From chair at hobart.lca2017.org Thu Dec 1 10:03:25 2016 From: chair at hobart.lca2017.org (Christopher Neugebauer (linux.conf.au 2017)) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2016 10:03:25 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] linux.conf.au 2017 t-shirts only available until Sunday 11 December Message-ID: Want a t-shirt along with your linux.conf.au ticket? Make sure you buy your ticket soon, because we?re closing t-shirt orders after Sunday 11 December. You can find out all of the information about attending linux.conf.au 2017 at https://linux.conf.au/attend If you already have a ticket, and want to add more to your order, you can do so by going to https://linux.conf.au/dashboard and selecting "t-shirts". This year, we?re trying to cut down on the waste that the conference generates. As part of that, we?re going to place our t-shirt order at the latest possible opportunity, and we?ll only order enough to cover confirmed registrations at the time we make our order. So, if you want one of our amazingly fetching linux.conf.au t-shirts, make sure you have your ticket locked in by the end of next week! -- --Christopher Neugebauer Conference Director - linux.conf.au - January 2017 - Hobart Tickets on sale now! https://linux.conf.au/attend From wil at zeropointdevelopment.com Thu Dec 1 16:45:26 2016 From: wil at zeropointdevelopment.com (Wil Brown) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2016 16:45:26 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Grant Application for Meetup Group Hardware Message-ID: Date: December 1st, 2016 Project Name: WordPress Sydney Video Camera Aim of Project: To obtain a good HD quality video camera to record presentations at local meetups and connected events. Person Responsible for Request: Wil Brown Request: As co-organiser of the WordPress Sydney meetup and lead organiser of WordCamp Sydney conferences I would like to apply for a $2000 grant to purchase a good HD quality video camera and accessories (bag, tripod, mic, SD cards) for our meetup events and related events such as WordCamp Sydney and MeetupMixup Sydney. The aim would be to publish presentations via YouTube to further engage with the WordPress and open source community. The camera would get good use at our WordCamp events as a hall cam to engage directly with attendees. Kind regards, Wil. -- Wil Brown *Web Developer, WordPress Consultant & Speaker**Zero Point Development* * - We* ? *WordPress* *Skype: DeveloperWil m. 0423 526 829 p. +61 (0)2 809 13634* *zeropointdevelopment.com | @DeveloperWil * *Join us at WordPress Sydney * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vice-president at linux.org.au Thu Dec 1 17:42:42 2016 From: vice-president at linux.org.au (Linux Australia Vice President) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2016 17:42:42 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] [LACTTE] Grant Application for Meetup Group Hardware In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <592a0cba-2a9b-2539-ccf5-4f24974642fd@linux.org.au> As a matter of due diligence, I can confirm the following financials for WordCamp Sunshine Coast and WordCamp Sydney (the latter which Wil ran with the excellent help of Kristen Symonds as Treasurer). * Overall profit WordCamp Sydney: $21,348 * Overall profit WordCamp Sunshine Coast: $6449 These amounts are inclusive of an amount we require events to return to LA for assistance with items such as insurance, bank fees, auditing and so on. The approved budget for 2016-2017 financial year includes an amount of $15k for grants and donations, and $10k of this is earmarked for Software Freedom Conservancy (we've been waiting to see if $AUD to $USD becomes more favourable, alas not). So, a $2k grant here would leave $3k remaining in the grants budget. TL;DR, this is within budget and represents no financial imposte to LA. Kind regards, Kathy On 01/12/16 16:45, Wil Brown wrote: > Date: December 1st, 2016 > > Project Name: WordPress Sydney Video Camera > > Aim of Project: To obtain a good HD quality video camera to record > presentations at local meetups and connected events. > > Person Responsible for Request: Wil Brown > > Request: > As co-organiser of the WordPress Sydney meetup and lead organiser of > WordCamp Sydney conferences I would like to apply for a $2000 grant to > purchase a good HD quality video camera and accessories (bag, tripod, > mic, SD cards) for our meetup events and related events such as > WordCamp Sydney and MeetupMixup Sydney. > > The aim would be to publish presentations via YouTube to further > engage with the WordPress and open source community. > > The camera would get good use at our WordCamp events as a hall cam to > engage directly with attendees. > > Kind regards, > Wil. > > -- > Wil Brown > > *Web Developer, WordPress Consultant & Speaker > **Zero Point Development** - We* ? *WordPress** > * > * > * > *Skype: DeveloperWil m. 0423 526 829 p. +61 (0)2 809 13634* > * > * > *zeropointdevelopment.com | > @DeveloperWil * > > *Join us at WordPress Sydney * > > > _______________________________________________ > committee mailing list > committee at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/committee -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mithro at mithis.com Thu Dec 1 18:34:36 2016 From: mithro at mithis.com (Tim Ansell) Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2016 18:34:36 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] [LACTTE] Grant Application for Meetup Group Hardware In-Reply-To: <592a0cba-2a9b-2539-ccf5-4f24974642fd@linux.org.au> References: <592a0cba-2a9b-2539-ccf5-4f24974642fd@linux.org.au> Message-ID: Hi Will, A bunch of questions, * What existing hardware do you have and how is it currently being used? * Can you provide a link to any existing videos that you have published? * Can you provide information on who will be doing the recording, editing and publishing of your videos? Purchasing a camera is the easy part, unless you have a dedicated group of individuals who are doing recording you won't get any results (let alone usable ones). Typically what happens is that new equipment is purchased, someone gets excited about doing the recording, they record one or two events and then the equipment ends up collecting dust. Camera quality is also the *least* important part of capturing technical content, both the audio quality and slide capture quality is significantly more important and generally it is more sensible to invest money towards those. You have described your current setup, so it is unclear to me if you already have those areas covered already. Lastly, have you tried reaching out to other groups in Sydney? You might find that /someone/ has a large amount of recording equipment and would be interested in helping groups that are excited about recording their proceedings. Tim 'mithro' Ansell On 1 December 2016 at 17:42, Linux Australia Vice President < vice-president at linux.org.au> wrote: > As a matter of due diligence, I can confirm the following financials for > WordCamp Sunshine Coast and WordCamp Sydney (the latter which Wil ran with > the excellent help of Kristen Symonds as Treasurer). > > - Overall profit WordCamp Sydney: $21,348 > - Overall profit WordCamp Sunshine Coast: $6449 > > These amounts are inclusive of an amount we require events to return to LA > for assistance with items such as insurance, bank fees, auditing and so on. > > The approved budget for 2016-2017 financial year includes an amount of > $15k for grants and donations, and $10k of this is earmarked for Software > Freedom Conservancy (we've been waiting to see if $AUD to $USD becomes more > favourable, alas not). So, a $2k grant here would leave $3k remaining in > the grants budget. > > TL;DR, this is within budget and represents no financial imposte to LA. > > Kind regards, > > Kathy > > > > On 01/12/16 16:45, Wil Brown wrote: > > Date: December 1st, 2016 > > Project Name: WordPress Sydney Video Camera > > Aim of Project: To obtain a good HD quality video camera to record > presentations at local meetups and connected events. > > Person Responsible for Request: Wil Brown > > Request: > As co-organiser of the WordPress Sydney meetup and lead organiser of > WordCamp Sydney conferences I would like to apply for a $2000 grant to > purchase a good HD quality video camera and accessories (bag, tripod, mic, > SD cards) for our meetup events and related events such as WordCamp Sydney > and MeetupMixup Sydney. > > The aim would be to publish presentations via YouTube to further engage > with the WordPress and open source community. > > The camera would get good use at our WordCamp events as a hall cam to > engage directly with attendees. > > Kind regards, > Wil. > > -- > Wil Brown > > > *Web Developer, WordPress Consultant & Speaker **Zero Point Development* > * - We* ? *WordPress* > > *Skype: DeveloperWil m. 0423 526 829 p. +61 (0)2 809 13634* > > *zeropointdevelopment.com | > @DeveloperWil * > > *Join us at WordPress Sydney * > > > _______________________________________________ > committee mailing listcommittee at lists.linux.org.auhttp://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/committee > > > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aj at erisian.com.au Fri Dec 2 08:46:18 2016 From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 07:46:18 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 02:45:10PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: > 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). That seems kind of gold-plated, especially if the $23k doesn't include the custom development that will actually let it do the one thing memberdb actually does... Why so much? Is the admin team not happy to maintain an instance of civicrm directly? > Response #2: Develop and execute a formal recruitment program aimed at > younger potential members, [...] I'm not sure if this actually makes sense to me -- trying to get new members only makes sense if being a member is actually valuable to people; and if being an LA member is valuable, then word of mouth is probably the best way of getting people involved anyway. I kind of think that in practice that 95% of the reason LA is valuable to anyone these days is that it helps people *run* events; and if so, that isn't really valuable to that many people -- the pool of people running open source related events in Australia (and maybe NZ) just isn't that big. Personally, I think of LA as an organisation run by/for open source developers/admins/power users -- so, by and large, it doesn't make sense to me to out source things like running a website or developing a voting module or whatever: that's our wheelhouse, those are the skills our members have at their fingertips. Sure not everyone knows how to do SQL queries or create a drupal module or whatever, but that just means learning new skills and asking for some help when you need it. And isn't that approach *exactly* the collaborative spirit of free software in the first place? But I wonder if maybe I'm out of date -- that was how things were 10 or 15 years ago, for sure; but maybe LA's active members these days have, as you might expect, changed to match its value proposition, and LA's now an organisation run by/for event organisers. In which case paying someone to do SQL queries or develop and admin software probably does make sense -- at the very least, if all the members who you'd like to ask for help are busy organising events, they're not going to have much in the way of time to help out. In my opinion, there's obvious drawbacks to either view: * if LA's a bunch of volunteer open source hobbiests collaborating and building things themselves, then stuff won't be as slick/reliable/prompt/presentable/whatever; we'll end up with things like memberdb rather than a nice CRM; our website or conference management software might be ugly or go unmaintained; things will get rewritten unnecessarily because the people involved find writing new code fun, etc. * if LA's a bunch of event organisers who are all about running great events in a particular field, and just want to make those events great again, then there's not much reason for non-event organisers to be involved as members, so the organisation won't be broadly representative of volunteer free software hackers and won't be great at influencing government policy etc; and the organisation will be reliant on plenty of proprietary software rather than setting an example of using open source in the real world; and it'll cost a lot more to maintain services since they're not being run by volunteers To me, the efforts at growth all seem to be pushing LA into the latter situation -- and don't get me wrong, that would be a fine and worthy end in and of itself, but to me that looks more like better filling an existing niche than really expanding the organisation's relevance and reach (or free software's). Cheers, aj From chair at hobart.lca2017.org Fri Dec 2 09:51:15 2016 From: chair at hobart.lca2017.org (Christopher Neugebauer (linux.conf.au 2017)) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 09:51:15 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Free childcare at linux.conf.au, thanks to GitHub Message-ID: If you?re planning on bringing children to Hobart while you?re in town for linux.conf.au, we?re happy to help take care of them while you?re at the conference. Thanks to GitHub, linux.conf.au 2017 will have complimentary on-site childcare. You can register your interest for childcare at https://linux.conf.au/attend/childcare/form We want linux.conf.au to be accessible to everyone, including members of our community with young families. This year?s conference is taking place during school holidays, and the areas around Hobart are a fascinating place to explore. We?d love you to bring your family with you! Thanks to GitHub, linux.conf.au 2017 will be providing qualified child carers on-site at the conference venue, free of charge for the children of conference attendees. We?ll also provide lunch suitable for older children, as well as some entertainment. For infants and toddlers, we?ll need you to supply food and drinks suitable for them. If you want to express interest in childcare at linux.conf.au, you can fill out our form at https://linux.conf.au/attend/childcare/form - please do so as soon as possible, as space may be limited. If you have any questions about childcare at linux.conf.au 2017, please e-mail us at team at hobart.lca2017.org -- --Christopher Neugebauer Conference Director - linux.conf.au - January 2017 - Hobart Tickets on sale now! https://linux.conf.au/attend From aj at erisian.com.au Fri Dec 2 10:18:22 2016 From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 09:18:22 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <61fdb7bc-acd6-8aef-cb75-ed3ef8abd8fe@blemings.org> References: <61fdb7bc-acd6-8aef-cb75-ed3ef8abd8fe@blemings.org> Message-ID: <20161201231822.GB5058@erisian.com.au> On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 11:39:23AM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote: > Thus all considered we found ourselves somewhat short staffed for much > of the Council term with the lion's share of day to day operations > falling to three or four members of Council. > [...] some of the more visible > examples of this [...] were largely the product of folk > outside the Council who devoted considerable amounts of their own time > and energy into making these things happen. So, for what it's worth, these things seem exactly in line with what I've seen from past councils over the past decade and a bit -- the council gets the boring, less visible work; council members have other things crop up that distracts them; and the best stuff is done by people who aren't actually on the council. It (still) seems to me like it'd be best for the council to recognise this reality and go with the flow, rather than trying to resist it... That gives some... counterintuitive conclusions though: for example, I think Kathy's vision would be most likely to be achieved if she weren't on the council, let alone President. (Though it would also require a council that provided both moral and practical support and was willing to take a back seat, which I don't think has really ever happened so far) ie, in order to support her vision, I think it's best to vote against her... > As an organisation, well resourced with a wide volunteer base and > enthusiasm to match we can I think do more than this, but I fear I lack > the vision and energy to lead us to more ambitious plans. This is not > me being self effacing, just an objective observation that I?m not a big > ideas/visionary sort of person. I am however very good at keeping > things ticking along or helping someone else attain -their- vision. So I guess the thing I'm seeing as missing here is something like this: if you're good at keeping things ticking along and helping other people attain their visions, then with you having been president over the past year, why hasn't Kathy's vision already been realised, and why does she feel the need to take over as president? I'm going to take a liberty and posit a couple of possible answers to that, despite having zero information to base them on: * there's been second guessing on the details of the approach by the rest of the council, by the admin team and/or by other stakeholders, and being elected VP doesn't provide enough of a mandate to ignore/overrule those concerns (especially a problem if even getting quorum has been hard) * the only time the LA community is really engaged around changes is when people propose them as part of the council elections * contributing to LA doesn't provide many tangible rewards, and being able to put "LA President" on your resume is one of the best available Honestly, the latter point is the one that concerns me most: if visionary changes work best when they come from outside the council, then driving change as part of a sub-committee or whatever should be more rewarding than being on the council -- in the same way it's more impressive (IMO anyway) to be LCA 2016 lead organiser than the 2016 LA president. I don't really know how that could be made possible though. Cheers, aj From nate at polynate.net Fri Dec 2 10:39:41 2016 From: nate at polynate.net (Nathan Bailey) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 10:39:41 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: On 2 December 2016 at 08:46, Anthony Towns wrote: > > > Response #2: Develop and execute a formal recruitment program aimed at > > younger potential members, [...] > > I'm not sure if this actually makes sense to me -- trying to get new > members only makes sense if being a member is actually valuable to people; > and if being an LA member is valuable, then word of mouth is probably > the best way of getting people involved anyway. > True to a point, but in practice: a) People don't necessarily communicate that value well, particularly in the language of a novice b) Some of the value is altruistic c) If people aren't exposed to the community, they may never hear about it Discretionary time is a scarce resource, and we have to ensure our "bid" for it is well-communicated, otherwise the virtue of our offer may not be heard. If we want to see our vision of "open" grow, we need to be continually reaching forward to engage new people in defining and delivering what "open" is. -N -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nate at polynate.net Fri Dec 2 10:51:07 2016 From: nate at polynate.net (Nathan Bailey) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 10:51:07 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <20161201231822.GB5058@erisian.com.au> References: <61fdb7bc-acd6-8aef-cb75-ed3ef8abd8fe@blemings.org> <20161201231822.GB5058@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: On 2 December 2016 at 10:18, Anthony Towns wrote: > > So, for what it's worth, these things seem exactly in line with what I've > seen from past councils over the past decade and a bit -- the council > gets the boring, less visible work; council members have other things > crop up that distracts them; and the best stuff is done by people who > aren't actually on the council. > > It (still) seems to me like it'd be best for the council to recognise > this reality and go with the flow, rather than trying to resist it... > Or to propose a new model that actually puts council in a role of driving a leadership agenda, rather than just management/support role. I think this is the crux of Kathy's platform - if council is to lead, then other approaches must be identified to get the work done. And for essential work, volunteers aren't an appropriate solution - because they get busy, interrupted and sometimes don't have the required skills. Have a volunteer team is great, but the buck needs to stop somewhere, and that's going to either be with staff or a contractor (or, as with the membership database problem, it never gets done). > That gives some... counterintuitive conclusions though: for example, I > think Kathy's vision would be most likely to be achieved if she weren't on > the council, let alone President. I think this misconstrues the brilliant opportunity Hugh and Kathy have given us. This isn't a vote on leadership, its a referendum on the future of LA. Kathy winning doesn't require Kathy to deliver. It creates a direction for the council (and future volunteers in all capacities) to work towards. It might even be Hugh that delivers more of it. I would love to see LA not just foster events, but also communities. Vibrant communities of open developers who are creating things. An open maker movement. -N -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hugh at blemings.org Fri Dec 2 11:07:04 2016 From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 11:07:04 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: References: <61fdb7bc-acd6-8aef-cb75-ed3ef8abd8fe@blemings.org> <20161201231822.GB5058@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: <73d8a7d4-d602-a9d0-b22a-e3f74da78918@blemings.org> Hi AJ, Nathan, All, Just a quick note to acknowledge receipt as it were - have a family commitment today which will preclude me responding more fully until the weekend at earliest. Good points made all round though I think - in particular that the point of what Kathy and I are trying to accomplish is less about a leadership vote, more a about a referendum on future directions for LA :) Cheers, Hugh From wil at zeropointdevelopment.com Fri Dec 2 14:25:39 2016 From: wil at zeropointdevelopment.com (Wil Brown) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 14:25:39 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] [LACTTE] Grant Application for Meetup Group Hardware In-Reply-To: References: <592a0cba-2a9b-2539-ccf5-4f24974642fd@linux.org.au> Message-ID: Hi Tim Thanks for the follow up questions. Here are my responses. * * What existing hardware do you have and how is it currently being used?* We have three meetups per month in the Sydney CBD, North Sydney TAFE college and a startup office in Parramatta. The CBD venue has a static wall mounted camera accessible by USB. Unfortunately we cannot control position or zoom and the built-in mic pics up the audience as it is mounted on a beam in the middle of the room. The two other venues have no built-in camera and the other organisers don't have videos cameras (just phones and photo cameras). * * Can you provide a link to any existing videos that you have published?* We have no existing videos as we don't have the hardware to record. * * Can you provide information on who will be doing the recording, editing and publishing of your videos?* Our thoughts on recording would be that it would initially be in the CBD and North Sydney locations as there is an organiser overlap of video editing experience. We would set the camera up in a static position to record speaker and screen and use a radio mic to capture audio into the camera. I believe all Sony video cameras have an external mic input. Both myself and James Carmody have experience with video editing - adding titles, splitting video, synchronizing audio and compressing using Adobe Premier. We're currently editing the WordCamp Sydney videos getting them ready for publishing to wordpress.tv We can talk to the Parramatta organisers to see if anyone has editing experience, however, there is uncertainty whether that meetup group will continue in 2017. We have an organisers meeting mid December to plan the next 6 months. There is the possibility that we will be creating a new WordPress developers workshop meetup group in 2017, lead by myself initially - TBC. I understand about the excitement factor of getting new toys only for them not to be used. We don't want that to happen. Kristen, who lead the North group and I who lead the CBD group have run the meetup for almost 5 years now. We have a second organiser present at each meetup, however, both Kristen and I attend North and CBD groups so there are usually at least three organisers at any given meetup, so recording person resources are not an issue. I have tried several times to use the wall-mounted camera in the CBD office to take the video and syncronize audio from a radio mic recorded onto the laptop but timing differences in the device frequencies meant that the audio track and the video ended up slipping out of sync on longer presentations. Having the audio link into the same recording device (camera) would stop that issue from happening. I agree that video quality is not the only deliverable when putting together a video, however the cameras we have at our disposal are very poor quality, or do not have the storage capacity to record a 30min presentation which is why we have not produced any video content thus far. If we were to buy a video camera for this purpose I would prefer it to be a decent HD quality product and something that can last over time. We don't quite need to go 4K yet though! :) Presentation slides will be linked to from the video which we will publish on YouTube - this format seems to work well on wordpress.tv. We don't quite have the time, resources or hardware budget to do in-video slide presentations. ** Have you tried reaching out to other groups in Sydney?