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<p>Hi everyone,</p>
<p>Hope this note finds everyone safe and well, and a big shout out
to everyone heading home or catching up on Pycon AU. <br>
</p>
<h4>Pycon AU - August 4-7th, Melbourne Convention & Exhibition
Centre, Melbourne<br>
</h4>
<p>Speaking of which, a huge well done to Richard Jones and his
outstanding team for delivering another brilliant Pycon AU in
Melbourne - where he was ably supported by an exceedingly
competent and committed core team and group of volunteers. Thank
you all. <br>
</p>
<p>The videos from Pycon AU, with thanks to the crack team of ninjas
under the guidance of Ryan Verner at Next Day Video, are already
up. Outstanding work. <br>
</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/user/PyConAU">https://www.youtube.com/user/PyConAU</a><br>
</p>
<p>In 2018 and 2019, Pycon AU will move to Sydney under the
direction of long-time community advocate and previous Linux
Australia Council Member, Katie McLaughlin. Well done Katie and
team on your successful bid. <br>
</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://2018.pycon-au.org/">http://2018.pycon-au.org/</a></p>
<p>Given the size that Pycon AU has now grown to (600-700 this
year), Linux Australia will be working with the Python community
to look at how we can make the bid process more transparent, and
further updates will be provided in due course. <br>
</p>
<p>You may have been following the #pyconau hashtag over the
weekend, but if not, we're experimenting a little bit with Storify
(yeah, we know it's not open source, but we couldn't find a
similar alternative), and you can see some highlights of #pyconau
at: <br>
</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://storify.com/linuxaustralia/pycon-au-2017">https://storify.com/linuxaustralia/pycon-au-2017</a></p>
<h4>DrupalSouth Auckland 2017 - November 16-17, Q Hotel, Auckland</h4>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://drupalsouth2017.drupal.org.nz/">https://drupalsouth2017.drupal.org.nz/</a></p>
<p>Early bird tickets are on sale now, and the first Keynote
announcement has been made - Michael Schmid. You can follow all
the updates on the website above, or @DrupalSouth on Twitter. <br>
</p>
<p>A huge thanks to Pam Clifford, Nicole Kirsch, Dave Sparks and the
team for all their efforts. </p>
<h4>linux.conf.au - January 22-26 2018, UTS, Sydney</h4>
<p>With a huge thanks to Michael Davies, Michael Still and the
Papers Committee, the CfP for linux.conf.au closed yesterday, with
a last-minute spike in submissions (a pattern that has now been
well established!). A huge thumbs up to everyone who has now made
the job of Papers Committee very tough (sorry! .... not sorry ;-)
)</p>
<p>Bruce Crawley, James Polley and the team are doing a fantastic
job, and we're all looking forward to a deeply technical flagship
event in Sydney next year. <br>
</p>
<p>Keep up to date with all the goings on at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://linux.conf.au">https://linux.conf.au</a>,
on Twitter @linuxconfau and #lca2018 and and Facebook at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.facebook.com/linuxconferenceaustralia">https://www.facebook.com/linuxconferenceaustralia</a></p>
<h4>Joining the Dots data visualisation symposium, Melbourne, Walter
and Eliza Hall Institute, August 18th</h4>
<p>Linux Australia is sponsoring this event at the intersection of
data science, data visualisation and digital humanities. If you
#dataviz, come to #joiningthedots</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://joiningthedots.github.io/">https://joiningthedots.github.io/</a><br>
</p>
<h4>Linux Australia Council Face to Face meeting, Melbourne, August
5-6th</h4>
<p>While Pycon AU was happening down the road, the Linux Australia
Council met for our second face to face meeting of the year, where
we tackled the 2017/2018 budget, discussed areas where we need to
improve our governance and continued planning on key projects. <br>
</p>
<p>The headlines are: <br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>Overall we've been very pleased with the successes of the
2016/2017 Grants Program, and have allocated a similar amount in
the 2017/2018 budget for a program to run in next financial year
(1 October 2017 to 30 September 2018). We are likely to review
the Grant Program requirements before the next Program runs, and
will seek community input on this. The funds allocated to this
year's Grants Program are now exhausted, but we haven't closed
Grant Requests - if one came in we could choose to overspend
budget if the request was worthy, or defer payment to the new
financial year. <br>
<br>
</li>
<li>We've allocated around $30k to the Membership DB and website
replacement, noting that although the quotes we received were
lower than this, we will likely need some supporting services
such as training, and may need additional help with ETL tasks. <br>
<br>
</li>
<li>We have resolved to seek legal advice on a number of matters,
including whether our legal structure (an incorporated
association in NSW, regulated by Fair Trading NSW) remains the
most optimal structure for us, seeking advice on provision of
childcare and how to streamline this while remaining compliant,
and on a number of other items, such as whether our Constitution
needs amending (last amended in 2011). <br>
<br>
</li>
<li>We have resolved to seek financial advice on a number of
matters, including whether our current financial accounting
system is optimal, and whether our current approach to term
deposit to gain interest earnings is the appropriate investment
for Linux Australia (keeping in mind risk and return). We've
allocated $20k to financial advice and legal advice. <br>
<br>
</li>
<li>We're also very aware now that we don't just have one large
event (linux.conf.au), but now have two large events -
linux.conf.au and Pycon AU - and that our strategy of keeping a
"war chest" to run linux.conf.au in the event of unforeseen
issues - now needs to extend to Pycon AU as well. <br>
<br>
</li>
<li>We also gave consideration to some of the "bigger picture"
pieces we would like to see over the next 2-5 years within the
Aussie open source community, including a mentoring programme
and other efforts to encourage younger members to engage with
the community, and an Open Source awards (akin to the NZ Open
Source awards).<br>
<br>
</li>
<li>We looked at ways we can be more efficient and make our
meetings quicker<br>
<br>
</li>
<li>We met with Toby Ansell, graphic designer, on our rebranding
project, and aim to have some rebranding options within a few
weeks.<br>
<br>
</li>
<li>We met with George Fong to discuss the current actions for the
Beyond 2020 Alliance, and Josh Stewart, Cameron Tudball and Sae
Ra Germaine will be more involved in this going forward. <br>
<br>
</li>
<li>We began planning for the "end of year rush" that we have in
in terms of producing end of year reports and financials. <br>
</li>
</ul>
<h4>LCA2020 Bids</h4>
<p>Will open soon(TM), we promise!<br>
</p>
<h4>Social media goodness</h4>
<p>A reminder you can find Linux Australia on the following social
media: <br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>Twitter: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/linuxaustralia">https://twitter.com/linuxaustralia</a></li>
<li>Facebook: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://facebook.com/linuxaustralia">https://facebook.com/linuxaustralia</a><br>
</li>
<li>LinkedIn: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/2966738/">https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/2966738/</a><br>
</li>
</ul>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>As always, your feedback, comments and concerns are always warmly
welcomed, <br>
</p>
<p>Kind regards,</p>
<p>Kathy Reid, Cameron Tudball, Sae Ra Germaine, Russell Stuart,
Josh Stewart, Hugh Blemings and David Bell.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Kathy Reid
President
Linux Australia
0418 130 636
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:president@linux.org.au">president@linux.org.au</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://linux.org.au">http://linux.org.au</a>
Linux Australia Inc
GPO Box 4788
Sydney NSW 2001
Australia
ABN 56 987 117 479 </pre>
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