentation
ACTION: Get a CSV export from Zookeepr from web team James Iseppi to add 
to announce mailing list.

Council discussed mailing list policy, and whether we need a brief 
statement on the mailing list subscription page to state we have the 
ability to remove posts or ban members if content is inappropriate.
ACTION: Someone to add a statement to the mailing list subscription page 
around this.
http://lists.linux.org.au/listinfo

Council decided that we would wait until after membership expiry/renewal 
before auditing the membership of the email list. It was noted that 
privacy requirements are better for opt in than opt out - if people are 
interested they will opt in. People who aren’t interested won’t know 
about it.


      Constitution

Discussion was held on what value it adds to change it. A number of pros 
and cons were debated, and it was decided to leave it ‘as is’ at the 
moment.

ACTION: All Council members to become more familiar with the constitution
https://www.linux.org.au/constitution


      AGM Minutes

In progress.
ACTION: Clinton to finish AGM Minutes, work with John Ferlito and Terry 
to submit to office of fair trading


      linux.conf.au


        LCA2013


Debrief is being planned for late March, getting dates is difficult. 
Financial position is unknown at this time and will be confirmed during 
debrief. Final accounts are not settled as yet. Discussions regarding 
the venue - staff costs on top of the hall hire for ushering due to 
legal requirements. B&G accommodation costs need to be sorted.


        LCA2014


Ghosts will be held around the 27th April. Coming along nicely. Working 
with venue around dates. Clinton will be the liaison, and other Ghosts 
will be in attendance.


        LCA2015


Expressions of interest have been received already, even without the 
call for Expressions of Interest going out.

ACTION: Set dates for the linux.conf.au 2015 bid process and execute the 
bid process by end of March. Now’s the time to start asking questions 
and start reviewing, shortlisting and selecting.


      Subcommittees


        Admin team

Admin team report filed in November. Admin team don’t need to report too 
often. Hosting agreement under negotiation.


        linux.conf.au

Last report by 2013 filed in July, good to get an update from them at Ghosts


        Newcastle LUG

Filed a report in September. No activity to report.


        Mirror team

Michael Still is leaving the Mirror Team. Council noted his excellent 
contributions to date. Under control at the moment, team can do a call 
for participation if required. Next report end of May.


        PyconAu

Reporting set to bimonthly. Planning going well for 2013.


        Webteam

Last report March 2012, next report due March 2013.


        WordCampMelbourne

Reporting set to bimonthly.


        Retired subcommittees

Council reviewed a number of retired subcommittees. Discussion held 
around putting in previous subcommittees to Drupal, and whether to put 
old ones in so we have a historical record. Discussion around who is 
responsible for checking reports. Council is happy for events to run as 
Subcommittees.

Discussion around multiple bids for the same event. Process is generally 
if you want to run one, check in with the LA Council, so that we know 
about it and can determine objectively.
Another way to do this is to have an Events Subcommittee made up of 
Ghosts of previous events to provide advice to Council. Designed to 
produce successful conference - and say advise on who should run the 
next conference. Do we have a subcommittee that parents subcommittees - 
ie all of them. As long as it was understood that they are 
recommendations and that Council could override. Have we reached the 
point where we actually need this? Council decided this was not yet 
required.


        Subcommittee budgeting

Discussion around budgeting to break even on a per-person basis without 
sponsorship, and then as sponsors come on board add in extra schwag and 
benefits for the event. This should be a key principle of funding 
events. PyconAu has been very good in valuing exactly different 
sponsorship deals.


        Subcommittee process

Subcommittee policy is documented at 
https://www.linux.org.au/policies/sub-committee
Discussion around whether we have any issues with current Subcommittee 
process, and tracking activities of subcommittee. Discussion around the 
reports from Subcommittee and whether we’re still happy for them to go 
straight to the Linux Australia home page.

Feed of subcommittee reports is at;
http://linux.org.au/subcommittees/reports/feed

ACTION: El Presidenté to update the email that is sent to Subcommittees 
regarding reporting to advise that the information is made public on the 
Linux Australia webpage.


        Review of potential subcommittees

ACTION: Follow up expressions of interest with potential subcommittees 
to get them to formalise their actions and possibly submit formal 
subcommittee formation requests.

ACTION: Let LCA2014 know that it would be a good idea to have a ZooKeepr 
keeperer.


      Insurance

Insurance definitely covers subcommittees


      Budget, banks, finance and treasury

Council was informed of the expenses policy
http://linux.org.au/policies/expense

Expense claims should be logged with Treasurer, Francois.

Although LA is in a strong financial position, it’s going to be a tight 
year financially. No specific action is required currently to address 
this, we just need to be aware of this when deliberating financial 
decisions. We have sufficient reserves currently without curtailing 
grants or other expenditures.


        Credit cards


  * Francois needs one
  * Kathy needs one


ACTION: El presidenté to send the credit card forms to Westpac


      Sponsorships, donations and grants

General feeling to prefer grants over donations - so that there is a 
return on the investment. Discussion around outreach around getting more 
donation requests - something simple like just having business cards 
available so that you can provide contact details when say you’re at a 
conference.

ACTION: To organise business cards for Council members

Discussion held around whether we should we review previous grants? 
There is a grants page on the site at; 
http://linux.org.au/projects/grants. Council also discussed whether we 
should focus on more grants this year due to our strong financial position.

ACTION: Clinton to review previous travel and study submissions to get a 
better feel for which requests were approved and which ones were denied 
to identify trends.


      Documentation and processes

ACTION: Mail needs to be redirected to Kathy. Kathy to send John Ferlito 
her address.