* The other tech groups that we go to or organisers we know do not have a video kit. The ones that do produce videos are fortunate enough to hold their meetups in office spaces that are set up for producing AV content. There is talk that the WordPress Community (formally WordPress Foundation) are thinking of putting together a video kit for Asia-Pacific use (they already have one for US and EU), however it is unlikely we as a local meetup group would be able to get access to that. It would likely only be for WordCamp conferences. I hope that helps you understand the position we are in and the request that we have made however I completely understand if the council thinks the investment is not a good choice at this time. If you need me to further explain any part then I'm happy to do and you can give me a call on 0423 526 829 or follow up on email. Regards, Wil. On 1 December 2016 at 18:34, Tim Ansell wrote: > Hi Will, > > A bunch of questions, > > * What existing hardware do you have and how is it currently being used? > * Can you provide a link to any existing videos that you have published? > * Can you provide information on who will be doing the recording, editing > and publishing of your videos? > > Purchasing a camera is the easy part, unless you have a dedicated group of > individuals who are doing recording you won't get any results (let alone > usable ones). Typically what happens is that new equipment is purchased, > someone gets excited about doing the recording, they record one or two > events and then the equipment ends up collecting dust. > > Camera quality is also the *least* important part of capturing technical > content, both the audio quality and slide capture quality is significantly > more important and generally it is more sensible to invest money towards > those. You have described your current setup, so it is unclear to me if you > already have those areas covered already. > > Lastly, have you tried reaching out to other groups in Sydney? You might > find that /someone/ has a large amount of recording equipment and would be > interested in helping groups that are excited about recording their > proceedings. > > Tim 'mithro' Ansell > > > On 1 December 2016 at 17:42, Linux Australia Vice President < > vice-president at linux.org.au> wrote: > >> As a matter of due diligence, I can confirm the following financials for >> WordCamp Sunshine Coast and WordCamp Sydney (the latter which Wil ran with >> the excellent help of Kristen Symonds as Treasurer). >> >> - Overall profit WordCamp Sydney: $21,348 >> - Overall profit WordCamp Sunshine Coast: $6449 >> >> These amounts are inclusive of an amount we require events to return to >> LA for assistance with items such as insurance, bank fees, auditing and so >> on. >> >> The approved budget for 2016-2017 financial year includes an amount of >> $15k for grants and donations, and $10k of this is earmarked for Software >> Freedom Conservancy (we've been waiting to see if $AUD to $USD becomes more >> favourable, alas not). So, a $2k grant here would leave $3k remaining in >> the grants budget. >> >> TL;DR, this is within budget and represents no financial imposte to LA. >> >> Kind regards, >> >> Kathy >> >> >> >> On 01/12/16 16:45, Wil Brown wrote: >> >> Date: December 1st, 2016 >> >> Project Name: WordPress Sydney Video Camera >> >> Aim of Project: To obtain a good HD quality video camera to record >> presentations at local meetups and connected events. >> >> Person Responsible for Request: Wil Brown >> >> Request: >> As co-organiser of the WordPress Sydney meetup and lead organiser of >> WordCamp Sydney conferences I would like to apply for a $2000 grant to >> purchase a good HD quality video camera and accessories (bag, tripod, mic, >> SD cards) for our meetup events and related events such as WordCamp Sydney >> and MeetupMixup Sydney. >> >> The aim would be to publish presentations via YouTube to further engage >> with the WordPress and open source community. >> >> The camera would get good use at our WordCamp events as a hall cam to >> engage directly with attendees. >> >> Kind regards, >> Wil. >> >> -- >> Wil Brown >> >> >> *Web Developer, WordPress Consultant & Speaker **Zero Point Development* >> * - We* ? *WordPress* >> >> *Skype: DeveloperWil m. 0423 526 829 p. +61 (0)2 809 13634* >> >> *zeropointdevelopment.com | >> @DeveloperWil * >> >> *Join us at WordPress Sydney * >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> committee mailing listcommittee at lists.linux.org.auhttp://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/committee >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> linux-aus mailing list >> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au >> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus >> >> > -- Wil Brown *Web Developer, WordPress Consultant & Speaker**Zero Point Development* * - We* ? *WordPress* *Skype: DeveloperWil m. 0423 526 829 p. +61 (0)2 809 13634* *zeropointdevelopment.com | @DeveloperWil * *Join us at WordPress Sydney * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mithro at mithis.com Fri Dec 2 14:59:12 2016 From: mithro at mithis.com (Tim Ansell) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 14:59:12 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] [LACTTE] Grant Application for Meetup Group Hardware In-Reply-To: References: <592a0cba-2a9b-2539-ccf5-4f24974642fd@linux.org.au> Message-ID: Hi Will (and the LA council), I would personally recommend that LA **not** fund this grant request at this moment. I would recommend funding such a grant request only after the Wordcamp people have reliably produced videos for their user groups for 6 events in a row. This however would leave Wordcamp with a "chicken and egg" problem -- they can't get equipment until they have videos and they can't get videos until they have equipement. As this group is in Sydney, I have a proposal to solve this problem. I'm willing to *lend* the Wordcamp group the following equipment (on a permanent basis) to allow them to produce high quality recordings; * 1 x Wireless microphone receiver * 1 x Lapel microphone * 1 x USB Audio capture mixer * 1 x Numato Opsis board (in case with power supply and cables) for capturing high quality recording of the presentation * 1 x HV30 Canon camera for speaker capture * 1 x Lenovo Laptop for recording The expectation would be the gear is returned (in working order) if recordings are not produced or the user groups stop meeting. You might also notice that this equipment is very similar to the kit used to record Linux.conf.au and PyCon Australia. This setup will allow them to produce videos of the same quality level as found at these conferences. As the setup is almost identical to that which will be used at LCA2017, I would highly recommend that someone from the Wordcamp group attend LCA2017 and volunteer to be part of the A/V team to get a better understanding of how this equipment can be used and some hands on experience. Will, how does that sound? Tim 'mithro' Ansell On 2 December 2016 at 14:25, Wil Brown wrote: > Hi Tim > > Thanks for the follow up questions. Here are my responses. > > * * What existing hardware do you have and how is it currently being used?* > We have three meetups per month in the Sydney CBD, North Sydney TAFE > college and a startup office in Parramatta. > The CBD venue has a static wall mounted camera accessible by USB. > Unfortunately we cannot control position or zoom and the built-in mic pics > up the audience as it is mounted on a beam in the middle of the room. > > The two other venues have no built-in camera and the other organisers > don't have videos cameras (just phones and photo cameras). > > * * Can you provide a link to any existing videos that you have published?* > We have no existing videos as we don't have the hardware to record. > > * * Can you provide information on who will be doing the recording, > editing and publishing of your videos?* > Our thoughts on recording would be that it would initially be in the CBD > and North Sydney locations as there is an organiser overlap of video > editing experience. > We would set the camera up in a static position to record speaker and > screen and use a radio mic to capture audio into the camera. I believe all > Sony video cameras have an external mic input. > > Both myself and James Carmody have experience with video editing - adding > titles, splitting video, synchronizing audio and compressing using Adobe > Premier. We're currently editing the WordCamp Sydney videos getting them > ready for publishing to wordpress.tv > > We can talk to the Parramatta organisers to see if anyone has editing > experience, however, there is uncertainty whether that meetup group will > continue in 2017. We have an organisers meeting mid December to plan the > next 6 months. > > There is the possibility that we will be creating a new WordPress > developers workshop meetup group in 2017, lead by myself initially - TBC. > > I understand about the excitement factor of getting new toys only for them > not to be used. We don't want that to happen. Kristen, who lead the North > group and I who lead the CBD group have run the meetup for almost 5 years > now. We have a second organiser present at each meetup, however, both > Kristen and I attend North and CBD groups so there are usually at least > three organisers at any given meetup, so recording person resources are not > an issue. > > I have tried several times to use the wall-mounted camera in the CBD > office to take the video and syncronize audio from a radio mic recorded > onto the laptop but timing differences in the device frequencies meant that > the audio track and the video ended up slipping out of sync on longer > presentations. Having the audio link into the same recording device > (camera) would stop that issue from happening. > > I agree that video quality is not the only deliverable when putting > together a video, however the cameras we have at our disposal are very poor > quality, or do not have the storage capacity to record a 30min presentation > which is why we have not produced any video content thus far. > > If we were to buy a video camera for this purpose I would prefer it to be > a decent HD quality product and something that can last over time. We > don't quite need to go 4K yet though! :) > > Presentation slides will be linked to from the video which we will publish > on YouTube - this format seems to work well on wordpress.tv. We don't > quite have the time, resources or hardware budget to do in-video slide > presentations. > > ** Have you tried reaching out to other groups in Sydney?* > The other tech groups that we go to or organisers we know do not have a > video kit. The ones that do produce videos are fortunate enough to hold > their meetups in office spaces that are set up for producing AV content. > > There is talk that the WordPress Community (formally WordPress Foundation) > are thinking of putting together a video kit for Asia-Pacific use (they > already have one for US and EU), however it is unlikely we as a local > meetup group would be able to get access to that. It would likely only be > for WordCamp conferences. > > I hope that helps you understand the position we are in and the request > that we have made however I completely understand if the council thinks > the investment is not a good choice at this time. > > If you need me to further explain any part then I'm happy to do and you > can give me a call on 0423 526 829 or follow up on email. > > Regards, > Wil. > > > On 1 December 2016 at 18:34, Tim Ansell wrote: > >> Hi Will, >> >> A bunch of questions, >> >> * What existing hardware do you have and how is it currently being used? >> * Can you provide a link to any existing videos that you have published? >> * Can you provide information on who will be doing the recording, >> editing and publishing of your videos? >> >> Purchasing a camera is the easy part, unless you have a dedicated group >> of individuals who are doing recording you won't get any results (let alone >> usable ones). Typically what happens is that new equipment is purchased, >> someone gets excited about doing the recording, they record one or two >> events and then the equipment ends up collecting dust. >> >> Camera quality is also the *least* important part of capturing technical >> content, both the audio quality and slide capture quality is significantly >> more important and generally it is more sensible to invest money towards >> those. You have described your current setup, so it is unclear to me if you >> already have those areas covered already. >> >> Lastly, have you tried reaching out to other groups in Sydney? You might >> find that /someone/ has a large amount of recording equipment and would be >> interested in helping groups that are excited about recording their >> proceedings. >> >> Tim 'mithro' Ansell >> >> >> On 1 December 2016 at 17:42, Linux Australia Vice President < >> vice-president at linux.org.au> wrote: >> >>> As a matter of due diligence, I can confirm the following financials for >>> WordCamp Sunshine Coast and WordCamp Sydney (the latter which Wil ran with >>> the excellent help of Kristen Symonds as Treasurer). >>> >>> - Overall profit WordCamp Sydney: $21,348 >>> - Overall profit WordCamp Sunshine Coast: $6449 >>> >>> These amounts are inclusive of an amount we require events to return to >>> LA for assistance with items such as insurance, bank fees, auditing and so >>> on. >>> >>> The approved budget for 2016-2017 financial year includes an amount of >>> $15k for grants and donations, and $10k of this is earmarked for Software >>> Freedom Conservancy (we've been waiting to see if $AUD to $USD becomes more >>> favourable, alas not). So, a $2k grant here would leave $3k remaining in >>> the grants budget. >>> >>> TL;DR, this is within budget and represents no financial imposte to LA. >>> >>> Kind regards, >>> >>> Kathy >>> >>> >>> >>> On 01/12/16 16:45, Wil Brown wrote: >>> >>> Date: December 1st, 2016 >>> >>> Project Name: WordPress Sydney Video Camera >>> >>> Aim of Project: To obtain a good HD quality video camera to record >>> presentations at local meetups and connected events. >>> >>> Person Responsible for Request: Wil Brown >>> >>> Request: >>> As co-organiser of the WordPress Sydney meetup and lead organiser of >>> WordCamp Sydney conferences I would like to apply for a $2000 grant to >>> purchase a good HD quality video camera and accessories (bag, tripod, mic, >>> SD cards) for our meetup events and related events such as WordCamp Sydney >>> and MeetupMixup Sydney. >>> >>> The aim would be to publish presentations via YouTube to further engage >>> with the WordPress and open source community. >>> >>> The camera would get good use at our WordCamp events as a hall cam to >>> engage directly with attendees. >>> >>> Kind regards, >>> Wil. >>> >>> -- >>> Wil Brown >>> >>> >>> *Web Developer, WordPress Consultant & Speaker **Zero Point Development* >>> * - We* ? *WordPress* >>> >>> *Skype: DeveloperWil m. 0423 526 829 p. +61 (0)2 809 13634* >>> >>> *zeropointdevelopment.com | >>> @DeveloperWil * >>> >>> *Join us at WordPress Sydney * >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> committee mailing listcommittee at lists.linux.org.auhttp://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/committee >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> linux-aus mailing list >>> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au >>> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus >>> >>> >> > > > -- > Wil Brown > > > *Web Developer, WordPress Consultant & Speaker**Zero Point Development* > * - We* ? *WordPress* > > *Skype: DeveloperWil m. 0423 526 829 <0423%20526%20829> p. +61 (0)2 809 > 13634* > > *zeropointdevelopment.com | > @DeveloperWil * > > *Join us at WordPress Sydney * > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jwoithe at just42.net Fri Dec 2 15:37:38 2016 From: jwoithe at just42.net (Jonathan Woithe) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 15:07:38 +1030 Subject: [Linux-aus] [LACTTE] Grant Application for Meetup Group Hardware In-Reply-To: References: <592a0cba-2a9b-2539-ccf5-4f24974642fd@linux.org.au> Message-ID: <20161202043738.GF3549@marvin.atrad.com.au> On Fri, Dec 02, 2016 at 02:59:12PM +1100, Tim Ansell wrote: > I would personally recommend that LA **not** fund this grant request at > this moment. I would recommend funding such a grant request only after the > Wordcamp people have reliably produced videos for their user groups for 6 > events in a row. > > This however would leave Wordcamp with a "chicken and egg" problem -- they > can't get equipment until they have videos and they can't get videos until > they have equipement. As this group is in Sydney, I have a proposal to > solve this problem. > > I'm willing to *lend* the Wordcamp group the following equipment (on a > permanent basis) to allow them to produce high quality recordings; > : Given the information we now have (thanks Wil) I think this proposal is a very good idea. It provides the wordcamp people with the equipment they need to produce high quality video recordings and allows them to gauge whether doing so works for them in the long run. It also provides a way for the group to gain experience in the AV recording game (there's *much* more to it than meets the eye). If it turns out that making these videos works and appears sustainable over the longer term, a grant could then be applied for. Otherwise the idea can be dropped without any money being lost. All this comes as a result of the very generous offer from Tim. I can see no obvious downsides to this proposal. > As the setup is almost identical to that which will be used at LCA2017, I > would highly recommend that someone from the Wordcamp group attend LCA2017 > and volunteer to be part of the A/V team to get a better understanding of > how this equipment can be used and some hands on experience. I second this recommendation. Regards jonathan From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Fri Dec 2 16:14:46 2016 From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 00:14:46 -0500 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - Kathy - President or OCM In-Reply-To: <4ccc0722-f630-854c-8557-56537592147b@kathyreid.id.au> References: <4ccc0722-f630-854c-8557-56537592147b@kathyreid.id.au> Message-ID: <01c901d24c5b$01adada0$050908e0$@adam.com.au> Is it at all possible to state one?s position in less than 250 words? From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On Behalf Of Kathy Reid Sent: Tuesday, 22 November 2016 7:46 PM To: linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - Kathy - President or OCM Hi everyone, Firstly, I?d like to echo Hugh?s words, and strongly underline our joint, united, and well considered approach into this election. We both care deeply about the ideas and fundamentals of free and opensource hardware, software, data and communities - as evidenced by our commitment to LA over the past many years. The choice we present you with is deliberately designed to elicit a mandate on how you would like us to steer Linux Australia in the coming years. I see three paths for Linux Australia?s future, the foundations and drivers of which were covered in ?Inflection Point - a white paper on LA?s future to 2020? in late 2015 - an attempt to gather broad thoughts on a long term strategy for the organisation. https://goo.gl/08fGqr. This document did not have the outcome I was hoping for - some sort of consensus agreement on a future for Linux Australia, however it did start to spur discussion and reflection on where we want our organisation to go. To be clear, I am advocating for Scenario 2 below - Linux Australia makes key investments in a number of areas, offloading activities from an overloaded Council and volunteer base, allowing Council to focus efforts on stronger governance, advocacy and strengthening our membership base. We cannot undertake these efforts while we carry the load of ?business as usual? activities for Linux Australia. If we think of LA?s activities in terms of MoSCoW - must do, should do, could do, won?t do - we are currently struggling in terms of capacity to do the things that must be legally done as an incorporated association. This leaves no capacity for the things we should be doing, or would even like to be doing. Should I not be elected to the President role - and I strongly encourage others to nominate for this role if they have a strong vision and desire to do so - then I would seek to serve as OCM to provide organisational continuity to Council 2017, and allow others with a strong vision to lead. In terms of professional background, I bring to the table a strong technical background in web development, applications development, root cause analysis, videoconferencing and digital. I?ve held management and team leadership roles for nearly 15 years, have served 3 terms on Council in office-bearer roles (Secretary and VP), and was 2IC of linux.conf.au 2016 Geelong - LCA By the Bay - under David Bell?s excellent leadership. I also serve as Treasurer of Creative Geelong, Inc. I?m known for strong organisational skills and solid, well-structured governance documents. I ask not that you vote for me specifically - but give consideration and reflection to the direction you would like Linux Australia to take, and vote accordingly. With kind regards, Kathy _____ Scenario 1 - continue on current course Under this scenario, LA continues pretty much on its current course. The 7-member Council continues to be a volunteer force, and while passionate and dedicated, is overloaded by the demands of running an incorporated association that has a significant annual turnover and large stable of open source events. Without investment in a membership platform to communicate with members, member engagement continues to be suboptimal, centred on social media and mailing lists. Efforts to activate a membership pipeline focussed on younger and newer community members are not undertaken, and so the membership continues to 'age out', both due to other commitments (children, career, care of elderly relatives), lack of interest and so on. In order to reduce Council and volunteer burnout, activities of the organisation are pared back to ?minimum viable LA?, and decisions on whether to auspice events are made in this light - that is, are there sufficient volunteer hours to provide effective event oversight, or will auspicing this event mean that we don?t have bandwidth to do something else? Eventually this could lead to the key events of Linux Australia incorporating under their own brands / associations, removing the need for the oversight / administration role played by LA. Some of the events may not have the strength to form their own independent group and so may cease to run, or may be auspiced by local organisations. LUGs could continue to dwindle as the need for them - aside from being a technical community - is diminished by the internet, and the wide availability of information. The role of advocating for free and open technologies will likely fall to other groups, such as Electronic Frontiers Australia, Open Knowledge Foundation and the Open Australia Foundation. Scenario 2 - middle road course with investment in key areas This is the scenario I?m advocating for. Under this scenario, LA makes some key strategic investments in areas such as; * Membership platform - investment is made in CiviCRM or similar, making membership onboarding, communication and renewal much easier. * Hired help, such as through contractors - investment is made in offloading administrative and financial tasks to contractors to ease the 'doing' workload of Council and Subcommittees, reducing overload * Digital presence - investment is made in refreshing the website and social media of Linux Australia, better serving as a promotion and pipeline mechanism These actions help to reduce the load on Council and Subcommittees, and help to build a pipeline of newer members for the organisation. The events auspiced by Linux Australia remain so, now that additional capacity and competencies are available to ensure their effective running. The passion and will of Members is better able to be harnessed through the Membership platform, so the risk of burnout and overload is reduced (but not eliminated). Because assistance is available for the day to day running of the organisation, Council and Members are better positioned to take on additional activities such as whitepapers and submissions to government, furthering the objectives and values of the organisation. As you can see, these three options exist on a continuum from purely grass-roots to heavily commercialised. However, if we go too far down the commercialisation spectrum, then we might become something I don?t think we want to be - Scenario 3: Scenario 3 - more commercially focussed organisation Under this scenario, Linux Australia evolves into a fully commercial operation, with paid staff to undertake key functions of the organisation, and paid leaders. Staff would work on Linux Australia events and projects on a part time or full time basis, and undertake work which furthers the objectives and values of the organisation - like many of the items on our ?it would be nice to do X? list. Linux Australia events under this scenario would no longer be purely grassroots-organised. This is a double edged sword. The events would generally have a more commercial flavour, and ticket prices would increase to cover the labour costs of staff. This would necessitate legal changes to transition from an incorporated association to a company structure. To reiterate the point I make above, this isn?t something I think we want to be. _____ -- -- Kathy Reid Independent digital consultant email: kathy at kathyreid.id.au mobile: 0418 130 636 twitter: @kathyreid blog: http://blog.kathyreid.id.au linkedin: https://au.linkedin.com/in/kathyreid -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jamezpolley at gmail.com Fri Dec 2 16:57:33 2016 From: jamezpolley at gmail.com (James Polley) Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2016 16:57:33 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: References: <61fdb7bc-acd6-8aef-cb75-ed3ef8abd8fe@blemings.org> <20161201231822.GB5058@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: On Fri, Dec 2, 2016 at 10:51 AM, Nathan Bailey wrote: > On 2 December 2016 at 10:18, Anthony Towns wrote: >> >> So, for what it's worth, these things seem exactly in line with what I've >> seen from past councils over the past decade and a bit -- the council >> gets the boring, less visible work; council members have other things >> crop up that distracts them; and the best stuff is done by people who >> aren't actually on the council. >> >> It (still) seems to me like it'd be best for the council to recognise >> this reality and go with the flow, rather than trying to resist it... >> > > Or to propose a new model that actually puts council in a role of driving > a leadership agenda, rather than just management/support role. > > I think this is the crux of Kathy's platform - if council is to lead, then > other approaches must be identified to get the work done. > And for essential work, volunteers aren't an appropriate solution - > because they get busy, interrupted and sometimes don't have the required > skills. > Have a volunteer team is great, but the buck needs to stop somewhere, and > that's going to either be with staff or a contractor (or, as with the > membership database problem, it never gets done). > Just to provide some historical context (I don't mean this to be an argument for or against any of the proposals that Kathy/Hugh have presented, or for/against what Nathan has said here), I'd like to point out that a proposal that "puts council in the role of driving a leadership agenda" is not really a new model - it's more of a reversion to the prior model. You can read more context in the list archives, starting at http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2007-February/015125.html. To summarise, the body now called the Council used to be called the Committee, and its name was changed (at the 2008 AGM, following this conversation) to the Council. The intention behind the change was precisely what Nathan has identified here - the Council would provide oversight and support to the subcommittees, who did most of the work. Just to be clear, I don't intend to say that Kathy's second proposal should be taken as a reversion to a previously-rejected model; I think that what she's proposed is quite different from what's been done before; and even if it wasn't, I don't have a problem with changing back to an old model if that's what's appropriate for the times. I read Kathy's Scenario 2 as more of an evolution - moving even more of the administrivia away from the council members, so that they can spend more of their limited volunteering time focusing on strategic leadership. