[Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member

[Kathy Reid]

Thank *you* for a well considered question, Donna!

Firstly I think there's a bit more nuance to the positions Hugh and I
hold - and again I want to underline how much we respect each other's
positions - and how willing we are to work again together next year. Our
positions are not so much 'Sustain and maintain' vs 'Grow' as 'Pare back
what we do maintain' vs 'Invest in things that help us sustain'.

As an incorporated association, there's a lot of administrivia we have
to do simply to maintain compliance with Fair Trading NSW - the
regulatory body under which we are incorporated. This includes keeping
accurate books, accurate register of members, handling insurances, doing
annual reports, keeping minutes etc. Think of this as the bare minimum
we have to do - without doing these tasks we aren't legally allowed to
operate. Because of the size of the events we run now, and volume of
events, this work is in itself high volume.

Couple this with some systems that, while once useful, and well
intentioned by all, are now past their useful life - MemberDB, our
website needs a refresh and so on - and we have a situation where it's
harder to do the bare minimum. For example, to effect member renewal
from our recent process, we need to manually execute SQL against
MemberDB to expire members who didn't explicitly renew their membership.
This is a several hour process for something that should be automated -
less yak shaving is a good thing. Additionally, it's difficult to
communicate with our members. We have lists and MemberDB, and people who
are on lists who are not Members, and we have few ways - short of
resorting to Mail Chimp - of reaching some people - as the 2013 Member
survey [1] identified. So, we need to reduce the overhead in managing
and communicating with members. We also maintain manual records of
things like Event Leaders, Treasurers etc, but having a more accurate
record of volunteer hours and input would be useful to identify items
like who are our superstars, or where could we do better targeted comms
- such as "send this key piece of information to all Treasurers of
current events", or "send this useful open source program to people only
in the North Queensland region".

Response #1: Transition from MemberDB to CiviCRM at a cost of approx
$23k AUD, with ongoing opex of around $2.5k AUD annually and have a
custom voting module developed to facilitate Elections (cost not yet
estimated).

As also identified in the 2013 Member Survey, we don't have a pipeline
of newer members, enthusiastic to volunteer their time to further our
values [2]. While some events we auspice promote the values and brand of
Linux Australia, for attendees of some events, LA is just a link in a
footer. To continue to strengthen the organisation we need to encourage
new membership - and to do that we need to focus on younger members,
such as high school students and University students. Students generally
get *fantastic* pricing to LA events - as we're investing in their
future. But for us to invest in their future, they need to know about us!

Response #2: Develop and execute a formal recruitment program aimed at
younger potential members, using an outsourcing model (cost not yet
estimated, but likely low $AUD thousands)

A related issue is the ongoing engagement of existing members, and
regularly communicating both with existing members, other partners,
stakeholders and like-minded organisations through social media,
newsletters, briefing papers, white papers and so on. At the moment our
social media presence is minimal, largely because the Media and Comms
Team is quite small and overlaps significantly with Council. There is
opportunity here to engage communications professionals to assist with
work that is not necessarily our key strength, but which has the
potential to be valuable for the organisation as a whole. Similarly, our
website, which has served us well for several years, is in need of an
update, and restructuring to help further the organisation's values and
objectives, and to help us partner effectively with organisations who
share our values on projects or campaigns of mutual benefit.
Additionally, with special thanks to Josh Stewart and Kimberlee
Weatherall, LA has had a stronger voice in issues like the TPP and
Copyright reform, and it would be ideal to continue these efforts
without over-burdening the same people. We need to avoid burnout for the
long term good of the organisation.

Response #3: Evaluate the cost/benefit/risk profile of outsourcing
communication and engagement work to a paid professional (cost not yet
estimated)

Response #4: Refresh linux.org.au (likely at same time as move from
MemberDB to CiviCRM)

In terms of managing finances and risk, we've recently implemented the
Treasury and Finance Committee - big shout out to Tony Breeds, Sae Ra
Germaine, Russell Stuart, David Bell, Ritesh Kapoor and Jan Bryson for
all your excellent efforts so far - and this will help to ensure
additional oversight of LA and event budgets, better identification and
management of risk via our Risk Register, and better 'pipeline' of
members with knowledge of the organisation's finances and treasury
operations, providing better Council succession planning. There may be a
need here (less pressing than the above) to engage business advisory
professionals in areas of risk management, project management and
accountancy to provide guidance or templated responses to issues and
risks we have - such as forecasting event cashflow throughout the year
(current event budgets provide and overall profit and loss, but not
projected cashflow, which is not usually a risk other than when two
large events with large expenditures are run close together - such as
Pycon AU and GovHack).

Response #5: Evaluate the need to engage business advisory services
(cost of services not yet estimated).


As always, we really, really appreciate this feedback, and such useful
questions and probing - they help us shape, guide and steer the
organisation in alignment with our members' wishes.

with kind regards,

K.


[1] https://linux.org.au/news/news/linux-australia-member-survey-2013

[2] https://linux.org.au/values




On 26/11/16 13:40, Donna Benjamin wrote:
> And yet again, we are talking more about style, and ignoring the substance. 
>
> Kathy, Hugh - thank you for this deeply considered approach to leading our organisation. 
>
> It is indeed an inflexion point. 
>
> I'm, as yet, somewhat on the fence. 
>
> Sustain and maintain is compelling. Simply because LA provides a critical service supporting open source events. 
>
> Growth is compelling, LA has barely scratched the surface of its potential. 
> But this also puts the onus on future committees to do more in order to sustain and maintain.  
>
> I'd like to hear more on how you foresee resourcing those efforts. 
>
> - Donna. 
>
> Via mobile. 
>
>> On 26 Nov. 2016, at 11:48, Craige McWhirter <craige at mcwhirter.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 14:16:17 +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
>>>
>>> Now I think about it, that is a a markdown - style idiom, so perhaps that's
>>> what's done it.
>> Hugh's email rendered perfectly in Mutt, so I'd concur with Chris and Hugh
>> that Russell's KMail client is attempting to interpret the text as something
>> other than plain text.
>>
>> --
>> Craige McWhirter
>> M: +61 4685 91819
>> W: https://mcwhirter.com.au/
>> GNUSocial: https://social.mcwhirter.io/craige
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