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Hey all,<br>
<br>
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*.<br>
<br>
On the topic of membership I would like to highlight a few excerpts
from the councils minutes on the 02/03/2013[0]:<br>
<br>
<br>
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Membership tiers<br>
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. <br>
<br>
MOTION moved by El Presidenté that we;<br>
1. Have a single free membership tier<br>
2. That memberships are expired/renewed annually via an online
mechanism before 1st October in accordance with Clause 4(e) of the
Constitution<br>
Seconded by François, carried unanimously<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
...<br>
<br>
Mailing lists<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
I still stand by the decisions made back in 2013, however I believe
the new 2016 council should reconfirm them.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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 <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://linux.org.au/membership/">https://linux.org.au/membership/</a> before you are a
candidate).<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
Josh<br>
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