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell at coker.com.au Sat Dec 3 00:21:44 2016 From: russell at coker.com.au (Russell Coker) Date: Sat, 03 Dec 2016 00:21:44 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> On Friday, 2 December 2016 7:46:18 AM AEDT Anthony Towns wrote: > On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 02:45:10PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: > > 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). > > That seems kind of gold-plated, especially if the $23k doesn't include > the custom development that will actually let it do the one thing memberdb > actually does... Why so much? > > Is the admin team not happy to maintain an instance of civicrm directly? It is a lot of money and Linux sysadmin is something that many volunteers can do. But there aren't many people with CiviCRM skills and such projects can be complex. > > Response #2: Develop and execute a formal recruitment program aimed at > > younger potential members, [...] > > I'm not sure if this actually makes sense to me -- trying to get new > members only makes sense if being a member is actually valuable to people; > and if being an LA member is valuable, then word of mouth is probably > the best way of getting people involved anyway. People speak to other people in a similar situation to themselves. For example there's some interesting stuff going on with CoderDojos and helping school IT teachers. Probably few people here hang out with school IT teachers so word of mouth isn't going to work too well. > I kind of think that in practice that 95% of the reason LA is valuable > to anyone these days is that it helps people *run* events; and if so, > that isn't really valuable to that many people -- the pool of people > running open source related events in Australia (and maybe NZ) just > isn't that big. > Personally, I think of LA as an organisation run by/for open source > developers/admins/power users -- so, by and large, it doesn't make I think the problem here is that LA was traditionally an organisation for such people, but the LA council is focused on running events etc. This isn't a problem as such, changing the name to "council" with the aim of having lots of subcommittees was a good idea but it unfortunately didn't get followed through. We need subcommittees for things such as Linux advocacy. I will consider volunteering for such a subcommittee. > Personally, I think of LA as an organisation run by/for open source > developers/admins/power users -- so, by and large, it doesn't make > sense to me to out source things like running a website or developing a > voting module or whatever: that's our wheelhouse, those are the skills > our members have at their fingertips. Sure not everyone knows how to do > SQL queries or create a drupal module or whatever, but that just means > learning new skills and asking for some help when you need it. And isn't > that approach *exactly* the collaborative spirit of free software in > the first place? Yes. For most things that's the case. But CiviCRM is a little unusual. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/ From jamezpolley at gmail.com Sat Dec 3 15:10:03 2016 From: jamezpolley at gmail.com (James Polley) Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2016 15:10:03 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] How did non-event sub-comittees get formed? Message-ID: On Sat, Dec 3, 2016 at 12:21 AM, Russell Coker wrote: > On Friday, 2 December 2016 7:46:18 AM AEDT Anthony Towns wrote: > > > I kind of think that in practice that 95% of the reason LA is valuable > > to anyone these days is that it helps people *run* events; and if so, > > that isn't really valuable to that many people -- the pool of people > > running open source related events in Australia (and maybe NZ) just > > isn't that big. > > Personally, I think of LA as an organisation run by/for open source > > developers/admins/power users -- so, by and large, it doesn't make > > I think the problem here is that LA was traditionally an organisation for > such > people, but the LA council is focused on running events etc. This isn't a > problem as such, changing the name to "council" with the aim of having > lots of > subcommittees was a good idea but it unfortunately didn't get followed > through. > > We need subcommittees for things such as Linux advocacy. I will consider > volunteering for such a subcommittee. > I was about to respond by pointing to https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies/blob/master/subcommittee_policy_v2.md - but on closer reading, that policy seems to be only for event subcommittees. https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies/blob/master/subcommittee_policy_v1.md still refers to sub-committees that exist "to facilitate LA's operations or" as "a project undertaken with the governance of the council" Could a current council-member confirm that the "v1" policy is the policy that would apply to a Linux advocacy sub-committee? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wil at zeropointdevelopment.com Sat Dec 3 15:48:33 2016 From: wil at zeropointdevelopment.com (Wil Brown) Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2016 15:48:33 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] [LACTTE] Grant Application for Meetup Group Hardware In-Reply-To: <20161202043738.GF3549@marvin.atrad.com.au> References: <592a0cba-2a9b-2539-ccf5-4f24974642fd@linux.org.au> <20161202043738.GF3549@marvin.atrad.com.au> Message-ID: Hi Tim That's a fantastic and generous offer! Let me talk to the other organisers and see what they think of the proposal. Regards, Wil. On 2 December 2016 at 15:37, Jonathan Woithe wrote: > On Fri, Dec 02, 2016 at 02:59:12PM +1100, Tim Ansell wrote: > > I would personally recommend that LA **not** fund this grant request at > > this moment. I would recommend funding such a grant request only after > the > > Wordcamp people have reliably produced videos for their user groups for 6 > > events in a row. > > > > This however would leave Wordcamp with a "chicken and egg" problem -- > they > > can't get equipment until they have videos and they can't get videos > until > > they have equipement. As this group is in Sydney, I have a proposal to > > solve this problem. > > > > I'm willing to *lend* the Wordcamp group the following equipment (on a > > permanent basis) to allow them to produce high quality recordings; > > : > > Given the information we now have (thanks Wil) I think this proposal is a > very good idea. It provides the wordcamp people with the equipment they > need to produce high quality video recordings and allows them to gauge > whether doing so works for them in the long run. It also provides a way > for > the group to gain experience in the AV recording game (there's *much* more > to it than meets the eye). If it turns out that making these videos works > and appears sustainable over the longer term, a grant could then be applied > for. Otherwise the idea can be dropped without any money being lost. All > this comes as a result of the very generous offer from Tim. > > I can see no obvious downsides to this proposal. > > > As the setup is almost identical to that which will be used at LCA2017, I > > would highly recommend that someone from the Wordcamp group attend > LCA2017 > > and volunteer to be part of the A/V team to get a better understanding of > > how this equipment can be used and some hands on experience. > > I second this recommendation. > > Regards > jonathan > -- Wil Brown *Web Developer, WordPress Consultant & Speaker**Zero Point Development* * - We* ? *WordPress* *Skype: DeveloperWil m. 0423 526 829 p. +61 (0)2 809 13634* *zeropointdevelopment.com | @DeveloperWil * *Join us at WordPress Sydney * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Sat Dec 3 23:11:47 2016 From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd) Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2016 07:11:47 -0500 Subject: [Linux-aus] How did non-event sub-comittees get formed? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <00e201d24d5e$6d3acb80$47b06280$@adam.com.au> As Chancellor Palpatine, paraphrased, said to Queen Amidala, ?Now the bureaucrats step in.? From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On Behalf Of James Polley Sent: Friday, 2 December 2016 11:10 PM To: russell at coker.com.au Cc: Linux Australia List Subject: [Linux-aus] How did non-event sub-comittees get formed? On Sat, Dec 3, 2016 at 12:21 AM, Russell Coker > wrote: On Friday, 2 December 2016 7:46:18 AM AEDT Anthony Towns wrote: > I kind of think that in practice that 95% of the reason LA is valuable > to anyone these days is that it helps people *run* events; and if so, > that isn't really valuable to that many people -- the pool of people > running open source related events in Australia (and maybe NZ) just > isn't that big. > Personally, I think of LA as an organisation run by/for open source > developers/admins/power users -- so, by and large, it doesn't make I think the problem here is that LA was traditionally an organisation for such people, but the LA council is focused on running events etc. This isn't a problem as such, changing the name to "council" with the aim of having lots of subcommittees was a good idea but it unfortunately didn't get followed through. We need subcommittees for things such as Linux advocacy. I will consider volunteering for such a subcommittee. I was about to respond by pointing to https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies/blob/master/subcommittee_policy_v2.md - but on closer reading, that policy seems to be only for event subcommittees. https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies/blob/master/subcommittee_policy_v1.md still refers to sub-committees that exist "to facilitate LA's operations or" as "a project undertaken with the governance of the council" Could a current council-member confirm that the "v1" policy is the policy that would apply to a Linux advocacy sub-committee? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aj at erisian.com.au Sun Dec 4 10:30:06 2016 From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns) Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2016 09:30:06 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] How did non-event sub-comittees get formed? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20161203233006.GA12360@erisian.com.au> On Sat, Dec 03, 2016 at 03:10:03PM +1100, James Polley wrote: > We need subcommittees for things such as Linux advocacy.? I will consider > volunteering for such a subcommittee. > I was about to respond by pointing to https://github.com/linuxaustralia/ > constitution_and_policies/blob/master/subcommittee_policy_v2.md - but on closer > reading, that policy seems to be only for event subcommittees. The treasury subctte is under the v2 policy according to https://linux.org.au/treasury-and-finance-subcommittee I thought I remembered something about the v1 policy being kept around for non-events (heh), but I can't recall any details. Cheers, aj From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Sun Dec 4 10:56:06 2016 From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid) Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2016 10:56:06 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] How did non-event sub-comittees get formed? In-Reply-To: <20161203233006.GA12360@erisian.com.au> References: <20161203233006.GA12360@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: <276074c0-e65f-7cd5-2d06-4a12f4e85626@kathyreid.id.au> At the risk of sounding like a bureaucrat (let alone a Sith Lord!), I'd just like to provide some background here. The legal basis for Subcommittees is S(21) of the LA Constitution [1] which in essence allows the Committee (Council) to delegate powers to a Subcommittee - the instruments for doing so - such as policies - are left up to the organisation. This seems like a great opportunity for someone to have a look at v1 and v2 of our Subcommittee policy and see if one or both need revision for non-event Subcommittees, and propose changes / amendments / additions to our policy suite [2]. For example, Chris Neugebauer did some excellent work taking v1 as the basis and producing v2 a couple of years ago to ensure that events have some long-term oversight, even if they're run by different teams year to year. Do we need revisions to our non-event Subcommittee policy to have more effective Subcommittees and better facilitate people making contributions on Subcommittees (and thanks too Russell for your interest here)? Let's turn the conversation into an action item or productive outcome. Kind regards, Kathy [1] https://linux.org.au/constitution [2] https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies On 04/12/16 10:30, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Sat, Dec 03, 2016 at 03:10:03PM +1100, James Polley wrote: >> We need subcommittees for things such as Linux advocacy. I will consider >> volunteering for such a subcommittee. >> I was about to respond by pointing to https://github.com/linuxaustralia/ >> constitution_and_policies/blob/master/subcommittee_policy_v2.md - but on closer >> reading, that policy seems to be only for event subcommittees. > The treasury subctte is under the v2 policy according to > > https://linux.org.au/treasury-and-finance-subcommittee > > I thought I remembered something about the v1 policy being kept around > for non-events (heh), but I can't recall any details. > > Cheers, > aj > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus From paulway at mabula.net Sun Dec 4 11:14:12 2016 From: paulway at mabula.net (Paul Wayper) Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2016 11:14:12 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> Message-ID: On 03/12/16 00:21, Russell Coker wrote: > On Friday, 2 December 2016 7:46:18 AM AEDT Anthony Towns wrote: >> On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 02:45:10PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: >>> 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). >> >> That seems kind of gold-plated, especially if the $23k doesn't include >> the custom development that will actually let it do the one thing memberdb >> actually does... Why so much? >> >> Is the admin team not happy to maintain an instance of civicrm directly? > > It is a lot of money and Linux sysadmin is something that many volunteers can > do. But there aren't many people with CiviCRM skills and such projects can be > complex. Of course, if AJ is volunteering to do the conversion, maybe we could save that money! It'd be good if he could also volunteer to maintain the CiviCRM instance, rewrite MemberDB for the 21st century, or whatever alternative is deemed suitable, that'd be good too. Personally, I don't see the problem with spending the money if we don't have someone volunteering to do that conversion work. Linux Australia has a healthy balance sheet, the ongoing expenditure is small, and >> I'm not sure if this actually makes sense to me -- trying to get new >> members only makes sense if being a member is actually valuable to people; >> and if being an LA member is valuable, then word of mouth is probably >> the best way of getting people involved anyway. What do you mean by "value" here? To me the benefits of LA membership are: * involvement in the advocacy and community that LA provides * voting at the AGM * warm feeling that I'm contributing I proposed some more tangible benefits a while back, like: * members getting a 'username at members.linux.org.au' address with SSMTP/IMAPS access. * LA running an OpenID server for members but all those require work on the part of Linux Australia (not to mention expenditure for equipment and more bureaucracy) and I realised that if I couldn't volunteer to do it myself I shouldn't really be advocating for someone else to do it. And it was pointed out to me that members already have email addresses, many have their own servers, and don't need or don't care about these things. So I'm intrigued what you see the 'value' of a membership to be. Why do you think that we _shouldn't_ bother with getting new members? > We need subcommittees for things such as Linux advocacy. I will consider > volunteering for such a subcommittee. I'm all for advocacy, and I would endorse Russell and AJ for such a subcommittee. >> Personally, I think of LA as an organisation run by/for open source >> developers/admins/power users -- so, by and large, it doesn't make >> sense to me to out source things like running a website or developing a >> voting module or whatever: that's our wheelhouse, those are the skills >> our members have at their fingertips. Sure not everyone knows how to do >> SQL queries or create a drupal module or whatever, but that just means >> learning new skills and asking for some help when you need it. And isn't >> that approach *exactly* the collaborative spirit of free software in >> the first place? The problem is: how exactly does that happen? I don't know who's on the Linux Australia systems admin team - I'm not even sure it's shown on the website. I don't know how anyone becomes part of that team - I assume the interested people just get in touch with them somehow via IRC or email. If you want to volunteer for this, AJ, I'm sure they'd be happy to have another person to help. But you and I know that "the skills our members have at their fingertips" doesn't translate into "stuff actually gets done". In Strine this is encapsulated in the word 'Aorta' - as in 'Aorta fix that'. So I'm really wary of us ordinary members saying "the admins should totally do X" or "Linux Australia should implement Y" or "why are we spending money on doing Z when we can do it ourselves?" I think it's totally fair for Linux Australia to resolve to do something, and discuss it with the members (as they're doing now). And if Linux Australia decides, after all that discussion, that the best way of implementing what they want to achieve is by doing things a particular way and possibly paying money to have it done, then that's OK. In all of this I also am trying to avoid saying "LA should do something" when I'm not (at the moment) in a position to volunteer my time for that commitment. But hopefully this is something they could take on board. Hope this helps, Paul From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Sun Dec 4 11:47:42 2016 From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd) Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2016 19:47:42 -0500 Subject: [Linux-aus] How did non-event sub-comittees get formed? In-Reply-To: <276074c0-e65f-7cd5-2d06-4a12f4e85626@kathyreid.id.au> References: <20161203233006.GA12360@erisian.com.au> <276074c0-e65f-7cd5-2d06-4a12f4e85626@kathyreid.id.au> Message-ID: <013201d24dc8$07906ff0$16b14fd0$@adam.com.au> A strict reading of the constitution would indicate that provided the instrument of delegation to a sub-committee does not delegate the council's power to delegate its power, or otherwise delegate a power that any relevant law requires the elected committee to perform, it may do so (the Linux Australia Constitution ("Constitution"), 21 contained in section 3). Whilst I realise that policies and procedures need to be in place, there's actually no legal reason why it couldn't delegate any of its powers to a sub-committee so long as it fell within furthering the aims and objectives of Linux Australi ("Constitution", 13 (a, b, c)). The power to do so was in the original constitution as approved by the association. On a quick look at version 2 of the subcommittee policy (here ), I'd suggest renaming that (git mv) to "conference subcommittee policy" and creating a new "subcommittee policy". In fact, if one wanted to go OOP style, one could gut part of the "conference subcommittee policy" into the "subcommittee policy" as I'm sure there would be an overlap between, say, a "Linux Australia - Australian Government Advocacy Subcommittee" and the "LCA Subcommittee". (To be concrete, V2 of the subcommittee policy talks about running a conference. A possible advocacy subcommittee might not even want to run a conference.) But, to continue our Star Wars analogy, as the commander mentions to Lord Vader, "The Emperor asks the impossible - we need more men." (I'm sorry, that's a quote - it's probably against Linux Australia's inclusion policy/policies to stipulate "men" but it seems that misogyny lives on in a galaxy far, far away). That, I think, is the crux of the problem; Linux Australia doesn't seem to have a governance issue as it once did many years ago before the ratification of the original association. It never really did but prior to then its governance fell too strongly on one or perhaps two people's shoulders, a situation I'm sure we'd all agree wasn't fair to those people - and let me make it clear those people did a very good job. In fact, I'm not sure why an advocacy subcommittee has to be as formal as described in the constitution itself. Sure, to satisfy the legal definition you'd probably need at least two members - although three is probably a more workable number - and in case the Council was worried about what they might actually do in its name they could fairly much neuter it by saying, "You can't do anything BUT advise us to do SOMETHING on this range of SOMETHINGS." So an advocacy committee could come to the conclusion that "LA should host lemonade stands outside each parliamentarian's office" which, I suppose, the Council might reject. Or they might suggest "Linux Australia allocates [some funds] to work with [some professional marketers] to [do something]" and maybe then Linux Australia might delegate more authority to the subcommittee and make it more formal - especially if its busy doing other things like running multiple events, dealing with this and that. I think: 1. Fix the subcommittee policy; 2. Garner the enthusiasm demonstrated to create a subcommittee to perform "advocacy" (or some other worthy objective). .is the wrong order to fix things at the moment. I'd suggest: 1. Find a reason for an "advocacy subcommittee" to exist, make one up even if the initial delegation is to "define its role amongst its members and make a proposal within 2 weeks to formalise what powers are needed to perform that role"; 2. Fix the subcommittee policy. Or, as Queen Amidala herself sort of said, "I did not come here . to discuss things in a committee." DSL > -----Original Message----- > From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On Behalf > Of Kathy Reid > Sent: Saturday, 3 December 2016 6:56 PM > To: linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] How did non-event sub-comittees get formed? > > At the risk of sounding like a bureaucrat (let alone a Sith Lord!), I'd just > like to provide some background here. > > The legal basis for Subcommittees is S(21) of the LA Constitution [1] > which in essence allows the Committee (Council) to delegate powers to > a Subcommittee - the instruments for doing so - such as policies - are left > up to the organisation. > > This seems like a great opportunity for someone to have a look at v1 and > v2 of our Subcommittee policy and see if one or both need revision for > non-event Subcommittees, and propose changes / amendments / > additions to our policy suite [2]. For example, Chris Neugebauer did > some excellent work taking v1 as the basis and producing v2 a couple of > years ago to ensure that events have some long-term oversight, even if > they're run by different teams year to year. > > Do we need revisions to our non-event Subcommittee policy to have > more effective Subcommittees and better facilitate people making > contributions on Subcommittees (and thanks too Russell for your interest > here)? > > Let's turn the conversation into an action item or productive outcome. > > Kind regards, > Kathy > > > [1] https://linux.org.au/constitution > > [2] https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies > > > On 04/12/16 10:30, Anthony Towns wrote: > > On Sat, Dec 03, 2016 at 03:10:03PM +1100, James Polley wrote: > >> We need subcommittees for things such as Linux advocacy. I will > consider > >> volunteering for such a subcommittee. > >> I was about to respond by pointing to > >> https://github.com/linuxaustralia/ > >> constitution_and_policies/blob/master/subcommittee_policy_v2.md > - but > >> on closer reading, that policy seems to be only for event > subcommittees. > > The treasury subctte is under the v2 policy according to > > > > https://linux.org.au/treasury-and-finance-subcommittee > > > > I thought I remembered something about the v1 policy being kept > around > > for non-events (heh), but I can't recall any details. > > > > Cheers, > > aj > > > > _______________________________________________ > > linux-aus mailing list > > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aj at erisian.com.au Sun Dec 4 12:17:15 2016 From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns) Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2016 11:17:15 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> Message-ID: <20161204011715.GB12360@erisian.com.au> On Sat, Dec 03, 2016 at 12:21:44AM +1100, Russell Coker wrote: > On Friday, 2 December 2016 7:46:18 AM AEDT Anthony Towns wrote: > > On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 02:45:10PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: > > > 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). > > That seems kind of gold-plated, especially if the $23k doesn't include > > the custom development that will actually let it do the one thing memberdb > > actually does... Why so much? > > Is the admin team not happy to maintain an instance of civicrm directly? > It is a lot of money and Linux sysadmin is something that many volunteers can > do. But there aren't many people with CiviCRM skills and such projects can be > complex. A quick web search shows two (apparently) cheaper ways to outsource CiviCRM hosting: https://civihosting.com -- $20 installation, $240/year; unmanaged http://www.civi-go.net -- $0 upfront, ~$1500/year; managed updates Honestly, I'd worry a bit that any cloud hosting provider can actually maintain the data securely if our admins aren't confident of doing it themselves. And the more complex things are the harder it is to deal with a breach, eg by switching to a different, more securable service (cf the wiki data leaks we've had)... Having a quick look back through the published LA minutes, I'm guessing the $23k+$2500/year figures are based on quotes obtained by the membeship subctte in May and June: https://linux.org.au/meeting/2016-05-24 (Agileware & DevApp quotes) https://linux.org.au/meeting/2016-06-03 (Agileware 2 quotes) This seems like a case where the grants process is much better -- air the reasons for spending money and the amount as early as possible, and let people come up with ideas for cheaper and better approaches if they exist. (Also, it looks like the membership subctte doesn't have a page at https://linux.org.au/sub-committees ; also wrt the other thread, seems like it was constituted under the v1 subctte policy: https://linux.org.au/meeting/2016-02-18 ...) > > > Response #2: Develop and execute a formal recruitment program aimed at > > > younger potential members, [...] > > I'm not sure if this actually makes sense to me -- trying to get new > > members only makes sense if being a member is actually valuable to people; > > and if being an LA member is valuable, then word of mouth is probably > > the best way of getting people involved anyway. > People speak to other people in a similar situation to themselves. > For example there's some interesting stuff going on with CoderDojos and > helping school IT teachers. Probably few people here hang out with school IT > teachers so word of mouth isn't going to work too well. There was a talk on CoderDojo at PyCon AU last year: http://pyvideo.org/pycon-au-2015/trials-tribulations-teaching-python-at-coderdoj.html