[Announce] Rebranding, Membership platform, Grants budget, Pycon and other interesting updates from Linux Australia Face to Face

Tue Aug 8 09:14:03 AEST 2017

Hi everyone,

Hope this note finds everyone safe and well, and a big shout out to
everyone heading home or catching up on Pycon AU.

        Pycon AU - August 4-7th, Melbourne Convention & Exhibition
        Centre, Melbourne

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.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/user/PyConAU

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.

http://2018.pycon-au.org/

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.

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:

https://storify.com/linuxaustralia/pycon-au-2017

        DrupalSouth Auckland 2017 - November 16-17, Q Hotel, Auckland

https://drupalsouth2017.drupal.org.nz/

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.

A huge thanks to Pam Clifford, Nicole Kirsch, Dave Sparks and the team
for all their efforts. 

        linux.conf.au - January 22-26 2018, UTS, Sydney

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 ;-) )

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.

Keep up to date with all the goings on at https://linux.conf.au, on
Twitter @linuxconfau and #lca2018 and and Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/linuxconferenceaustralia

        Joining the Dots data visualisation symposium, Melbourne, Walter
        and Eliza Hall Institute, August 18th

Linux Australia is sponsoring this event at the intersection of data
science, data visualisation and digital humanities. If you #dataviz,
come to #joiningthedots

https://joiningthedots.github.io/

        Linux Australia Council Face to Face meeting, Melbourne, August
        5-6th

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.

The headlines are:

  * 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.

  * 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.

  * 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).

  * 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.

  * 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.

  * 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).

  * We looked at ways we can be more efficient and make our meetings quicker

  * We met with Toby Ansell, graphic designer, on our rebranding
    project, and aim to have some rebranding options within a few weeks.

  * 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.

  * We began planning for the "end of year rush" that we have in in
    terms of producing end of year reports and financials.

        LCA2020 Bids

Will open soon(TM), we promise!

        Social media goodness

A reminder you can find Linux Australia on the following social media:

  * Twitter: https://twitter.com/linuxaustralia
  * Facebook: https://facebook.com/linuxaustralia
  * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/2966738/

As always, your feedback, comments and concerns are always warmly welcomed,

Kind regards,

Kathy Reid, Cameron Tudball, Sae Ra Germaine, Russell Stuart, Josh
Stewart, Hugh Blemings and David Bell.

-- 
Kathy Reid
President
Linux Australia

0418 130 636

president at linux.org.au
http://linux.org.au

Linux Australia Inc
GPO Box 4788
Sydney NSW 2001
Australia

ABN 56 987 117 479 

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