Utbox - fax to email - provided free
Council noted their thanks to Utbox for provision of this service.

ACTION: Kathy to talk to Peter to sort out MemberDB initial email so it 
points to the right website for members to change their password.


      Outreach

DECISION: Regarding Eventifier - each event to make own decision, we 
will not provide as an umbrella service.

ACTION: Kathy to talk to Peter about Google Analytics
ACTION: Website refresh and hackfest. Will this be high value? Defer 
until we know what other action items are on our list.


      Evangelism

Discussion around what activities we want to do here. We shouldn’t aim 
to do a million things. We can publish on the mailing lists about what 
we do and cross-pollinate things.


      Stakeholder mapping

The Council mapped key stakeholders in and around the community in terms 
of importance and influence and prioritised according to the amount of 
effort that should be spent engaging the stakeholders. We prioritised 
the effort that should be spent engaging various stakeholders based on 
influence and importance.
ACTION: Kathy to upload the Stakeholder Mapping drawing to Council docs area


      Media and Communications Subcommittee

Discussion around the Media and Communications Subcommittee Charter and 
how this Subcommittee adds value to Council. They could assist in 
writing promotional material. We would need to ensure the integrity of 
communications sent out in our name. We discussed whether the 
Subcommittee could produce a newsletter each month and maintain a list 
of journalist and user group contacts. Council could then fill the gaps

ACTION: The Charter needs to be reviewed by Council, then the interested 
parties should propose to Council to form the Media and Communications 
Subcommittee

ACTION: Set up mailing list for Media and Communications Subcommittee. 
Clinton to be the point of contact, Kathy to be on the mail list also

Council welcomed Brianna Laugher as the contact for the Media and 
Communications Subcommittee. We discussed having a monthly newsletter. 
Expectations of the Media and Communications Subcommittee were 
discussed, noting the amount of work that could possibly be involved, 
and needing to constrain this.

The draft charter for the Media SubCommittee was reviewed.
http://wiki.linux.org.au/Roles_and_things

Council discussed the role of Media SubCommittee

  * Newsletter
  * Press releases
  * Maintaining a list of journalists
  * Maintaining a list of mailing lists
  * Maintaining a list of Calls for Papers
  * Sourcing feedback from the community
  * Assisting with Social Media - Twitter, Facebook.


Council discussed some of the the things that could be in the Newsletter

  * Calls for Papers
  * Upcoming events
  * Highlights of blogs and social media posts
  * LUG of the month
  * Podcast of the month
  * Links to the minutes
  * Links to videos of confs
  * Highlight community member / interview
  * NO CLIPART!


MOTION: Kathy moved that the Media and Communications Subcommittee be 
instantiated based on the current charter. Seconded by Bianca, passed 
unanimously.

ACTION: El Presidenté to give Brianna access to the Media Portal on the Wiki
ACTION: El Presidenté to set up reporting for the Media and 
Communications Subcommittee on Drupal
ACTION: Kathy to set up list of journalist and media contacts
ACTION: Clinton to create a list of LUGs/tech mailing lists


    4. Review of correspondence


      opensource.org.au (Leon Brooks)

ACTION: Francois to reimburse Leon Brooks
ACTION: Steven Walsh to delegate this domain to linux.org.au


      AV Co-ordinators report

Report was thorough. El Presidenté has thanked Paul for his report. No 
further action required on this matter.


      Subcommittee request for Sydney Joomla Group from Tim Plummer

Request was approved in principle, some further information is required 
to progress.
ACTION: Josh and Francois to communicate with the Sydney Joomla group 
and request a budget, and clarify that Linux Australia events keeps the 
profit from events that are run under Linux Australia’s auspices.
ACTION: Josh and Francois are to request a budget from Tim Plummer and team


      Request for monitoring mailing list from Alistair Irvine

Request for mailing list approved
ACTION: El Presidenté to chase monitoring mailing list for Alistair Irvine


      Request for Vietnam Open Source Training from Shaun Nyquist

Grants policy requires that members have two weeks to provide feedback.
DECISION: Council will defer decision until members have had an 
opportunity to provide feedback in line with Grants policy. Decision to 
be made at next teleconf.
ACTION: Clinton to speak with Shaun Nyquist to gather more details about 
the request


      Sponsorship request from BarCampMelbourne from Ben Dechrai

Request withdrawn, no further action required.


    5. Media training


Council welcomed Brad Howarth as the Media Trainer for the day. Brad 
provided his very accomplished career background in technology 
journalism. Brad is driven by wanting to help people become interesting 
storytellers, so helps people articulate technology stories and the 
passion behind them. He has a very strong media training background.

http://au.linkedin.com/in/bhowarth

Council received a presentation from Brad around how to deal with the 
Media, advice for working with journalists, and participated in mock 
interview training. Consensus this was good value.

ACTION: Get photos of Council Members
ACTION: Photos of Council Members to go up on web page 
http://linux.org.au/council
ACTION: We need an FAQ for dealing with journalists and put it on the 
website
ACTION: We need to build a stakeholder picture of journalists to get a 
better picture of what they do, which area they work in. Would this be a 
good thing to outsource to a PR company?
ACTION: We need to understand what the community reads - there is a 
touchpoint here with the upcoming member survey. What do members of the 
open source community actually read. What do our prospective members read?


    6. Deferred

  * Awards
  * Member survey
  * Member services


MEETING CLOSED 1730hrs 3rd March
NEXT MEETING via teleconference Thursday 15th March 1945hrs


    7. Matters discussed in camera

Five matters were discussed in camera, and cannot be made public at this 
time due to the need for privacy and confidentiality.