so in this instance word of mouth seems to be working fine to me? Maybe I'm missing something though? What value does LA provide that a formal recruitment program would enable CoderDojo students (ie, younger potential members) to access? Cheers, aj From jamezpolley at gmail.com Sun Dec 4 16:52:06 2016 From: jamezpolley at gmail.com (James Polley) Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2016 16:52:06 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] How did non-event sub-comittees get formed? In-Reply-To: <013201d24dc8$07906ff0$16b14fd0$@adam.com.au> References: <20161203233006.GA12360@erisian.com.au> <276074c0-e65f-7cd5-2d06-4a12f4e85626@kathyreid.id.au> <013201d24dc8$07906ff0$16b14fd0$@adam.com.au> Message-ID: On Sun, Dec 4, 2016 at 11:47 AM, David Lloyd wrote: > > > A strict reading of the constitution would indicate that provided the > instrument of delegation to a sub-committee does not delegate the council?s > power to delegate its power, or otherwise delegate a power that any > relevant law requires the elected committee to perform, it may do so (the > Linux Australia Constitution (?Constitution?), 21 contained in section 3). > Whilst I realise that policies and procedures need to be in place, there?s > actually no *legal* reason why it couldn?t delegate any of its powers to > a sub-committee so long as it fell within furthering the aims and > objectives of Linux Australi (?Constitution?, 13 (a, b, c)). > > > > The power to do so was in the original constitution as approved by the > association. > > > > On a quick look at version 2 of the subcommittee policy (here > ), > I?d suggest renaming that (git mv) to ?conference subcommittee policy? and > creating a new ?subcommittee policy?. In fact, if one wanted to go OOP > style, one could gut part of the ?conference subcommittee policy? into the > ?subcommittee policy? as I?m sure there would be an overlap between, say, a > ?Linux Australia ? Australian Government Advocacy Subcommittee? and the > ?LCA Subcommittee?. > > > > (To be concrete, V2 of the subcommittee policy talks about running a > conference. A possible advocacy subcommittee might not even want to run a > conference.) > > > > But, to continue our Star Wars analogy, as the commander mentions to Lord > Vader, ?The Emperor asks the impossible ? we need more men.? (I?m sorry, > that?s a quote ? it?s probably against Linux Australia?s inclusion > policy/policies to stipulate ?men? but it seems that misogyny lives on in a > galaxy far, far away). That, I think, is the crux of the problem; Linux > Australia doesn?t seem to have a governance issue as it once did many years > ago before the ratification of the original association. It never really > did but prior to then its governance fell too strongly on one or perhaps > two people?s shoulders, a situation I?m sure we?d all agree wasn?t fair to > those people ? and let me make it clear those people did a very good job. > > > > In fact, I?m not sure why an advocacy subcommittee has to be as formal as > described in the constitution itself. Sure, to satisfy the legal definition > you?d probably need at least two members ? although three is probably a > more workable number ? and in case the Council was worried about what they > might actually do in its name they could fairly much neuter it by saying, > ?You can?t do anything BUT advise us to do SOMETHING on this range of > SOMETHINGS.? So an advocacy committee could come to the conclusion that ?LA > should host lemonade stands outside each parliamentarian?s office? which, I > suppose, the Council might reject. Or they might suggest ?Linux Australia > allocates [some funds] to work with [some professional marketers] to [do > something]? and maybe then Linux Australia might delegate more authority to > the subcommittee and make it more formal ? especially if its busy doing > other things like running multiple events, dealing with this and that. > To be clear, I completely agree that there's no particular reason why people who want to do a thing (eg, advocacy) actually need to formally form a subcommittee. The v2 policy does describe some of the things that subcommittees get - delegated access to bank accounts with money in them, and legal authority to negotiate contracts. If you're running an event, running it as an LA subcommittee gives you coverage under LA's insurance policies. But a lot of tasks don't actually need any of that. If you wanted to write a blog post, or give a talk at a LUG, or a host of other advocacy actions, forming a subcommittee is almost certainly overkill. If a lot of people were doing advocacy and wanted to have a coordinating group and some dedicated funding, that might be the point where it's worth creating a subcommittee. > > I think: > > > > 1. Fix the subcommittee policy; > > 2. Garner the enthusiasm demonstrated to create a subcommittee to > perform ?advocacy? (or some other worthy objective)? > > > > ?is the wrong order to fix things at the moment. I?d suggest: > > > > 1. Find a reason for an ?advocacy subcommittee? to exist, make one > up even if the initial delegation is to ?define its role amongst its > members and make a proposal within 2 weeks to formalise what powers are > needed to perform that role?; > > 2. Fix the subcommittee policy. > > > > Or, as Queen Amidala herself sort of said, ?I did not come here ? to > discuss things in a committee.? > > > > > > DSL > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On Behalf > > > Of Kathy Reid > > > Sent: Saturday, 3 December 2016 6:56 PM > > > To: linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > > > Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] How did non-event sub-comittees get formed? > > > > > > At the risk of sounding like a bureaucrat (let alone a Sith Lord!), I'd > just > > > like to provide some background here. > > > > > > The legal basis for Subcommittees is S(21) of the LA Constitution [1] > > > which in essence allows the Committee (Council) to delegate powers to > > > a Subcommittee - the instruments for doing so - such as policies - are > left > > > up to the organisation. > > > > > > This seems like a great opportunity for someone to have a look at v1 and > > > v2 of our Subcommittee policy and see if one or both need revision for > > > non-event Subcommittees, and propose changes / amendments / > > > additions to our policy suite [2]. For example, Chris Neugebauer did > > > some excellent work taking v1 as the basis and producing v2 a couple of > > > years ago to ensure that events have some long-term oversight, even if > > > they're run by different teams year to year. > > > > > > Do we need revisions to our non-event Subcommittee policy to have > > > more effective Subcommittees and better facilitate people making > > > contributions on Subcommittees (and thanks too Russell for your interest > > > here)? > > > > > > Let's turn the conversation into an action item or productive outcome. > > > > > > Kind regards, > > > Kathy > > > > > > > > > [1] https://linux.org.au/constitution > > > > > > [2] https://github.com/linuxaustralia/constitution_and_policies > > > > > > > > > On 04/12/16 10:30, Anthony Towns wrote: > > > > On Sat, Dec 03, 2016 at 03:10:03PM +1100, James Polley wrote: > > > >> We need subcommittees for things such as Linux advocacy. I will > > > consider > > > >> volunteering for such a subcommittee. > > > >> I was about to respond by pointing to > > > >> https://github.com/linuxaustralia/ > > > >> constitution_and_policies/blob/master/subcommittee_policy_v2.md > > > - but > > > >> on closer reading, that policy seems to be only for event > > > subcommittees. > > > > The treasury subctte is under the v2 policy according to > > > > > > > > https://linux.org.au/treasury-and-finance-subcommittee > > > > > > > > I thought I remembered something about the v1 policy being kept > > > around > > > > for non-events (heh), but I can't recall any details. > > > > > > > > Cheers, > > > > aj > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > linux-aus mailing list > > > > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > > > > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > linux-aus mailing list > > > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > > > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aj at erisian.com.au Wed Dec 7 09:44:12 2016 From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 08:44:12 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> Message-ID: <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> On Sun, Dec 04, 2016 at 11:14:12AM +1100, Paul Wayper wrote: > On 03/12/16 00:21, Russell Coker wrote: > > On Friday, 2 December 2016 7:46:18 AM AEDT Anthony Towns wrote: > >> On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 02:45:10PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: > >>> 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). > >> > >> That seems kind of gold-plated, especially if the $23k doesn't include > >> the custom development that will actually let it do the one thing memberdb > >> actually does... Why so much? > >> > >> Is the admin team not happy to maintain an instance of civicrm directly? > > > > It is a lot of money and Linux sysadmin is something that many volunteers can > > do. But there aren't many people with CiviCRM skills and such projects can be > > complex. > Of course, if AJ is volunteering to do the conversion, maybe we could save > that money! So I've done the "count-to-ten" thing before replying to this (and thrown away a previous draft), because the whole "let's mock someone by sarcastically suggesting they should volunteer" gets on my nerves. I've volunteered to help out LA in the past; the most recent major contribution I did was back in 2008ish getting LA's accounting records into a self-maintained open source system, ready to pass on to a new treasurer. The incoming council junked it immediately, in favour of switching to a proprietary SaaS solution, Xero. I don't think there's any point volunteering to help if the powers that be are going to oppose your efforts. I was caught by surprise at that being the case previously in regards to managing our accounts with open source stuff. I'm trying to avoid being fooled in the same way again, given that it looks to me like it's also true now: Kathy is VP and on (or head of?) the membership committee, and already has a definite plan, and over the past couple of years that plan doesn't seem to have budged much at all in response to any of the concerns I have. For instance (quoting out of order): > So I'm really wary of us ordinary members saying "the admins should totally do > X" or "Linux Australia should implement Y" or "why are we spending money on > doing Z when we can do it ourselves?" ("Why are we doing X instead of Y?" seems like it's *always* a good question for members to ask and the council to be able to answer, to me. Modulo rate-limiting in extremes, I guess) The alternative to "let's pay someone to do X" isn't "let's demand someone do X for free", it's "let people who want to do X, Y or Z do a demo and then evaluate the results and pick one or more of them". I proposed that at the start of the year [0] but got shot down by Hugh [1] in favour of having a committee that can work out which themselves. Kathy then formed that committee, and within a week the requirements doc was updated to talk specifically about CiviCRM, and within about a month the committee was working on "understanding the scope of .. a Drupal/CiviCRM implementation" [2] and two months after that, was getting CiviCRM quotes [3]. Maybe there was some detailed review of concerns and alternative options that took place sometime in that period but never got posted to anywhere I've seen; but to me it looks more like it was all about getting to the already chosen solution. That's not necessarily a bad thing: I don't know Kathy at all well, but she seems pretty impressive to me, so "Kathy has a plan, let her execute it" is probably a fine way to run an organisation. Certainly other successful organisations have some form of "supreme absolute benevolent dictator for life" approach to leadership -- Linux kernel development, for example. But in any organisation that's run like that, if you have concerns about the plan, and don't have the ear of the leader (and don't want a drawn out fight that you're likely to lose), it's not a good idea to spend much energy or time on the organisation. > >> I'm not sure if this actually makes sense to me -- trying to get new > >> members only makes sense if being a member is actually valuable to people; > >> and if being an LA member is valuable, then word of mouth is probably > >> the best way of getting people involved anyway. > What do you mean by "value" here? To me the benefits of LA membership are: The benefits of LA membership for organisers of open source events include: - a registered organisation for official-ness - hassles about getting insurance already dealt with - access to credit card merchant facilities - availability of substantial existing funds to ease cash flow problems - existing procedures for handling tax stuff, some of the bother of which is taken care of for you by other people - contacts with people experienced in running conferences, doing conference videos and networking, etc - long term hosting of conference materials like videos - some hosting and admin support - people with LA debit cards able to cover small expenses like DNS registration or meetup.org costs Those are real valuable benefits, and if there's some collection of Australian, open source related event organisers out there that don't already have those things taken care of, a PR/recruitment campaign would totally make sense. > So I'm intrigued what you see the 'value' of a membership to be. Why do you > think that we _shouldn't_ bother with getting new members? Outside of event organisers, I don't think LA currently provides much value to members; and as far as I can see, there's no untapped group of open source event organisers that a recruitment effort coule tap into. I think LA could be valuable for more things than just organising events, but until that happens, recruiting new members on that basis is just selling vapourware. > I don't know who's on the Linux > Australia systems admin team - I'm not even sure it's shown on the website. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=linux+australia+admin+team (to be fair, if you include the word "systems" you don't get a useful result) > But you and I know that "the skills our members have at their fingertips" > doesn't translate into "stuff actually gets done". In Strine this is > encapsulated in the word 'Aorta' - as in 'Aorta fix that'. Even if you do have the skills, interest and motivation, without support from the council things still don't get done. For example, back after LCA in 2014 I was chatting with the Francois (then LA treasurer) about using Xero's REST API to write some scripts to automate some of the LA reports or similar. He got me setup with read-only access to the LA accounts, and since that let me look into the details, we had ended up having some productive discussions about how LCA2014 finances actually went [4], but it turned out that Xero doesn't provide REST access to read-only accounts (even if you only want to use read-only endpoints), and Francois had other worries (particularly dealing with LCA2014 finances, but also a server compromise, holidays, and other whatnot) so I never got sufficient perms to do anything useful and let it drop. > I think it's totally fair for Linux Australia to resolve to do something, and > discuss it with the members (as they're doing now). It doesn't really seem like a discussion at all to me; it seems to me that setting up CiviCRM has been something Kathy resolved to do sometime in 2014, and the public discussion since then has only been in aid of making that happen. For example, in this thread there hasn't actually been a response as to what the money's actually paying for, or why it's not being self hosted, despite those things presumably having been known by the council and membership ctte for seven months or more by now. > And if Linux Australia > decides, after all that discussion, that the best way of implementing what > they want to achieve is by doing things a particular way and possibly paying > money to have it done, then that's OK. And sure, it *is* okay to be decide things with only limited consultation in private and be kind of opaque about how and why the decisions were made and then expect the community to just go along with those decisions, even when those decisions involve lots of money -- that's kind of how LCA gets run for example. If anyone doen't like it, it's not like they have to be a member of LA or anything. But honestly, I don't think that approach is a win here; it doesn't even seem any faster or more efficient -- Kathy's been talking about this for at least three years already [5] and as far as I can tell the only practical progress that's actually been made in that time has been the "confirm your membership" stuff a couple of months ago. If Kathy had been just a regular member trying to help, and had made that little progress on a very real problem, I'd be asking why the council wasn't providing more support [6], or at least why they weren't making it a lot clearer what the problems are, with some ideas on how to deal with them (eg, maybe the money is a concern, in which case there should be a solution to addressing that other than "become LA president and you can spend as much as you like on whatever you want"). But Kathy is on the council, so presumably already knows the answers to those questions as well as anyone, even if I don't. Cheers, aj [0] http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2016-February/022584.html [1] http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2016-February/022589.html [2] http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2016-March/022626.html [3] https://linux.org.au/meeting/2016-05-24 [4] resulting in http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2014-June/021611.html (most of the text seems to have vanished from the archived copy of my mail in that thread, but still appears fine as quote in Sylvia's reply. weird) [5] http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2014-January/021367.html [6] and I did kind of ask that of Hugh already, http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/2016-December/022845.html From russell-humbug at stuart.id.au Wed Dec 7 10:05:35 2016 From: russell-humbug at stuart.id.au (Russell Stuart) Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2016 09:05:35 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: <1481065535.3367.4.camel@stuart.id.au> On Wed, 2016-12-07 at 08:44 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > Xero's REST API to write some scripts to automate some of the > LA reports or similar. There are API's? I needed to get data out of the thing so I could reconcile it ZooKeepr and budgets, and it looked to me like Xero went out of its way to lock up your data. I assumed that was deliberate. In the end I restored to screen scraping. From aj at erisian.com.au Wed Dec 7 10:35:22 2016 From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 09:35:22 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <1481065535.3367.4.camel@stuart.id.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <1481065535.3367.4.camel@stuart.id.au> Message-ID: <20161206233522.GA3269@erisian.com.au> On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 09:05:35AM +1000, Russell Stuart wrote: > On Wed, 2016-12-07 at 08:44 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > > Xero's REST API to write some scripts to automate some of the > > LA reports or similar. > There are API's? See https://developer.xero.com/documentation/api/banktransactions/ etc Everything has a REST API these days, some of them are even useful... I installed QubesOS on my laptop the other week and haven't finished recovering from the experience, so I don't have whatever code I'd written at the time handy at the moment. Can look through my backups later though. Cheers, aj From hugh at blemings.org Wed Dec 7 10:49:40 2016 From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 10:49:40 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> Hi AJ, All, Thanks for your considered reply AJ. What follows is a bit of a combo of attempt to respond and open letter, please bear with me. I've had a busy few weeks and while I'm aware there were some outstanding questions from your earlier emails, I just haven't had the bandwidth sorry. You raise some fair questions about the choice of membership management platform, in particular going for FOSS alternatives versus something FOSS+paid for or whatever combination CivCRM might be seen to represent. I had understood that this had been canvassed by the Membership Committee and while I recognise Kathy may have a preference for CiviCRM, yours is the first suggestion I've had that she has allowed this preference to overshadow a proper evaluation process. I'll leave it to her to comment further on that - not I hasten to add because I'm cranky about what you've said :) Candidly - would love to have you contribute if you've the bandwidth - I'd reached out once or twice and not heard from you so assumed you were frantic - which is ok :) It'd be wonderful to have your expertise and energy back in Council or wherever you feel fit to contribute. The tricky bit with this will always be whether we can have tools that are truly maintainable in the long term versus varying degrees of commercial offerings. While in some ways unfortunate, the move to Xero does seem to have paid other dividends, but perhaps this could have been accomplished with Libre tools as well ? I'd, truly, love to be proven wrong in this, but given the difficulties we face as an organisation just keeping what we have ticking over with stretched but capable volunteers I'm frankly unsure where we go in the pay versus roll your own equation - I trust others smarter than I to research, report and implement. I'm going to suggest something a little radical perhaps too - is it worth convening an actual real-time conversation (say teleconference) to kick some of these things over amongst interested folk. Email can at times be a blunt instrument ? Cheers, Hugh From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Wed Dec 7 17:57:13 2016 From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 17:57:13 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> Message-ID: Thanks everyone - this sort of robust debate and evaluation of our actions I feel helps us both ensure we're doing the right things, and doing them the right way. This feedback is welcome - it is passionate and well argued. The opposite of passion is apathy. TL;DR a round table / hangout / teleconf with passionate people is a great idea - thanks Hugh for suggesting it. AJ, your email questioned a number of actions and directions and I'd like to take the opportunity to respond if I may. Why choose CiviCRM, choose to have it outsourced not hosted internally, and why does it cost $23k? To begin the selection process, we identified a set of user requirements, written as user stories (ie. 'As the Secretary I want to do X function to get Y outcome). This set of requirements was tested against both existing MemberDB and CiviCRM demo instance. We didn't go further than CiviCRM (for instance SugarCRM or other open CRMs) because the fit with CiviCRM was strong, and it also ran on Drupal (our existing web platform), and there are several CiviCRM providers in Australia. Should we have looked wider for other CRM tools that fit the requirements? Possibly, but each assessment is time - and we are stretched for time. We also (at Hugh's prompting - all credit here) looked at whether MemberDB rewrite would be a suitable option. The writer of MemberDB advised us to adopt CiviCRM. We sought three quotes for CiviCRM implementation (the three CiviCRM partners in Australia listed on the CiviCRM website). One vendor didn't respond, a second's approach was appalling (requiring a signed document before a conversation) and the third, from a company called AgileWare, was thorough, methodical and robust. I have no relationship or history with AgileWare. So, to why we would outsource the setup and support of CiviCRM. Firstly, it's a specialised product. You need product knowledge to configure it appropriately, and undertake ETL from the other system (MemberDB). So why get it hosted externally? For the same reason. It's a specialist product, not say a vanilla httpd or smtpd - it requires specialist knowledge to host and tune it well. Is $23k too much? No, this included setup, configuration and ETL of CivicCRM and some training on getting the most out of the system. Both Hugh and I bounced this off others who work in the web space - as I do professionally - and this was considered 'ball park'. One point I'd like to make here is about *using* an open source system versus *running* one. While I agree that Linux Australia should wherever possible run open source systems, it's the Council and Subcommittees that have to *use* the tools that we put in place. I, and others in Council, spend hours per week on LA systems - they need to be easy to use - and not a chore. If there's an error, I need it fixed. If the system's down, I need an SLA to tell me when it will be up. LA is no longer a small operation - we run 10 events or so a year, with a turnover of over a million dollars, and over a thousand confirmed members, and a broad stakeholder group. For example, to do membership renewal, we had to export from MemberDB into mailchimp, then we will have to spend several hours manually reconciling records, via raw SQL, in MemberDB. Not my idea of fun. The point is we're stretched - better systems help us do more tasks, quicker - freeing up time to do other things. These systems need to be stable, mature, and well supported. Is Kathy a benevolent dictator? This thread I find a little hard to swallow to be frank. We openly called for nominations to the Membership committee, and a cursory question to any members of the committee would answer the 'did Kathy railroad this through' question. I'm not going to apologise for having a plan - a strategic outlook - for the organisation. Quite frankly, I see it as the role of the Council to set this direction - with input, guidance and feedback from the LA Membership - and AJ has provided some frank and fearless feedback on this. I'd really like to see *more* feedback - what's working, what's not working, what we should be doing, what we shouldn't be doing. Kind regards, Kathy On 07/12/16 10:49, Hugh Blemings wrote: > Hi AJ, All, > > Thanks for your considered reply AJ. What follows is a bit of a combo > of attempt to respond and open letter, please bear with me. > > I've had a busy few weeks and while I'm aware there were some > outstanding questions from your earlier emails, I just haven't had the > bandwidth sorry. > > You raise some fair questions about the choice of membership > management platform, in particular going for FOSS alternatives versus > something FOSS+paid for or whatever combination CivCRM might be seen > to represent. > > I had understood that this had been canvassed by the Membership > Committee and while I recognise Kathy may have a preference for > CiviCRM, yours is the first suggestion I've had that she has allowed > this preference to overshadow a proper evaluation process. I'll leave > it to her to comment further on that - not I hasten to add because I'm > cranky about what you've said :) > > Candidly - would love to have you contribute if you've the bandwidth - > I'd reached out once or twice and not heard from you so assumed you > were frantic - which is ok :) It'd be wonderful to have your > expertise and energy back in Council or wherever you feel fit to > contribute. > > The tricky bit with this will always be whether we can have tools that > are truly maintainable in the long term versus varying degrees of > commercial offerings. While in some ways unfortunate, the move to Xero > does seem to have paid other dividends, but perhaps this could have > been accomplished with Libre tools as well ? > > I'd, truly, love to be proven wrong in this, but given the > difficulties we face as an organisation just keeping what we have > ticking over with stretched but capable volunteers I'm frankly unsure > where we go in the pay versus roll your own equation - I trust others > smarter than I to research, report and implement. > > I'm going to suggest something a little radical perhaps too - is it > worth convening an actual real-time conversation (say teleconference) > to kick some of these things over amongst interested folk. Email can > at times be a blunt instrument ? > > Cheers, > Hugh > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Wed Dec 7 18:33:47 2016 From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 02:33:47 -0500 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> Message-ID: <028101d2505c$41ca0e60$c55e2b20$@adam.com.au> You've limped along without a $23K CRM until now; I really can't see how CiviCRM or SugarCRM (which is actually less hassle to setup than CiviCRM and has a backer less likely to disappear) costs $23K. Let me make a counter proposal: employ someone whose cost and expense is $17,000 to work with the currenct systems. You've just saved $6,000. What monetary benefit would Linux Australia get from buying CiviCRM? What governance benefit would it get? And why haven't you asked anyone on linux-as to help you do the chore tasks that take hours? In fact I'm not sure I've heard the Council (or you) ask for help at all.for.much (I'm inclined to say anything). What's not working? I think the Council is working as a group that keeps the organization going. I don't think it's working to promote the organizations goals through means OTHER than running events. I think you agree and I think you've identified why. I've said before the problem isn't legal; it's not structural. You just don't have enough volunteers.