[Linux-aus] Inflection Point - A Strategic Plan for Linux Australia

[Joshua Hesketh]

Hey all,

So there are a lot of different discussions going on in this list. It's
very encouraging to see so many caring about the future of the
organisation. There have been some really great and constructive points
made. I'd like to see a discussion on the content continue, rather than
getting stuck on the format*.

On the topic of membership I would like to highlight a few excerpts from
the councils minutes on the 02/03/2013[0]:


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.

MOTION moved 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.

...

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.



There were also a few sets of action items to see through the above
decisions. These action items were largely blocked on missing features
from memberdb (namely a method to contact all members and
auto-expiry/renewal). Unfortunately for numerous reasons (that I won't
get into now) these actions have not been completed.

I still stand by the decisions made back in 2013, however I believe the
new 2016 council should reconfirm them.

There are plenty of other discussions that I have thoughts of and I may
write more in due course. But for now, I must be off.

Keep in mind that nominations are open until Sunday. Presently we have
no candidates for any of the office roles. (If you've been nominated and
wish to stand, you must accept your nomination by logging into
https://linux.org.au/membership/ before you are a candidate).

Cheers,
Josh
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