(I can't be more blunt than that). DSL From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On Behalf Of Kathy Reid Sent: Wednesday, 7 December 2016 1:57 AM To: Hugh Blemings ; Anthony Towns ; null Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member Thanks everyone - this sort of robust debate and evaluation of our actions I feel helps us both ensure we're doing the right things, and doing them the right way. This feedback is welcome - it is passionate and well argued. The opposite of passion is apathy. TL;DR a round table / hangout / teleconf with passionate people is a great idea - thanks Hugh for suggesting it. AJ, your email questioned a number of actions and directions and I'd like to take the opportunity to respond if I may. Why choose CiviCRM, choose to have it outsourced not hosted internally, and why does it cost $23k? To begin the selection process, we identified a set of user requirements, written as user stories (ie. 'As the Secretary I want to do X function to get Y outcome). This set of requirements was tested against both existing MemberDB and CiviCRM demo instance. We didn't go further than CiviCRM (for instance SugarCRM or other open CRMs) because the fit with CiviCRM was strong, and it also ran on Drupal (our existing web platform), and there are several CiviCRM providers in Australia. Should we have looked wider for other CRM tools that fit the requirements? Possibly, but each assessment is time - and we are stretched for time. We also (at Hugh's prompting - all credit here) looked at whether MemberDB rewrite would be a suitable option. The writer of MemberDB advised us to adopt CiviCRM. We sought three quotes for CiviCRM implementation (the three CiviCRM partners in Australia listed on the CiviCRM website). One vendor didn't respond, a second's approach was appalling (requiring a signed document before a conversation) and the third, from a company called AgileWare, was thorough, methodical and robust. I have no relationship or history with AgileWare. So, to why we would outsource the setup and support of CiviCRM. Firstly, it's a specialised product. You need product knowledge to configure it appropriately, and undertake ETL from the other system (MemberDB). So why get it hosted externally? For the same reason. It's a specialist product, not say a vanilla httpd or smtpd - it requires specialist knowledge to host and tune it well. Is $23k too much? No, this included setup, configuration and ETL of CivicCRM and some training on getting the most out of the system. Both Hugh and I bounced this off others who work in the web space - as I do professionally - and this was considered 'ball park'. One point I'd like to make here is about *using* an open source system versus *running* one. While I agree that Linux Australia should wherever possible run open source systems, it's the Council and Subcommittees that have to *use* the tools that we put in place. I, and others in Council, spend hours per week on LA systems - they need to be easy to use - and not a chore. If there's an error, I need it fixed. If the system's down, I need an SLA to tell me when it will be up. LA is no longer a small operation - we run 10 events or so a year, with a turnover of over a million dollars, and over a thousand confirmed members, and a broad stakeholder group. For example, to do membership renewal, we had to export from MemberDB into mailchimp, then we will have to spend several hours manually reconciling records, via raw SQL, in MemberDB. Not my idea of fun. The point is we're stretched - better systems help us do more tasks, quicker - freeing up time to do other things. These systems need to be stable, mature, and well supported. Is Kathy a benevolent dictator? This thread I find a little hard to swallow to be frank. We openly called for nominations to the Membership committee, and a cursory question to any members of the committee would answer the 'did Kathy railroad this through' question. I'm not going to apologise for having a plan - a strategic outlook - for the organisation. Quite frankly, I see it as the role of the Council to set this direction - with input, guidance and feedback from the LA Membership - and AJ has provided some frank and fearless feedback on this. I'd really like to see *more* feedback - what's working, what's not working, what we should be doing, what we shouldn't be doing. Kind regards, Kathy On 07/12/16 10:49, Hugh Blemings wrote: Hi AJ, All, Thanks for your considered reply AJ. What follows is a bit of a combo of attempt to respond and open letter, please bear with me. I've had a busy few weeks and while I'm aware there were some outstanding questions from your earlier emails, I just haven't had the bandwidth sorry. You raise some fair questions about the choice of membership management platform, in particular going for FOSS alternatives versus something FOSS+paid for or whatever combination CivCRM might be seen to represent. I had understood that this had been canvassed by the Membership Committee and while I recognise Kathy may have a preference for CiviCRM, yours is the first suggestion I've had that she has allowed this preference to overshadow a proper evaluation process. I'll leave it to her to comment further on that - not I hasten to add because I'm cranky about what you've said :) Candidly - would love to have you contribute if you've the bandwidth - I'd reached out once or twice and not heard from you so assumed you were frantic - which is ok :) It'd be wonderful to have your expertise and energy back in Council or wherever you feel fit to contribute. The tricky bit with this will always be whether we can have tools that are truly maintainable in the long term versus varying degrees of commercial offerings. While in some ways unfortunate, the move to Xero does seem to have paid other dividends, but perhaps this could have been accomplished with Libre tools as well ? I'd, truly, love to be proven wrong in this, but given the difficulties we face as an organisation just keeping what we have ticking over with stretched but capable volunteers I'm frankly unsure where we go in the pay versus roll your own equation - I trust others smarter than I to research, report and implement. I'm going to suggest something a little radical perhaps too - is it worth convening an actual real-time conversation (say teleconference) to kick some of these things over amongst interested folk. Email can at times be a blunt instrument ? Cheers, Hugh _______________________________________________ linux-aus mailing list linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paulway at mabula.net Wed Dec 7 19:27:31 2016 From: paulway at mabula.net (Paul Wayper) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 19:27:31 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: <7dff1d3c-765d-4017-c11e-78d93962f8fa@mabula.net> On 07/12/16 09:44, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Sun, Dec 04, 2016 at 11:14:12AM +1100, Paul Wayper wrote: >> On 03/12/16 00:21, Russell Coker wrote: >>> On Friday, 2 December 2016 7:46:18 AM AEDT Anthony Towns wrote: >>>> On Sat, Nov 26, 2016 at 02:45:10PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: >>>>> 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). >>>> >>>> That seems kind of gold-plated, especially if the $23k doesn't include >>>> the custom development that will actually let it do the one thing memberdb >>>> actually does... Why so much? >>>> >>>> Is the admin team not happy to maintain an instance of civicrm directly? >>> >>> It is a lot of money and Linux sysadmin is something that many volunteers can >>> do. But there aren't many people with CiviCRM skills and such projects can be >>> complex. >> Of course, if AJ is volunteering to do the conversion, maybe we could save >> that money! > > So I've done the "count-to-ten" thing before replying to this (and > thrown away a previous draft), because the whole "let's mock someone by > sarcastically suggesting they should volunteer" gets on my nerves. Hey, AJ, I should have made that less flippant. I'm sorry about that. That wasn't meant as an attack on you or your reasonable point that we ask whether we're getting value for money there. I know you've given a lot of time both as part of the council and volunteering. Having some of that work junked is a shame and would feel bad. I sympathise. I don't want to take anything away from the rest of your email so I'll send this off as a separate leaf on the tree. Have fun, Paul From abartlet at samba.org Wed Dec 7 19:53:19 2016 From: abartlet at samba.org (Andrew Bartlett) Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2016 21:53:19 +1300 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <028101d2505c$41ca0e60$c55e2b20$@adam.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <028101d2505c$41ca0e60$c55e2b20$@adam.com.au> Message-ID: <1481100799.10608.61.camel@samba.org> On Wed, 2016-12-07 at 02:33 -0500, David Lloyd wrote: > ? > You?ve limped along without a $23K CRM until now; I really can?t see > how CiviCRM or SugarCRM (which is actually less hassle to setup than > CiviCRM and has a backer less likely to disappear) costs $23K. > ? > Let me make a counter proposal: employ someone whose cost and expense > is $17,000 to work with the currenct systems. You?ve just saved > $6,000. G'Day David, Can you flesh this out a bit more? ?I understand from the tread that the MemberDB author (Stewart Smith if I recall) suggested that moving to CiviCRM. As someone working professionally in open source software development for hire, my general experience is that $17,000 at consultant/contractor rates doesn't buy much in terms of a major software overhaul, which seems to be what is requested. ?It certainly seems from the things Kathy described as limitations that we are beyond minor just works. My main thought on your proposal is that Linux Australia would end up with the execution risk (is the money spent well, regression, etc) and keep the maintenance burden of a bespoke system, rather than having a vendor with an SLA and a quoted migration price. ?That could easily eat up any 'savings'.? Given LA is an organisation turning over 1millon per year, paying for a few things in the services area, particularly if it avoids paying staff to push paper around and do things manually, seems very good value. Thanks, Andrew Bartlett -- Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/ Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org Samba Developer, Catalyst IT http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Wed Dec 7 19:54:03 2016 From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 03:54:03 -0500 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <028101d2505c$41ca0e60$c55e2b20$@adam.com.au> Message-ID: <02aa01d25067$77a65a10$66f30e30$@adam.com.au> Hmm.. > Read the report from the membership committee, and several previous > councils, *and* the author of MemberDB, *AND* Kathy's reply in this > thread, who have all said that MemberDB actively prevents LA from > communicating with and managing the membership. I don't need to - they all seem to say it costs money; the Council is legally empowered to spend money on the members' behalf and it's not currently my problem they haven't. > > And why haven't you asked anyone on linux-as to help you do the > chore > > tasks that take hours? In fact I'm not sure I've heard the Council (or > > you) ask for help at all.for.much (I'm inclined to say anything). > > The creation of a membership working group (subcommittee) and a > treasury working group/subcommittee earlier in the year is such a thing. So the committee's been convened - have I seen Linux Australia - council willing or otherwise DO anything about it? > We have *plenty* of volunteers, they just work on things that they find > interesting to them. Running an organisation is deeply boring work. We > have a council which no longer has enough bandwidth to get the > organisation to do anything other than what it currently does. We have > an opportunity here to free up bandwidth in the council, so that they > can > potentially do the useful things that you want. No, you don't have volunteers to run the organisation. You have volunteers who suggest that policies be reviewed so that they can do what they want. I'm not sure how you can't see the problem here? DSL From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Wed Dec 7 20:15:44 2016 From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 04:15:44 -0500 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <1481100799.10608.61.camel@samba.org> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <028101d2505c$41ca0e60$c55e2b20$@adam.com.au> <1481100799.10608.61.camel@samba.org> Message-ID: <02ac01d2506a$7fb8f930$7f2aeb90$@adam.com.au> Hi Andrew, I take your point - the truth is that $17K vs $23K isn't that much; the fact that the organisation has known it needs this fixed and has not is priceless. At some stage some council acting on behalf of LA, if the needs are real, most likely should spend some money; I'm not sure why they haven't [this is the nicest version of what I'm saying. Sort of.] DSL > -----Original Message----- > From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On Behalf > Of Andrew Bartlett > Sent: Wednesday, 7 December 2016 3:53 AM > To: David Lloyd ; 'Kathy Reid' > ; 'Hugh Blemings' ; > 'Anthony Towns' ; 'null' aus at lists.linux.org.au> > Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or > Ordinary Council Member > > On Wed, 2016-12-07 at 02:33 -0500, David Lloyd wrote: > > > > You've limped along without a $23K CRM until now; I really can't see > > how CiviCRM or SugarCRM (which is actually less hassle to setup than > > CiviCRM and has a backer less likely to disappear) costs $23K. > > > > Let me make a counter proposal: employ someone whose cost and > expense > > is $17,000 to work with the currenct systems. You've just saved > > $6,000. > > G'Day David, > > Can you flesh this out a bit more? I understand from the tread that the > MemberDB author (Stewart Smith if I recall) suggested that moving to > CiviCRM. > > As someone working professionally in open source software > development for hire, my general experience is that $17,000 at > consultant/contractor rates doesn't buy much in terms of a major > software overhaul, which seems to be what is requested. It certainly > seems from the things Kathy described as limitations that we are beyond > minor just works. > > My main thought on your proposal is that Linux Australia would end up > with the execution risk (is the money spent well, regression, etc) and > keep the maintenance burden of a bespoke system, rather than having a > vendor with an SLA and a quoted migration price. That could easily eat > up any 'savings'. > > Given LA is an organisation turning over 1millon per year, paying for a > few things in the services area, particularly if it avoids paying staff > to > push paper around and do things manually, seems very good value. > > Thanks, > > Andrew Bartlett > > -- > Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/ > Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org > Samba Developer, Catalyst IT > http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Wed Dec 7 21:25:21 2016 From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg) Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2016 21:25:21 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> Message-ID: I haven't read most of the thread. I read the bit where our nominated, voted representatives are fending off accusations of being benevolent dictators, and then a bit of the rest. We voted for them, there's no dictatorship, but our leaders are benevolent. I support the current leadership fully, and I support the process by which they were elected. Having been involved in organising many things* I now ask the question of "what is a person's highest value function"? When it comes to this issue, what's the highest value function of everyone concerned? I would strongly prefer the LCA leadership to be focused on the driving narratives of the organisation. That is (in my own opinion only) -- organising conferences, advocating for Linux, supporting user groups and supporting the community. Wrangling a project like an infrastructure upgrade is always harder than you think, requires a lot of commitment, and merits being done well. The work is often tricky, requires an attention to detail, and needs focus. For me, the question of value for money isn't about the cost of the solution as much as the value of the time of those in leadership. If this approach allows the committee to most efficiently use their time in office, then I fully support the strategy. I do also support the questioning to make sure the committee has actually run the numbers to make sure this is affordable. To my eyes, 23k is not a big number for what's being proposed. So long as the money is in the bank (so to speak), then barring the risk of a major project blowout, I think it's well worth the recouped time and attention from the committee to get this done. But mostly I just want to say how grateful I am that this organisation exists, and that we have great leadership. On 7 December 2016 at 17:57, Kathy Reid wrote: > Thanks everyone - this sort of robust debate and evaluation of our actions > I feel helps us both ensure we're doing the right things, and doing them > the right way. This feedback is welcome - it is passionate and well argued. > The opposite of passion is apathy. > > TL;DR a round table / hangout / teleconf with passionate people is a great > idea - thanks Hugh for suggesting it. > > AJ, your email questioned a number of actions and directions and I'd like > to take the opportunity to respond if I may. > Why choose CiviCRM, choose to have it outsourced not hosted internally, > and why does it cost $23k? > > To begin the selection process, we identified a set of user requirements, > written as user stories (ie. 'As the Secretary I want to do X function to > get Y outcome). This set of requirements was tested against both existing > MemberDB and CiviCRM demo instance. We didn't go further than CiviCRM (for > instance SugarCRM or other open CRMs) because the fit with CiviCRM was > strong, and it also ran on Drupal (our existing web platform), and there > are several CiviCRM providers in Australia. Should we have looked wider for > other CRM tools that fit the requirements? Possibly, but each assessment is > time - and we are stretched for time. > > We also (at Hugh's prompting - all credit here) looked at whether MemberDB > rewrite would be a suitable option. The writer of MemberDB advised us to > adopt CiviCRM. > > We sought three quotes for CiviCRM implementation (the three CiviCRM > partners in Australia listed on the CiviCRM website). One vendor didn't > respond, a second's approach was appalling (requiring a signed document > before a conversation) and the third, from a company called AgileWare, was > thorough, methodical and robust. > > I have no relationship or history with AgileWare. > > So, to why we would outsource the setup and support of CiviCRM. Firstly, > it's a specialised product. You need product knowledge to configure it > appropriately, and undertake ETL from the other system (MemberDB). So why > get it hosted externally? For the same reason. It's a specialist product, > not say a vanilla httpd or smtpd - it requires specialist knowledge to host > and tune it well. > > Is $23k too much? No, this included setup, configuration and ETL of > CivicCRM and some training on getting the most out of the system. Both Hugh > and I bounced this off others who work in the web space - as I do > professionally - and this was considered 'ball park'. > > One point I'd like to make here is about *using* an open source system > versus *running* one. While I agree that Linux Australia should wherever > possible run open source systems, it's the Council and Subcommittees that > have to *use* the tools that we put in place. I, and others in Council, > spend hours per week on LA systems - they need to be easy to use - and not > a chore. If there's an error, I need it fixed. If the system's down, I need > an SLA to tell me when it will be up. LA is no longer a small operation - > we run 10 events or so a year, with a turnover of over a million dollars, > and over a thousand confirmed members, and a broad stakeholder group. For > example, to do membership renewal, we had to export from MemberDB into > mailchimp, then we will have to spend several hours manually reconciling > records, via raw SQL, in MemberDB. Not my idea of fun. The point is we're > stretched - better systems help us do more tasks, quicker - freeing up time > to do other things. These systems need to be stable, mature, and well > supported. > Is Kathy a benevolent dictator? > > This thread I find a little hard to swallow to be frank. We openly called > for nominations to the Membership committee, and a cursory question to any > members of the committee would answer the 'did Kathy railroad this through' > question. > > I'm not going to apologise for having a plan - a strategic outlook - for > the organisation. Quite frankly, I see it as the role of the Council to set > this direction - with input, guidance and feedback from the LA Membership - > and AJ has provided some frank and fearless feedback on this. > > I'd really like to see *more* feedback - what's working, what's not > working, what we should be doing, what we shouldn't be doing. > > Kind regards, > > Kathy > > > > On 07/12/16 10:49, Hugh Blemings wrote: > > Hi AJ, All, > > Thanks for your considered reply AJ. What follows is a bit of a combo of > attempt to respond and open letter, please bear with me. > > I've had a busy few weeks and while I'm aware there were some outstanding > questions from your earlier emails, I just haven't had the bandwidth sorry. > > You raise some fair questions about the choice of membership management > platform, in particular going for FOSS alternatives versus something > FOSS+paid for or whatever combination CivCRM might be seen to represent. > > I had understood that this had been canvassed by the Membership Committee > and while I recognise Kathy may have a preference for CiviCRM, yours is the > first suggestion I've had that she has allowed this preference to > overshadow a proper evaluation process. I'll leave it to her to comment > further on that - not I hasten to add because I'm cranky about what you've > said :) > > Candidly - would love to have you contribute if you've the bandwidth - I'd > reached out once or twice and not heard from you so assumed you were > frantic - which is ok :) It'd be wonderful to have your expertise and > energy back in Council or wherever you feel fit to contribute. > > The tricky bit with this will always be whether we can have tools that are > truly maintainable in the long term versus varying degrees of commercial > offerings. While in some ways unfortunate, the move to Xero does seem to > have paid other dividends, but perhaps this could have been accomplished > with Libre tools as well ? > > I'd, truly, love to be proven wrong in this, but given the difficulties we > face as an organisation just keeping what we have ticking over with > stretched but capable volunteers I'm frankly unsure where we go in the pay > versus roll your own equation - I trust others smarter than I to research, > report and implement. > > I'm going to suggest something a little radical perhaps too - is it worth > convening an actual real-time conversation (say teleconference) to kick > some of these things over amongst interested folk. Email can at times be a > blunt instrument ? > > Cheers, > Hugh > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > -- -------------------------------------------------- Tennessee Leeuwenburg http://myownhat.blogspot.com/ "Don't believe everything you think" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aj at erisian.com.au Fri Dec 9 12:56:45 2016 From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2016 11:56:45 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> Message-ID: <20161209015645.GA11757@erisian.com.au> On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 10:49:40AM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote: > The tricky bit with this will always be whether we can have tools that are > truly maintainable in the long term versus varying degrees of commercial > offerings. While in some ways unfortunate, the move to Xero does seem to > have paid other dividends, but perhaps this could have been accomplished > with Libre tools as well ? You could easily have said the same wrt using Windows 95 or NT or Solaris 7 back in the day. There are obviously plenty of practical benefits to using proprietary software -- if there weren't, no one would use it and no one would make it. One of the huge benefits of Xero is direct, automatic integration with major banks, so reconciliation is relatively easy. And that's going to remain a benefit of proprietary solutions over any open source approach for quite a long time [0]. An easy way to rely less on Xero would be to work on scripts to pull info out of it, so that interested people can work on LA's accounting data with free software like ledger. Doing that might eventually let LA's use of Xero be limited to being an I/O method for our bank accounts, ie the one thing open source can't reasonably do. And, like I said, I made a bit of an effort towards that end a while ago. But that still requires effort and interest and a willingness to put up with some inconvenience just for the sake of being able to do stuff in an open source DIY manner, rather than with prebuilt proprietary stuff, and for whatever reason that really seems to be swimming against the tide to me in LA. [1] > I'd, truly, love to be proven wrong in this, but given the difficulties we > face as an organisation just keeping what we have ticking over with > stretched but capable volunteers I'm frankly unsure where we go in the pay > versus roll your own equation Well, Kathy has presented a plan for some time now that suggests going significantly towards the "pay" side of that equation: the "Inflection Point" doc answered that unequivocally: Should the organisation hire paid staff and/or outsource some initiatives? Yes. Although the measures outlined above will help to increase the Volunteer capability and capacity available, it still won?t be enough to undertake growth and advancement activities. Paying people to do things that we traditionally have volunteers do isn't innately a bad idea; if not for hiring an event organiser lca2014 would not have happened, for instance. > - I trust others smarter than I to research, report and implement. And if that's the case, well, Kathy did two out of three of those a year ago, and continues to propose to do the third. (I'm still curious why the council hasn't already gone further forward with this; I assume Kathy tried to get the quote executed sometime in the last six months, but there aren't any minutes since June that I can see that might document any concerns, and I haven't seen any hints at discomfort with the approach from anyone else that might've presented a blocker) > I'm going to suggest something a little radical perhaps too - is it worth > convening an actual real-time conversation (say teleconference) to kick some > of these things over amongst interested folk. Email can at times be a blunt > instrument ? I don't really see the point of that; I spent about three days thinking about what I wanted to say in my previous mail, and a good twenty-four... uh, thirty-six hours or so now for this one and the next. In particular, that included doing a bit of web searching and delving through my archives to try to ensure I'm not talking completely out of the wrong orifice... So real-time conversation really doesn't seem like an advantage, unless, I guess, the goal is for me to say something (even) stupid(er)? Cheers, aj [0] At least until Rusty finishes the lightning network, and bitcoin becomes a practical and cheap payment method, and we get an open source API to money in general as a side effect. [1] I'd much rather applaud the LCA2017 team developing their own improved conference registration system [2] and consider that approach [3] the normal, expected, recommended and generally ideal approach for LA teams to take when they want improvements... [2] https://github.com/lca2017/registrasion https://chris.neugebauer.id.au/2016/04/27/introducing-registrasion/ [3] AIUI, this was funded by two PSF grants totalling about $10k USD: https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/2016-02-08/#new-business https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/2016-05-10/#new-business From aj at erisian.com.au Fri Dec 9 12:57:41 2016 From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2016 11:57:41 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> Message-ID: <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 05:57:13PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: > To begin the selection process, we identified a set of user requirements, > written as user stories (ie. 'As the Secretary I want to do X function to get Y > outcome). As far as I'm aware, this document is https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tyTA3Fj5J9XL2D7UTIxw46smXGrLM5J-fI4g6GxK9hM/edit?usp=sharing It doesn't include what seem like pretty basic items like "can run an election with preferential voting" or "can be safely secured so membership data isn't vulnerable to hackers", and doesn't prioritise the requirements it does include. > This set of requirements was tested against both existing MemberDB > and CiviCRM demo instance. We didn't go further than CiviCRM (for instance > SugarCRM or other open CRMs) > We also (at Hugh's prompting - all credit here) looked at whether MemberDB > rewrite would be a suitable option. The writer of MemberDB advised us to adopt > CiviCRM. So, you didn't look at any other existing products, and considered bespoke development only when prompted and not in any depth whatsoever? > because the fit with CiviCRM was strong, Half the requirements listed in that document are marked as "AWAITING traceability test in CiviCRM". [0] > and it also ran on Drupal (our existing web platform), > So, to why we would outsource the setup and support of CiviCRM. Firstly, > it's a specialised product. You need product knowledge to configure it > appropriately, and undertake ETL from the other system (MemberDB). > So why get it hosted externally? For the same reason. It's a specialist > product, not say a vanilla httpd or smtpd - it requires specialist knowledge > to host and tune it well. If it's too specialised a product to be self-hosted, the commonality with existing stuff LA uses doesn't seem relevant... > and there are several CiviCRM providers in Australia. > We sought three quotes for CiviCRM implementation (the three CiviCRM partners > in Australia listed on the CiviCRM website). One vendor didn't respond, a > second's approach was appalling (requiring a signed document before a > conversation) and the third, from a company called AgileWare, was thorough, > methodical and robust. So, from your sampling 67% of CiviCRM providers aren't able to do what LA needs, and you only know of a single provider that can. Taking that at face value, switching to CiviCRM would put LA over a barrell -- all our data would be controlled by a third party, in a manner too complicated for us to take over ourselves, and with low-liklihood of being able to find someone else to take over if our initial provider proved problematic. Honestly, I was kind of assuming that CiviCRM would be a perfectly workable idea, and was just wishing that it could be reached by an approach that fitted in with what my view of how open source works best (and thus the approach LA should be exemplifying), but, well, the above is a fair bit worse than I was assuming. > Should we have looked wider for other CRM tools that > fit the requirements? Possibly, but each assessment is time - and we are > stretched for time. If you wanted to honestly evaluate the alternatives available and choose the best one from Linux Australia's needs, then yes, you definitely should have looked more widely. It's not like that's something you necessarily have to do -- if the admin team are setting up a website, it's fine for them to say "okay, apache is good enough, let's just do it", and equally it should be fine to say "okay, civicrm is good enough, let's just do it" without spending time to work out whether maybe the optimum conclusion would have actually been "foobarcrm is even better, omg!!!" The reason it's fine for apache is because (a) when apache isn't fine, it's no big problem to roll out nginx or whatever; (b) the admin team take full responsibility for the costs (in terms of volunteer time for setup and ongoing maintenance); and (c) if other teams want something different and are willing to handle it themselves, they can. The same reasoning applies for LCA teams too; particularly they take care of the costs of their choices either by dedicating volunteer time, or raising funds to pay for it via sponsorship or rego fees. (Also, as a procurement approach, "our VP thinks such-n-such is good enough, it'll only cost a few tens of thousands of dollars, so let's just do it" doesn't seem entirely ideal in general, but it's not the worst of all worlds) > Is $23k too much? No, this included setup, configuration and ETL of CivicCRM > and some training on getting the most out of the system. I would put training as an ongoing expense -- when someone else becomes secretary, or a new team gets constituted to run an event, they'll need to know how to get the most out of the system, I'd guess that'd be on average a person a year. From a quick search, CiviCRM training seems surprisingly cheap, however: - there's official stuff for free, https://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Training - cividesk has training events like "manage your membership with CiviCRM" for $40pp - https://www.cividesk.com/civicrm/event/info?id=348 - in person, two-day training things seem to be going for about $600 per person, however the only ones I could easily find prices for were in the UK and USA. In any event, as I said an email or two ago, there are cloud hosting places that seem to charge $20 or less upfront for setup, so that leaves about $20k for configuration and data import, which still sounds very gold plated to me. > Both Hugh and I > bounced this off others who work in the web space - as I do professionally - > and this was considered 'ball park'. $23k at $300/hour is about two weeks fulltime work. If you were getting fairly simple custom development work done -- like paying someone to write memberdb from scratch at commercial rates -- that would be pretty reasonable. Not necessarily a good idea, versus encouraging members to develop it, or just deploying something ourselves that already exists, but reasonable. My guess is that, if paid for, the "custom voting module (cost not yet estimated)" will come out in the $10k-$20k ballpark. If LA were an organisation that had zero technical capability, $23k would also probably be pretty reasonable; getting complicated systems setup for other people who give you requirements documents that don't actually include all their requirements and so on is a pretty hard job. If you had to have zero downtime because the membership database is a mission critical system and can't tolerate even slight errors, the expense would be reasonable then too; but memberdb is only needed during the election, could be run concurrently anyway, and with only 1/3rd of the entries actually being valid members per the reconfirmation, I think it's clear we can pretty easily tolerate errors. > One point I'd like to make here is about *using* an open source system versus > *running* one. While I agree that Linux Australia should wherever possible run > open source systems, it's the Council and Subcommittees that have to *use* the > tools that we put in place. I, and others in Council, spend hours per week on > LA systems - they need to be easy to use - and not a chore. If you see using and maintaining open source systems as a chore, maybe you're in the wrong organisation? (Or since you're VP going for President, maybe I am?) > If there's an error, I need it fixed. > If the system's down, I need an SLA to tell me when it will be up. The value of "open source" is being able to say "If there's an error, I can fix it." If you want someone else to do it, then open source isn't the answer -- paying someone else is. (If you're not /able/ to do it, then you've got three options: pay someone else, learn how to do it, or join an organisation where you help other people do things they can't do, and they help you do things you can't do. I figure the point of LA is the second and third of those options) > LA is no longer a small operation - we run 10 events or so a year, > with a turnover of over a million dollars, and over a thousand confirmed > members, and a broad stakeholder group. "LA is no longer a small operation" is something that could probably have been said every year since 2004 or so, if not earlier. If that's somehow become a reason to abandon actually using and maintaining free software, and living up to open source ideals, then it seems to me like the response should be to make it a small operation again. > For example, to do membership renewal, > we had to export from MemberDB into mailchimp, then we will have to spend > several hours manually reconciling records, via raw SQL, in MemberDB. Not my > idea of fun. So ask for help? The whole point of a volunteer group like LA is that it's somewhere for people who do find things like spending hours playing with raw SQL fun. Or at least, LA used to be a group like that; as much as I'd love to be convinced otherwise, I'm still leaning towards the conclusion that it's not anymore. > This thread I find a little hard to swallow to be frank. We openly called for > nominations to the Membership committee, and a cursory question to any members > of the committee would answer the 'did Kathy railroad this through' question. I'm pretty sure I didn't use the word "railroad", but if you didn't look seriously at other alternatives, then the metaphor's not entirely inapt -- there was a set destination in mind before anything started, and there wasn't an opportunity to have ended up anywhere else, just like a train on a stretch of railroad. I don't doubt that most of the membership committee were fine with that, just as most Linux developers are mostly fine with Linus's decisions, and most core Python developers are mostly fine with Guido as BDFL. It's a self-selecting process. Cheers, aj [0] I really don't understand why this bit would be an issue. Paying $200 for ten month's hosting by any random cheap provider for an unmanaged throwaway instance for evaluation purposes seems like it would be straightforward and not introduce any burden on any volunteers. From russell-humbug at stuart.id.au Fri Dec 9 13:41:35 2016 From: russell-humbug at stuart.id.au (Russell Stuart) Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2016 12:41:35 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> On Fri, 2016-12-09 at 11:57 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > [0] I really don't understand why this bit would be an issue. Paying > $200 for ten month's hosting by any random cheap provider for an > unmanaged throwaway instance for evaluation purposes Do you think LA is made of money? Why spend $20/mo when you can get away with $5 (including a 2 wildcard SSL cert's thrown in): https://lowendbox.com/blog/vmbox-co-2gb-ovz-w-2-free-wildcare-ssl-5m/#more-9302 The bit about "made of money" is in jest. The real point is web hosting for a site that only attracts a hit a second or so is essentially free. So is backup - Humbug's hourly snapshot to S3 costs Humbug around $0.60/month. From hugh at blemings.org Fri Dec 9 13:58:16 2016 From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2016 13:58:16 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: Hi AJ, All, On 9/12/2016 12:57, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Wed, Dec 07, 2016 at 05:57:13PM +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: >> > [...] Setting aside the pretty unkind and unjustified inferences about Kathy's commitment to using Free Software, I'll just try and distill this down. We would like two or three members to volunteer to install and run a replacement Membership/CRM style management system for a minimum period of two years. It needs to be something demonstrably well integrated, user friendly and with a broad community of support of the underlying codebase. If you have the requisite skills and are not on the existing (over stretched) admin team, please get in touch with the committee at council at linux.org.au Seriously - if any one can, that'd be awesome and be embraced :) Kind Regards, Hugh From aj at erisian.com.au Fri Dec 9 14:08:41 2016 From: aj at erisian.com.au (Anthony Towns) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2016 13:08:41 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> Message-ID: <20161209030841.GA12573@erisian.com.au> On Fri, Dec 09, 2016 at 12:41:35PM +1000, Russell Stuart wrote: > On Fri, 2016-12-09 at 11:57 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > > [0] I really don't understand why this bit would be an issue. Paying > > $200 for ten month's hosting by any random cheap provider for an > > unmanaged throwaway instance for evaluation purposes > Do you think LA is made of money? Why spend $20/mo when you can get > away with $5 (including a 2 wildcard SSL cert's thrown in): $15 a month and $20 upfront via civihosting.com gets you a system with CiviCRM pre-installed, and presumably able to be immediately used by someone with basic CiviCRM admin skills. Cheers, aj From russell-humbug at stuart.id.au Fri Dec 9 14:49:39 2016 From: russell-humbug at stuart.id.au (Russell Stuart) Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2016 13:49:39 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <20161209030841.GA12573@erisian.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> <20161209030841.GA12573@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> On Fri, 2016-12-09 at 13:08 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > $15 a month and $20 upfront via civihosting.com gets you a system > with CiviCRM pre-installed, and presumably able to be immediately > used by someone with basic CiviCRM admin skills. Oh. Presumably LA would need basic CiviCRM admin skills for it to be useful at all. If they don't have them now CiviCRM training is cheap as you point out. On Fri, 2016-12-09 at 13:58 +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote: > We would like two or three members to volunteer to install and run a? > replacement Membership/CRM style management system for a minimum > period of two years.??It needs to be something demonstrably well > integrated, user friendly and with a broad community of support of > the underlying codebase. Assuming LA is prepared to pay the $15/mo instead of using volunteers, is this now fulfilled? There is still the issue of replacing MemberDB voting of course, but presumably you could use both for a year or so. It's just a web site so the results would be visible to the membership. That would eliminate most of the speculative arguments occurring now. From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Fri Dec 9 14:58:15 2016 From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2016 14:58:15 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> <20161209030841.GA12573@erisian.com.au> <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> Message-ID: Who do I call if I have a problem with CiviCRM I can't figure out? What is their SLA for responding to me? Who does the ETL process for MemberDB -> CiviCRM? Who does the quarterly updates to CiviCRM? Who configures CiviCRM to set us up well from the start? Who is responsible for keeping me informed with changes to the platform? On 09/12/16 14:49, Russell Stuart wrote: > On Fri, 2016-12-09 at 13:08 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: >> $15 a month and $20 upfront via civihosting.com gets you a system >> with CiviCRM pre-installed, and presumably able to be immediately >> used by someone with basic CiviCRM admin skills. > Oh. Presumably LA would need basic CiviCRM admin skills for it to be > useful at all. If they don't have them now CiviCRM training is cheap > as you point out. > > On Fri, 2016-12-09 at 13:58 +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote: >> We would like two or three members to volunteer to install and run a >> replacement Membership/CRM style management system for a minimum >> period of two years. It needs to be something demonstrably well >> integrated, user friendly and with a broad community of support of >> the underlying codebase. > Assuming LA is prepared to pay the $15/mo instead of using volunteers, > is this now fulfilled? There is still the issue of replacing MemberDB > voting of course, but presumably you could use both for a year or so. > It's just a web site so the results would be visible to the membership. > That would eliminate most of the speculative arguments occurring now. > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus From hugh at blemings.org Fri Dec 9 15:08:56 2016 From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings) Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2016 15:08:56 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> <20161209030841.GA12573@erisian.com.au> <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> Message-ID: <4d32cfc0-f5fa-6b24-9ca7-93d0983b3b5c@blemings.org> Hi Russell, All, On 9/12/2016 14:49, Russell Stuart wrote: > On Fri, 2016-12-09 at 13:08 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: >> $15 a month and $20 upfront via civihosting.com gets you a system >> with CiviCRM pre-installed, and presumably able to be immediately >> used by someone with basic CiviCRM admin skills. > > Oh. Presumably LA would need basic CiviCRM admin skills for it to be > useful at all. If they don't have them now CiviCRM training is cheap > as you point out. So I guess this was something I'd be hoping that whoever steps up will have or be able to acquire. We don't (afaik) have the requisite CiviCRM (or whichever platform) admin skills. Council doesn't have the bandwidth. Hence the (sincere) call for volunteers :) > On Fri, 2016-12-09 at 13:58 +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote: >> We would like two or three members to volunteer to install and run a >> replacement Membership/CRM style management system for a minimum >> period of two years. It needs to be something demonstrably well >> integrated, user friendly and with a broad community of support of >> the underlying codebase. > > Assuming LA is prepared to pay the $15/mo instead of using volunteers, > is this now fulfilled? There is still the issue of replacing MemberDB > voting of course, but presumably you could use both for a year or so. > It's just a web site so the results would be visible to the membership. > That would eliminate most of the speculative arguments occurring now. I don't have the cycles to evaluate or make a complete list. Off the top of my head though, in addition to basic hosting we need; * Basic install, security patching whatever of $NEWCRMSYSTEM * Assurance that the data stays within an Australian hosted DC * Customisation of the site to LA requirements * ETL of existing data * Testing * Ongoing maintenance, tweaking of data etc. I'm quite sure folk smarter than me can fill in, but, honestly, the idea wasn't to try and design a solution on the fly here :) Hence the desire to have a couple (seriously, it needs to be two or three to give some backup/redundancy whatever :) to just "Make it So" :) As to the voting module - this seems like an ideal candidate for a grant for someone to write one for {$NEWCRMSYSTEM} In the meantime, yes, the two could be run in parallel. Cheers, Hugh From russell-humbug at stuart.id.au Fri Dec 9 15:51:06 2016 From: russell-humbug at stuart.id.au (Russell Stuart) Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2016 14:51:06 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> <20161209030841.GA12573@erisian.com.au> <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> Message-ID: <1481259066.3651.17.camel@stuart.id.au> On Fri, 2016-12-09 at 14:58 +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: > Who do I call if I have a problem with CiviCRM I can't figure out? How important is this? For example, who do you call now if you have problem with the LA website and can't figure it out? But if you really need to do that CiviCRM helpfully provides a list on their web site: https://civicrm.org/partners-contributors?country=1013&service_languages_181=All&services=All&supported_cms_s_182=All That aside, this is a "toe in the water" exercise. If it has a steep learning curve maybe it's not the right choice for a bunch of volunteers that are elected every year. > What is their SLA for responding to me? Again, how important is this? What is the SLA for the current web site? How much does it matter if it's down for a day? But does it matter now? This isn't a "big bang", so both the old and new web sites will be around. Surely the time to be thinking about an SLA is when you are planning to trash the old, working system - not when you are doing a cheap test of the new one. > Who does the ETL process for MemberDB -> CiviCRM? No idea. Presumably if everyone agreed CiviCRM is the way to go, you would start down whatever process you have planned now, and it would take the same time??? > Who does the quarterly updates to CiviCRM? Is it that hard? If it is, they will do it for you for USD$65 or something: https://civihosting.com/site-upgrades > Who configures CiviCRM to set us up well from the start? That would have to be someone who knows what LA wants. You perhaps? Maybe we could do it together. I imagine learning how to configure it is step 1 in learning how to use it. Since it is a throw away instance we can keep doing it until we get it right. That's one of the advantages of putting your toe into the water, as opposed to getting everything perfect on the initial roll out which is what a "big bang" requires. > Who is responsible for keeping me informed with changes to the > platform? You are. And don't underestimate it. Any system that take changes every 3 months is going to require ongoing investment in self education. On the positive side, unsurprisingly CiviCRM has a lot of ways of keeping new stuff flowing into your inbox - newsletters, mailing lists, rss feeds. Take your pick. By the by, I'm a big fan of "evolution not revolution". If the idea works both techniques end up with the same result, the only difference being evolution takes a bit longer. Revolution is faster because it puts you in the middle of the creek from the beginning, but at the cost of throwing away the paddles. From stewart at flamingspork.com Sat Dec 10 10:57:59 2016 From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 10:57:59 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <028101d2505c$41ca0e60$c55e2b20$@adam.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <028101d2505c$41ca0e60$c55e2b20$@adam.com.au> Message-ID: <1481327879.2489830.814324113.34DD76C1@webmail.messagingengine.com> On Wed, Dec 7, 2016, at 06:33 PM, David Lloyd wrote: > You've limped along without a $23K CRM until now; I really can't see how > CiviCRM or SugarCRM (which is actually less hassle to setup than CiviCRM > and has a backer less likely to disappear) costs $23K. Assume human at $100k/year, and it's 0.25 years of work (i.e. 3 months) (+/- overheads etc etc) and it doesn't sound too bad for helping smooth out a number of processes. I think it would *easily* use this much time of volunteer time to do the same, and that volunteer time may not be of experts in the field - and it does not seem to be readily available. Maintaining and tweaking things may be more suitable for the current reality of volunteer effort around LA, and at least with CiviCRM we're supporting an ecosystem of free software with said expenditure. The reality is, many people have pockets of effort they can expend, but seldom a concentrated number of full weeks/months - we usually use that time for having people organize LCA and other events. From stewart at flamingspork.com Sat Dec 10 11:07:57 2016 From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 11:07:57 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <1481100799.10608.61.camel@samba.org> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <028101d2505c$41ca0e60$c55e2b20$@adam.com.au> <1481100799.10608.61.camel@samba.org> Message-ID: <1481328477.2491619.814330417.6C1E2885@webmail.messagingengine.com> On Wed, Dec 7, 2016, at 07:53 PM, Andrew Bartlett wrote: > On Wed, 2016-12-07 at 02:33 -0500, David Lloyd wrote: > > ? > > You?ve limped along without a $23K CRM until now; I really can?t see > > how CiviCRM or SugarCRM (which is actually less hassle to setup than > > CiviCRM and has a backer less likely to disappear) costs $23K. > > ? > > Let me make a counter proposal: employ someone whose cost and expense > > is $17,000 to work with the currenct systems. You?ve just saved > > $6,000. > > G'Day David, > > Can you flesh this out a bit more? ?I understand from the tread that > the MemberDB author (Stewart Smith if I recall) suggested that moving > to CiviCRM. Yep, it is/was me! I've been wishing that either myself or someone else would find the spare time to write/migrate the voting system to CiviCRM for some time... but it's just proved too much of a task to fit in around the rest of things. > As someone working professionally in open source software development > for hire, my general experience is that $17,000 at > consultant/contractor rates doesn't buy much in terms of a major > software overhaul, which seems to be what is requested. ?It certainly > seems from the things Kathy described as limitations that we are beyond > minor just works. Exactly. There is no minor rework of MemberDB here, it's absolutely the best web application a systems programmer came up with in their mostly spare time 13-16 years ago. Personally, I'm amazed it's lasted this long - but the state of the art in other systems has come such a long way, and LA has enough resources to employ somebody to write free software to adapt other systems to modern requirements. > My main thought on your proposal is that Linux Australia would end up > with the execution risk (is the money spent well, regression, etc) and > keep the maintenance burden of a bespoke system, rather than having a > vendor with an SLA and a quoted migration price. ?That could easily eat > up any 'savings'.? > > Given LA is an organisation turning over 1millon per year, paying for a > few things in the services area, particularly if it avoids paying staff > to push paper around and do things manually, seems very good value. I heartily agree. When I first set up MemberDB for LA, I think we were about an order of magnitude smaller? Certainly so in events being held (there was just LCA). From stewart at flamingspork.com Sat Dec 10 11:13:47 2016 From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 11:13:47 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> <20161209030841.GA12573@erisian.com.au> <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> Message-ID: <1481328827.2492526.814337009.1C7A44FA@webmail.messagingengine.com> On Fri, Dec 9, 2016, at 02:49 PM, Russell Stuart wrote: > Assuming LA is prepared to pay the $15/mo instead of using volunteers, > is this now fulfilled? There is still the issue of replacing MemberDB > voting of course, but presumably you could use both for a year or so. > It's just a web site so the results would be visible to the membership. > That would eliminate most of the speculative arguments occurring now. I'd advocate spending LA money to pay somebody to develop the needed free software. I have no doubt that other organizations would like/benefit from preferential voting in an open source CRM for orgs. From donna at kattekrab.net Sat Dec 10 13:08:40 2016 From: donna at kattekrab.net (Donna Benjamin) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 13:08:40 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <1481328827.2492526.814337009.1C7A44FA@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> <20161209030841.GA12573@erisian.com.au> <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> <1481328827.2492526.814337009.1C7A44FA@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: Drupal uses the election module to elect community at large directors to the board of the Drupal association. https://www.drupal.org/project/election As another professional working to deliver open source based web applications I concur with Andrew Bartlett that 23k or 17k is cheap for the service we require right now. As an event organiser i need tools that support my volunteer energy, so I don't need to build those tools. As a Linux Australia member I'd love to see council engage in outreach to encourage more people to engage with the organisation and learn about and participate in free software communities. As a past pajamaran I tried to get volunteers to do our catering. I failed. I support this effort. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From secretary at linux.org.au Sat Dec 10 15:57:36 2016 From: secretary at linux.org.au (Linux Australia Secretary) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2016 15:57:36 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Notice of Annual General Meeting, Monday 16th January 2017 1800hrs, Wrest Point, Hobart Message-ID: Dear Linux Australia Members, Pursuant to Clause (24) of the Linux Australia Constitution [1], I hereby give notice that the Annual General Meeting of the organisation will be held Monday 16th January 2017 at Wrest Point, Hobart at 1800hrs (or as advised closer to the date), as part of linux.conf.au 2017. Specific room will be advised closer to the date. The meeting will: 1. confirm the minutes of the last preceding Annual General Meeting (to be forthcoming when the Agenda is advised) and of any Special General Meeting held since that meeting (nil SGM held), 2. receive from the Council reports on the activities of the association during the last preceding financial year 3. elect office-bearers of the association and ordinary committee members, or to announce the results of a ballot held prior to the Annual General Meeting under clause 15(5) - see [2] 4. receive and consider any financial statement or report required to be submitted to members under the Act A formal Agenda, including reports from office-bearers, will be compiled and distributed in due course. I also hereby call for any agenda items to be tabled for discussion at the Annual General Meeting. With kind regards, Sae Ra [1] http://www.linux.org.au/constitution [2] https://www.linux.org.au/membership/index.php?page=view-election&id=23 -- Sae Ra Germaine Secretary Linux Australia secretary at linux.org.au http://linux.org.au Linux Australia Inc GPO Box 4788 Sydney NSW 2001 Australia ABN 56 987 117 479 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stewart at flamingspork.com Sun Dec 11 10:46:35 2016 From: stewart at flamingspork.com (Stewart Smith) Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 10:46:35 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - Kathy - President or OCM In-Reply-To: <4ccc0722-f630-854c-8557-56537592147b@kathyreid.id.au> References: <4ccc0722-f630-854c-8557-56537592147b@kathyreid.id.au> Message-ID: <1481413595.2759831.814979945.275B6580@webmail.messagingengine.com> On Wed, Nov 23, 2016, at 11:45 AM, Kathy Reid wrote: > Firstly, I?d like to echo Hugh?s words, and strongly underline our > joint, united, and well considered approach into this election. We both > care deeply about the ideas and fundamentals of free and opensource > hardware, software, data and communities - as evidenced by our > commitment to LA over the past many years. > > The choice we present you with is deliberately designed to elicit a > mandate on how you would like us to steer Linux Australia in the coming > years. Thank you both for detailing positions and alternatives and generally being wonderful people dedicated to ensuring the Linux community in Australia is well served and healthy. From brent.wallis at gmail.com Sun Dec 11 10:54:52 2016 From: brent.wallis at gmail.com (Brent Wallis) Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 10:54:52 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <20161209015645.GA11757@erisian.com.au> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015645.GA11757@erisian.com.au> Message-ID: Hi, On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 12:56 PM, Anthony Towns wrote: > > > Well, Kathy has presented a plan for some time now that suggests going > significantly towards the "pay" side of that equation: the "Inflection > Point" doc answered that unequivocally: > > Should the organisation hire paid staff and/or outsource some > initiatives? > > Yes. Although the measures outlined above will help to increase the > Volunteer capability and capacity available, it still won?t be > enough to undertake growth and advancement activities. > > Paying people to do things that we traditionally have volunteers do isn't > innately a bad idea; if not for hiring an event organiser lca2014 would > not have happened, for instance. > > AJ has raised an important point. I was dubious of the "Inflection Point" discussion in the beginning but after a re-read and the time in between it's clear to me that: - Most points raised have become self evident since the document was first published. - The author has remained consistently dedicated to their belief and strategy outlined in that document and very willing to have that tested in the public forum. - There has been no concrete alternatives offered that I am aware of. Yes... Kathy "has presented a plan for some time now" It has been open to debate for quite a long time (3 years or was it 2? ). Kathy has professionally and IMHO successfully prosecuted the case for such changes ..and done so over an extended period. Dedication such as that speaks for itself and to me clearly demonstrates motivations of passion for the right outcome. It seems clear to me that there is no other way for LA to prosper in the long term. BW > > - I trust others smarter than I to research, report and implement. > > And if that's the case, well, Kathy did two out of three of those a > year ago, and continues to propose to do the third. > > (I'm still curious why the council hasn't already gone further forward > with this; I assume Kathy tried to get the quote executed sometime in > the last six months, but there aren't any minutes since June that I can > see that might document any concerns, and I haven't seen any hints at > discomfort with the approach from anyone else that might've presented > a blocker) > > > I'm going to suggest something a little radical perhaps too - is it worth > > convening an actual real-time conversation (say teleconference) to kick > some > > of these things over amongst interested folk. Email can at times be a > blunt > > instrument ? > > I don't really see the point of that; I spent about three days > thinking about what I wanted to say in my previous mail, and a good > twenty-four... uh, thirty-six hours or so now for this one and the > next. In particular, that included doing a bit of web searching and > delving through my archives to try to ensure I'm not talking completely > out of the wrong orifice... So real-time conversation really doesn't seem > like an advantage, unless, I guess, the goal is for me to say something > (even) stupid(er)? > > Cheers, > aj > > [0] At least until Rusty finishes the lightning network, and bitcoin > becomes a practical and cheap payment method, and we get an open > source API to money in general as a side effect. > > [1] I'd much rather applaud the LCA2017 team developing their own > improved conference registration system [2] and consider that approach > [3] the normal, expected, recommended and generally ideal approach > for LA teams to take when they want improvements... > > [2] https://github.com/lca2017/registrasion > https://chris.neugebauer.id.au/2016/04/27/introducing-registrasion/ > > [3] AIUI, this was funded by two PSF grants totalling about $10k USD: > > https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/2016-02- > 08/#new-business > https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/2016-05- > 10/#new-business > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paulway at mabula.net Mon Dec 12 04:12:16 2016 From: paulway at mabula.net (Paul Wayper) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 04:12:16 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Proposal: two year overlapping terms, more council members Message-ID: Hi all, What I observe from Hugh and Kathy's statements about what Linux Australia has achieved in the last year, and the ensuing discussion, is that LA council positions require a fair bit of work, and it's very difficult to find people that have simple enough lives that they can dedicate that much time to doing the work without real life intruding. This is no surprise - everyone's busy these days :-) And while we all want to see Linux Australia continue to be a forum for FOSS advocacy, an umbrella group for several successful FOSS conferences, and a variety of other things, we also don't expect the people that volunteer to be its elected council to pause the rest of their lives while serving. So I'd like to put forward the proposal that each position have effectively two people on it; one being the role leader, the other being an understudy. The understudy is there to learn the job and to step in should the role leader be required for whatever reason to step down or take a break. :::: Option A: each election elects the understudy for the position. The terms for each position are therefore twice as long, with each understudy stepping up to be the next role leader at the next election. Option B: each election elects both role leader and understudy, with terms operating as normal. Option C: each general member be also delegated (in some way) to be the understudy for a particular role, expanding the number of general council members if necessary. Option D: expand the number of general council members to add an understudy for each role plus all the current council members. The understudies do not hold an official position in the same way that the role leader. I'm sure the creative minds on the Linux Australia list can find a couple more variants. I suspect that we currently unofficially run with option C above. :::: The main disadvantage of this proposal is that it (generally) requires more council members. In some cases it also requires more people to put themselves forward for the council and to be voted on. This may involve extra expense for LA (?), the need to find more people to actually put themselves forward, and the extra complications of planning and organising that having a larger council would involve. The main advantage I hope for this proposal is that the business of Linux Australia can continue to progress if one or more elected officials need to step down. This seems to have happened a number of times, and as Hugh has said this sees LA move into more of a holding pattern and stall on achieving its goals. Let the discussion begin! Have fun, Paul From secretary at linux.org.au Mon Dec 12 10:49:48 2016 From: secretary at linux.org.au (Linux Australia Secretary) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 10:49:48 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Declaration of Council Election and call for Nominations In-Reply-To: <1361b892-b004-9579-5c3b-d2c1d97f7124@linux.org.au> References: <1361b892-b004-9579-5c3b-d2c1d97f7124@linux.org.au> Message-ID: A courtesy reminder that there are 8 days left to Nominate for election to Council: *https://linux.org.au/membership/index.php?page=view-election&id=23* On 22/11/16 21:28, Linux Australia Secretary wrote: > > ** > > *Dear Linux Australia Community,Pursuant to clause (15) of the Linux > Australia constitution [1] we hereby declare an election open and call > for nominations to the Linux Australia Council for the term January > 2017 to January 2018.All office bearer and ordinary committee member > positions are open for election. * Nominations will open from 22 > November 2016 until 20 December 2016 * Voting will open 21 December > 2016 until 15 January 2017 * Results will be announced at the AGM in > Hobart at linux.conf.au on orafter 16 January 2016The election can be > viewed > here:https://linux.org.au/membership/index.php?page=view-election&id=23*What > do I need to do?*First of all, make sure your details are correct in > MemberDB [2]If you wish to nominate, identify the positions you wish > to nominate for and get an understanding of what they involve. Think > about what you might bring to the role and prepare a short pitch. > Then, accept the nomination you've been given by clicking the 'Accept > nomination' link.If you wish to nominate another person for a > position, you may wish to contact them first and have a chat to make > sure they're happy being nominated. Then follow the 'Nominate' link to > nominate them.Once voting is open, you will be able to vote for > candidates. Results will be announced at the AGM at linux.conf.au in > Hobart in January 2017. *Why should I nominate?*Being a member of > Linux Australia Council is a fun way to meet new people, work on > exciting projects and expand your skill base. It gives you excellent > transferable skills to help build your career, and allows you to grow > your professional network. It looks great on a CV, and is also a > chance to give back to the vibrant Linux and open source ecosystem in > Australia and globally. If you're passionate about Linux and open > source, it's a great opportunity to help drive and steer Australia's > contribution in this field.* > > * > > If you are contemplating nominating for a role on Council, in addition > to referring to the Position Descriptions provided [3], you are > strongly encouraged to approach current and former council members for > their perspective. You will find them, to a person, willing to > discuss the roles and responsibilities in a more informal manner.The > roles do require a time commitment so please consider this with your > nomination. Each role has been documented for you as a position > description[1]http://www.linux.org.au/constitution[2]http://www.linux.org.au/membership > > [3]https://github.com/linuxaustralia/position-descriptionsAs > always, your feedback and questions are warmly welcomed. If you'd like > to have a chat with anyone on Council around what it involves, please > do make contact. With kind regards, > > > Sae Ra > > * > -- > Sae Ra Germaine > Secretary > Linux Australia > > secretary at linux.org.au > http://linux.org.au > > Linux Australia Inc > GPO Box 4788 > Sydney NSW 2001 > Australia > > ABN 56 987 117 479 > > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nate at polynate.net Mon Dec 12 12:35:57 2016 From: nate at polynate.net (Nathan Bailey) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 12:35:57 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Proposal: two year overlapping terms, more council members In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Paul, I like the gist of your idea, but I suspect the practicality is difficult, in that: a) Larger committees can find it harder to come to consensus (and longer to build momentum) b) Larger committees will also be more expensive to coordinate in-person meetings for But we could see some roles be for two years (eg. president) or having some overlap (eg. three months at end of term for key roles such as president and treasurer). -N On 12 December 2016 at 04:12, Paul Wayper wrote: > Hi all, > > What I observe from Hugh and Kathy's statements about what Linux Australia > has > achieved in the last year, and the ensuing discussion, is that LA council > positions require a fair bit of work, and it's very difficult to find > people > that have simple enough lives that they can dedicate that much time to > doing > the work without real life intruding. > > This is no surprise - everyone's busy these days :-) And while we all > want to > see Linux Australia continue to be a forum for FOSS advocacy, an umbrella > group for several successful FOSS conferences, and a variety of other > things, > we also don't expect the people that volunteer to be its elected council to > pause the rest of their lives while serving. > > So I'd like to put forward the proposal that each position have effectively > two people on it; one being the role leader, the other being an understudy. > The understudy is there to learn the job and to step in should the role > leader > be required for whatever reason to step down or take a break. > > :::: > > Option A: each election elects the understudy for the position. The terms > for > each position are therefore twice as long, with each understudy stepping > up to > be the next role leader at the next election. > > Option B: each election elects both role leader and understudy, with terms > operating as normal. > > Option C: each general member be also delegated (in some way) to be the > understudy for a particular role, expanding the number of general council > members if necessary. > > Option D: expand the number of general council members to add an understudy > for each role plus all the current council members. The understudies do > not > hold an official position in the same way that the role leader. > > I'm sure the creative minds on the Linux Australia list can find a couple > more > variants. I suspect that we currently unofficially run with option C > above. > > :::: > > The main disadvantage of this proposal is that it (generally) requires more > council members. In some cases it also requires more people to put > themselves > forward for the council and to be voted on. This may involve extra expense > for LA (?), the need to find more people to actually put themselves > forward, > and the extra complications of planning and organising that having a larger > council would involve. > > The main advantage I hope for this proposal is that the business of Linux > Australia can continue to progress if one or more elected officials need to > step down. This seems to have happened a number of times, and as Hugh has > said this sees LA move into more of a holding pattern and stall on > achieving > its goals. > > Let the discussion begin! > > Have fun, > > Paul > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jamezpolley at gmail.com Mon Dec 12 12:58:47 2016 From: jamezpolley at gmail.com (James Polley) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 12:58:47 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Proposal: two year overlapping terms, more council members In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 4:12 AM, Paul Wayper wrote: > Hi all, > > What I observe from Hugh and Kathy's statements about what Linux Australia > has > achieved in the last year, and the ensuing discussion, is that LA council > positions require a fair bit of work, and it's very difficult to find > people > that have simple enough lives that they can dedicate that much time to > doing > the work without real life intruding. > > This is no surprise - everyone's busy these days :-) And while we all > want to > see Linux Australia continue to be a forum for FOSS advocacy, an umbrella > group for several successful FOSS conferences, and a variety of other > things, > we also don't expect the people that volunteer to be its elected council to > pause the rest of their lives while serving. > > So I'd like to put forward the proposal that each position have effectively > two people on it; one being the role leader, the other being an understudy. > The understudy is there to learn the job and to step in should the role > leader > be required for whatever reason to step down or take a break. > > :::: > > Option A: each election elects the understudy for the position. The terms > for > each position are therefore twice as long, with each understudy stepping > up to > be the next role leader at the next election. > This seems to remove the possibility for any person to serve two consecutive terms. For Hugh to be president next term, he'd have to have been elected as both president and understudy-president at the last election; which really means there is no understudy. Actually - there is a VP already, so the president is probably the one role that already has an "understudy" already. > > Option B: each election elects both role leader and understudy, with terms > operating as normal. > > Option C: each general member be also delegated (in some way) to be the > understudy for a particular role, expanding the number of general council > members if necessary. > > Option D: expand the number of general council members to add an understudy > for each role plus all the current council members. The understudies do > not > hold an official position in the same way that the role leader. > > I'm sure the creative minds on the Linux Australia list can find a couple > more > variants. I suspect that we currently unofficially run with option C > above. > > :::: > > The main disadvantage of this proposal is that it (generally) requires more > council members. In some cases it also requires more people to put > themselves > forward for the council and to be voted on. This may involve extra expense > for LA (?), the need to find more people to actually put themselves > forward, > and the extra complications of planning and organising that having a larger > council would involve. > > The main advantage I hope for this proposal is that the business of Linux > Australia can continue to progress if one or more elected officials need to > step down. This seems to have happened a number of times, and as Hugh has > said this sees LA move into more of a holding pattern and stall on > achieving > its goals. > > Let the discussion begin! > > Have fun, > > Paul > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > In general, I like the idea of having interested parties standing by ready to take over if the elected person steps down. However, I don't think we need to change anything in order for this idea to go live. The constitution imposes duties on the office-bearers, but it doesn't restrict them from getting support for fulfilling those duties. As far as I can see, all we need is for people to reach out to the secretary or treasurer and offer to help. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Mon Dec 12 14:34:57 2016 From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd) Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 22:34:57 -0500 Subject: [Linux-aus] Proposal: two year overlapping terms, more council members In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <008301d25428$b803fda0$280bf8e0$@adam.com.au> Larger committees can work so long as they can meet quorum; they can become difficult if decisions are made by consensus but the committee meetings are technically ruled under laws (common or otherwise) which indicate that the majority will rule. I once sat on a large committee and my fellow committee member and I would count up the likely votes. If we thought that there was a majority either she or I would move ?the motion be put.: Extending ANY of the roles to a multi-year commitment might equally discourage someone to nominate. Now, instead of just one year they have to commit two years of their life? If you really just joined as a general committee member are you now expected to go for one of the non-general positions? It's not quite as easy as it looks. Linux Australia doesn?t need more council members or more subcommittees. It needs people to be doing stuff that promotes its goals and aims...and I think that?s the main problem. DSL From: linux-aus [mailto:linux-aus-bounces at lists.linux.org.au] On Behalf Of Nathan Bailey Sent: Sunday, 11 December 2016 8:36 PM To: paulway at mabula.net Cc: Linux Australia Subject: Re: [Linux-aus] Proposal: two year overlapping terms, more council members Hi Paul, I like the gist of your idea, but I suspect the practicality is difficult, in that: a) Larger committees can find it harder to come to consensus (and longer to build momentum) b) Larger committees will also be more expensive to coordinate in-person meetings for But we could see some roles be for two years (eg. president) or having some overlap (eg. three months at end of term for key roles such as president and treasurer). -N On 12 December 2016 at 04:12, Paul Wayper > wrote: Hi all, What I observe from Hugh and Kathy's statements about what Linux Australia has achieved in the last year, and the ensuing discussion, is that LA council positions require a fair bit of work, and it's very difficult to find people that have simple enough lives that they can dedicate that much time to doing the work without real life intruding. This is no surprise - everyone's busy these days :-) And while we all want to see Linux Australia continue to be a forum for FOSS advocacy, an umbrella group for several successful FOSS conferences, and a variety of other things, we also don't expect the people that volunteer to be its elected council to pause the rest of their lives while serving. So I'd like to put forward the proposal that each position have effectively two people on it; one being the role leader, the other being an understudy. The understudy is there to learn the job and to step in should the role leader be required for whatever reason to step down or take a break. :::: Option A: each election elects the understudy for the position. The terms for each position are therefore twice as long, with each understudy stepping up to be the next role leader at the next election. Option B: each election elects both role leader and understudy, with terms operating as normal. Option C: each general member be also delegated (in some way) to be the understudy for a particular role, expanding the number of general council members if necessary. Option D: expand the number of general council members to add an understudy for each role plus all the current council members. The understudies do not hold an official position in the same way that the role leader. I'm sure the creative minds on the Linux Australia list can find a couple more variants. I suspect that we currently unofficially run with option C above. :::: The main disadvantage of this proposal is that it (generally) requires more council members. In some cases it also requires more people to put themselves forward for the council and to be voted on. This may involve extra expense for LA (?), the need to find more people to actually put themselves forward, and the extra complications of planning and organising that having a larger council would involve. The main advantage I hope for this proposal is that the business of Linux Australia can continue to progress if one or more elected officials need to step down. This seems to have happened a number of times, and as Hugh has said this sees LA move into more of a holding pattern and stall on achieving its goals. Let the discussion begin! Have fun, Paul _______________________________________________ linux-aus mailing list linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robyn at robynspcs.com Mon Dec 12 15:19:30 2016 From: robyn at robynspcs.com (Robyn Willison) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 14:49:30 +1030 Subject: [Linux-aus] Proposal: two year overlapping terms, more council members In-Reply-To: <008301d25428$b803fda0$280bf8e0$@adam.com.au> References: <008301d25428$b803fda0$280bf8e0$@adam.com.au> Message-ID: <0b76d316-2250-c385-a52f-6a5c1804ab47@robynspcs.com> On 12/12/2016 2:04 PM, David Lloyd wrote: > > Linux Australia doesn?t need more council members or more > subcommittees. It needs people to be doing stuff that promotes its > goals and aims...and I think that?s the main problem. > > DSL > This has always been a problem, so put your money where your words are people and don't just rant here. Join the council, volunteer on a subcommittee or working group. If you are unemployed and looking for work it is a good thing to pad your CV/resume with. Regards Robyn -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tleeuwenburg at gmail.com Mon Dec 12 15:36:13 2016 From: tleeuwenburg at gmail.com (Tennessee Leeuwenburg) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 15:36:13 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Proposal: two year overlapping terms, more council members In-Reply-To: <0b76d316-2250-c385-a52f-6a5c1804ab47@robynspcs.com> References: <008301d25428$b803fda0$280bf8e0$@adam.com.au> <0b76d316-2250-c385-a52f-6a5c1804ab47@robynspcs.com> Message-ID: Every year so far: -- Every major position has multiple credible candidates -- Including general positions as well as office bearer positions If we are running the show with too few people involved, it's because the various powers that be have chosen not to leverage effort from the community. I don't see any reason not to "do something" with those extra people, unless it's presumed to add more complexity to do so. In addition to the "understudy" concept, we could also look at more project-based council allocations (e.g. head of projects, head of this, head of that etc) which could be either voting council member positions, or potentially just recognised roles reporting to the council. I think it's hard for ordinary community members to find the time to drive through a major commitment when they also have to take on convincing both the council and the community. Cheers, -T Regards, -Tennessee On 12 December 2016 at 15:19, Robyn Willison wrote: > On 12/12/2016 2:04 PM, David Lloyd wrote: > > > > Linux Australia doesn?t need more council members or more subcommittees. > It needs people to be doing stuff that promotes its goals and aims...and I > think that?s the main problem. > > > > > > DSL > > This has always been a problem, so put your money where your words are > people and don't just rant here. Join the council, volunteer on a > subcommittee or working group. > > If you are unemployed and looking for work it is a good thing to pad your > CV/resume with. > > Regards > Robyn > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > > -- -------------------------------------------------- Tennessee Leeuwenburg http://myownhat.blogspot.com/ "Don't believe everything you think" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lloy0076 at adam.com.au Mon Dec 12 15:53:28 2016 From: lloy0076 at adam.com.au (David Lloyd) Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2016 23:53:28 -0500 Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia as It Stands Message-ID: <00f901d25433$afc78700$0f569500$@adam.com.au> Has it outgrown its grassroots and does it need a paid secretariat? Note that "need" does not invite a discussion about "being able to pay for". -- David Lloyd http://www.validlyodd.net/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hugh at blemings.org Mon Dec 12 15:54:22 2016 From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 15:54:22 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Proposal: two year overlapping terms, more council members In-Reply-To: References: <008301d25428$b803fda0$280bf8e0$@adam.com.au> <0b76d316-2250-c385-a52f-6a5c1804ab47@robynspcs.com> Message-ID: Hi All, On 12/12/2016 15:36, Tennessee Leeuwenburg wrote: > Every year so far: > -- Every major position has multiple credible candidates > -- Including general positions as well as office bearer positions > > If we are running the show with too few people involved, it's because > the various powers that be have chosen not to leverage effort from the > community. > > [...] So I feel as President I should "wear" this one a bit. To elaborate; I don't think we've had a lot of folk coming forward, but I _think_ when they have we've done an ok job of making use of that. Perfect track record, I doubt it, but probably ok. What in hindsight I think I could perhaps have done more of, is actively ping the Community when Council could use a hand. Yes there is an overhead in getting someone up to speed, but nothing insurmountable. So to be explicit - if you'd like to help with "something" or you have an idea of a specific thing you'd like to do under the auspices of Linux Australia, please get in touch either with council as a whole council at linux.org.au or one of the office bearers of the day - president@ secretary at linux.org.au etc. :) This doesn't even need to be super formal "Hey Hugh, I was wondering if I could help out with $IDEA" works :) As to a larger Council, we'd talked about this at one point but (from memory) drawn the conclusion that we could just as readily get folk involved if/when they came forward. As per above, maybe I/we could have been more proactive in soliciting this assistance. As to the "understudy" concept - I think we more or less do this already in so far as we've a reasonable approach, if informal, of people coming on to Council after having been involved generally in the community or moving from an OCM role into one of the specific council roles (I went OCM > VP > year off > Prez for example) While it doesn't often come up, there is a reasonable if again informal norm of Office Bearers of the day consulting with their predecessors both during the actual handover but also throughout the year when knotty things pop up. Thanks all for the largely thoughtful conversation around this and to Paul for kicking the thread off :) Cheers, Hugh From hugh at blemings.org Mon Dec 12 16:00:13 2016 From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 16:00:13 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia as It Stands In-Reply-To: <00f901d25433$afc78700$0f569500$@adam.com.au> References: <00f901d25433$afc78700$0f569500$@adam.com.au> Message-ID: <8f84639c-c691-7b75-1cf5-7d9fabfa611e@blemings.org> Hi David, All, > Has it outgrown its grassroots and does it need a paid secretariat? > Note that ?need? does not invite a discussion about ?being able to > pay for?? I'll defer to Kathy as she may wish to elaborate, but devolving some more administrative functions of the organisation has been discussed and is something she explicitly posits in her Candidacy statement. If as I hope we will, we as a community decide to grow LA then this sort of offload seems eminently reasonable to me :) Cheers, Hugh From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Mon Dec 12 16:20:13 2016 From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 16:20:13 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia as It Stands In-Reply-To: <8f84639c-c691-7b75-1cf5-7d9fabfa611e@blemings.org> References: <00f901d25433$afc78700$0f569500$@adam.com.au> <8f84639c-c691-7b75-1cf5-7d9fabfa611e@blemings.org> Message-ID: <117771ff-f619-2d48-2cb1-1d535a71e975@kathyreid.id.au> On 12/12/16 16:00, Hugh Blemings wrote: > Hi David, All, > >> Has it outgrown its grassroots and does it need a paid secretariat? >> Note that ?need? does not invite a discussion about ?being able to >> pay for?? > > I'll defer to Kathy as she may wish to elaborate, but devolving some > more administrative functions of the organisation has been discussed > and is something she explicitly posits in her Candidacy statement. > > If as I hope we will, we as a community decide to grow LA then this > sort of offload seems eminently reasonable to me :) > > Cheers, > Hugh Thanks for starting the discussion David, I think it's a good one to have. I think there are two different questions here; 1 - should LA offload / outsource work to paid people 2 - should the Council be paid for the work they do The implications of both are different. I strongly advocate paying professionals / organisations / companies to do $things that we don't have the capacity or capability (viz. CiviCRM) to do internally, and where doing $thing is a priority for Linux Australia. This should be coupled with due process such as clear specifications / statements of work, a review process for proposals etc. I'm on the fence re: Council being paid for the work they (we?) do, and I'll note the obvious conflict of interest I have in commenting on this as a current Council member who's nominated to stand next year. Different Council members put in different amounts of effort over the year, and to be equitable we would need to stipulate and enforce 'minimum hours' of contribution or similar. Some Council members go above and beyond, with no remuneration whatsoever. Would introducing stipends or similar change who nominates to Council by providing a financial incentive? I'm not sure that's the position we want to be in. As a counterpoint though, some Council members spend upwards of 5-6 hours per week on LA business, at peak times more. That equates to say 240 hours a year, or say 6 weeks' full time work - at say a conservative rate of $500 per day that's $15k a year these people are donating in kind to LA. Reimbursing even a portion of this may be an incentive to get the "good ones" to stay on and keep contributing their expertise. Really keen to hear the thoughts of others on this one. Best, K. From abartlet at samba.org Mon Dec 12 17:12:45 2016 From: abartlet at samba.org (Andrew Bartlett) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 19:12:45 +1300 Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia as It Stands In-Reply-To: <117771ff-f619-2d48-2cb1-1d535a71e975@kathyreid.id.au> References: <00f901d25433$afc78700$0f569500$@adam.com.au> <8f84639c-c691-7b75-1cf5-7d9fabfa611e@blemings.org> <117771ff-f619-2d48-2cb1-1d535a71e975@kathyreid.id.au> Message-ID: <1481523165.10608.177.camel@samba.org> On Mon, 2016-12-12 at 16:20 +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: > > On 12/12/16 16:00, Hugh Blemings wrote: > > > > Hi David, All, > > > > > > > > Has it outgrown its grassroots and does it need a paid > > > secretariat? > > > Note that ?need? does not invite a discussion about ?being able > > > to > > > pay for?? > > > > I'll defer to Kathy as she may wish to elaborate, but devolving > > some > > more administrative functions of the organisation has been > > discussed > > and is something she explicitly posits in her Candidacy statement. > > > > If as I hope we will, we as a community decide to grow LA then this > > sort of offload seems eminently reasonable to me :) > > > > Cheers, > > Hugh > > Thanks for starting the discussion David, I think it's a good one to > have. > > I think there are two different questions here; > 1 - should LA offload / outsource work to paid people > 2 - should the Council be paid for the work they do > > The implications of both are different. > > I strongly advocate paying professionals / organisations / companies > to > do $things that we don't have the capacity or capability (viz. > CiviCRM) > to do internally, and where doing $thing is a priority for Linux > Australia. This should be coupled with due process such as clear > specifications / statements of work, a review process for proposals > etc. > > I'm on the fence re: Council being paid for the work they (we?) do, > and > I'll note the obvious conflict of interest I have in commenting on > this > as a current Council member who's nominated to stand next year. As an interested member but not one who is very involved, I have to say this lines up with my gut feeling. ?I'm quite comfortable for LA paying for services (hosting, X as a service, accounting, auditing, etc). ? I'm less comfortable with paying for employees or pseudo-employees, because even at the scale LA now is, becoming an employer does bring a considerable management overhead/risk that can be easily ignored but will come back to bite later. ?However, I'm quite willing to be convinced.? > Different Council members put in different amounts of effort over the > year, and to be equitable we would need to stipulate and enforce > 'minimum hours' of contribution or similar. Some Council members go > above and beyond, with no remuneration whatsoever. Would introducing > stipends or similar change who nominates to Council by providing a > financial incentive? I'm not sure that's the position we want to be > in. > > As a counterpoint though, some Council members spend upwards of 5-6 > hours per week on LA business, at peak times more. That equates to > say > 240 hours a year, or say 6 weeks' full time work - at say a > conservative > rate of $500 per day that's $15k a year these people are donating in > kind to LA. Reimbursing even a portion of this may be an incentive to > get the "good ones" to stay on and keep contributing their expertise. > > Really keen to hear the thoughts of others on this one. This certainly puts the situation very well. ?Thanks! Andrew Bartlett --? Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/ Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org Samba Developer, Catalyst IT http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba From abartlet at samba.org Tue Dec 13 03:27:36 2016 From: abartlet at samba.org (Andrew Bartlett) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2016 05:27:36 +1300 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <1481328827.2492526.814337009.1C7A44FA@webmail.messagingengine.com> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> <20161209030841.GA12573@erisian.com.au> <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> <1481328827.2492526.814337009.1C7A44FA@webmail.messagingengine.com> Message-ID: <1481560056.10608.185.camel@samba.org> On Sat, 2016-12-10 at 11:13 +1100, Stewart Smith wrote: > On Fri, Dec 9, 2016, at 02:49 PM, Russell Stuart wrote: > > > > Assuming LA is prepared to pay the $15/mo instead of using > > volunteers, > > is this now fulfilled???There is still the issue of replacing > > MemberDB > > voting of course, but presumably you could use both for a year or > > so.? > > It's just a web site so the results would be visible to the > > membership. > > ?That would eliminate most of the speculative arguments occurring > > now. > > I'd advocate spending LA money to pay somebody to develop the needed > free software. > > I have no doubt that other organizations would like/benefit from > preferential voting in an open source CRM for orgs. The Samba Team needed this for our internal elections, and? Bradley M. Kuhn (bkuhn) of the Software Freedom Conservency hacked this up from the parts he could find on the 'net: https://github.com/conservancy/voting Andrew Bartlett --? Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/ Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org Samba Developer, Catalyst IT http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba From harrywwc at yahoo.com.au Tue Dec 13 08:47:30 2016 From: harrywwc at yahoo.com.au (harry wwc) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2016 08:47:30 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia as It Stands In-Reply-To: <1481523165.10608.177.camel@samba.org> References: <00f901d25433$afc78700$0f569500$@adam.com.au> <8f84639c-c691-7b75-1cf5-7d9fabfa611e@blemings.org> <117771ff-f619-2d48-2cb1-1d535a71e975@kathyreid.id.au> <1481523165.10608.177.camel@samba.org> Message-ID: re: reimbursing Board Members I recently sat through some Board Governance training for NSW non-Government NFP schools, and my understanding there is that Board Members can only be reimbursed for actual costs incurred carrying out their duties as a Board Member. They can not, and it is illegal to do so, be paid for the 'time' as a Board Member. Now, of course, LA is _not_ a school - however, I expect that the rules of Board Governance of pretty we any NFP will be quite similar - e.g. the rules are much 'the same' for Board Members of SuperFunds (from the person delivering the above training who was previously a member of a SuperFund). While the suggestion that Board Members should be 'paid' in some way is a noble one, it may also be fraught with legal difficulties. .h On 12 December 2016 at 17:12, Andrew Bartlett wrote: > On Mon, 2016-12-12 at 16:20 +1100, Kathy Reid wrote: > > > > On 12/12/16 16:00, Hugh Blemings wrote: > > > > > > Hi David, All, > > > > > > > > > > > Has it outgrown its grassroots and does it need a paid > > > > secretariat? > > > > Note that ?need? does not invite a discussion about ?being able > > > > to > > > > pay for?? > > > > > > I'll defer to Kathy as she may wish to elaborate, but devolving > > > some > > > more administrative functions of the organisation has been > > > discussed > > > and is something she explicitly posits in her Candidacy statement. > > > > > > If as I hope we will, we as a community decide to grow LA then this > > > sort of offload seems eminently reasonable to me :) > > > > > > Cheers, > > > Hugh > > > > Thanks for starting the discussion David, I think it's a good one to > > have. > > > > I think there are two different questions here; > > 1 - should LA offload / outsource work to paid people > > 2 - should the Council be paid for the work they do > > > > The implications of both are different. > > > > I strongly advocate paying professionals / organisations / companies > > to > > do $things that we don't have the capacity or capability (viz. > > CiviCRM) > > to do internally, and where doing $thing is a priority for Linux > > Australia. This should be coupled with due process such as clear > > specifications / statements of work, a review process for proposals > > etc. > > > > I'm on the fence re: Council being paid for the work they (we?) do, > > and > > I'll note the obvious conflict of interest I have in commenting on > > this > > as a current Council member who's nominated to stand next year. > > As an interested member but not one who is very involved, I have to say > this lines up with my gut feeling. I'm quite comfortable for LA paying > for services (hosting, X as a service, accounting, auditing, etc). > > I'm less comfortable with paying for employees or pseudo-employees, > because even at the scale LA now is, becoming an employer does bring a > considerable management overhead/risk that can be easily ignored but > will come back to bite later. However, I'm quite willing to be > convinced. > > > Different Council members put in different amounts of effort over the > > year, and to be equitable we would need to stipulate and enforce > > 'minimum hours' of contribution or similar. Some Council members go > > above and beyond, with no remuneration whatsoever. Would introducing > > stipends or similar change who nominates to Council by providing a > > financial incentive? I'm not sure that's the position we want to be > > in. > > > > As a counterpoint though, some Council members spend upwards of 5-6 > > hours per week on LA business, at peak times more. That equates to > > say > > 240 hours a year, or say 6 weeks' full time work - at say a > > conservative > > rate of $500 per day that's $15k a year these people are donating in > > kind to LA. Reimbursing even a portion of this may be an incentive to > > get the "good ones" to stay on and keep contributing their expertise. > > > > Really keen to hear the thoughts of others on this one. > > This certainly puts the situation very well. Thanks! > > Andrew Bartlett > -- > Andrew Bartlett http://samba.org/~abartlet/ > Authentication Developer, Samba Team http://samba.org > Samba Developer, Catalyst IT http://catalyst.net.nz/ > services/samba > > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From la at mjec.net Tue Dec 13 09:05:20 2016 From: la at mjec.net (Michael Cordover) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2016 17:05:20 -0500 Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia as It Stands In-Reply-To: References: <00f901d25433$afc78700$0f569500$@adam.com.au> <8f84639c-c691-7b75-1cf5-7d9fabfa611e@blemings.org> <117771ff-f619-2d48-2cb1-1d535a71e975@kathyreid.id.au> <1481523165.10608.177.camel@samba.org> Message-ID: <1481580320.3123061.816797985.5D32C2A9@webmail.messagingengine.com> On Mon, Dec 12, 2016, at 16:47, harry wwc wrote: > I recently sat through some Board Governance training for NSW non- > Government NFP schools, and my understanding there is that Board > Members can only be reimbursed for actual costs incurred carrying out > their duties as a Board Member. They can not, and it is illegal to do > so, be paid for the 'time' as a Board Member. Momentarily donning my lawyer hat[0] to say this is not a hard-and-fast rule that would apply to Linux Australia. That is not to say it is something we should do, merely that it is something that it is legal for us to do. I think before doing so we would want to thoroughly examine the precise form this would take, because opportunities for conflict do arise. The usual approach would be not to pay members of the committee for their committee membership, but instead to employ one or more staff members who may sit on the Council ex oficio, or not. Some organizations also pay an honorarium to board members, and this is normally permissible (again subject to appropriate checks). []: This is not legal advice and should not be relied on as such. Specific legal advice should be taken by Linux Australia prior to paying board members. I do not currently hold a practicing certificate anywhere in Australia, so I cannot provide legal advice. I'm speaking here as someone who worked as a lawyer, but my knowledge may be outdated or incorrect, hence the need for specific legal advice. Michael -- https://mjec.net/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From russell-humbug at stuart.id.au Tue Dec 13 13:06:56 2016 From: russell-humbug at stuart.id.au (Russell Stuart) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2016 12:06:56 +1000 Subject: [Linux-aus] Candidacy Support Statement - President or Ordinary Council Member In-Reply-To: <1481560056.10608.185.camel@samba.org> References: <20161201214618.GA5058@erisian.com.au> <5389869.Z0DAPZpGJN@russell.coker.com.au> <20161206224412.GA30011@erisian.com.au> <4df99640-c22c-5f23-5925-1b9eba7312c1@blemings.org> <20161209015741.GA11891@erisian.com.au> <1481251295.3651.8.camel@stuart.id.au> <20161209030841.GA12573@erisian.com.au> <1481255379.3651.13.camel@stuart.id.au> <1481328827.2492526.814337009.1C7A44FA@webmail.messagingengine.com> <1481560056.10608.185.camel@samba.org> Message-ID: <1481594816.3015.1.camel@stuart.id.au> On Tue, 2016-12-13 at 05:27 +1300, Andrew Bartlett wrote: > > I have no doubt that other organizations would like/benefit from > > preferential voting in an open source CRM for orgs. > > The Samba Team needed this for our internal elections, and? > Bradley M. Kuhn (bkuhn) of the Software Freedom Conservency hacked > this up from the parts he could find on the 'net: > https://github.com/conservancy/voting Horror! His roundup of open source voting systems doesn't include MemberDB. On a more serious note, the main attribute of preferential voting (STV bkuln is using is a close variant) is it's better than First Past The Post. But then just about every other voting system short of picking a name out of a hat is. Anybody who's looked at MemberDB's voting logic, or has pondered how on earth some Senators got to be elected knows preferential voting also damned complex. Turns out there are simpler voting systems that better in many ways (this page calls "preferential voting" "instant run off"): http://ncase.me/ballot/ From andrew at donnellan.id.au Wed Dec 14 11:32:44 2016 From: andrew at donnellan.id.au (Andrew Donnellan) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2016 11:32:44 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] PSA: Messages sent through LA mailing lists being classified as SPAM In-Reply-To: <201601150118.37692.russell@coker.com.au> References: <5696B96B.3080105@blakjak.net> <201601150013.51452.russell@coker.com.au> <201601150118.37692.russell@coker.com.au> Message-ID: On 15 January 2016 at 01:18, Russell Coker wrote: > On Fri, 15 Jan 2016 12:30:45 AM Tim Connors wrote: >> > That appears to be the case. One other thing to note is that most people >> > don't know how to configure these things. When we discussed this issue >> > on the LUV list no-one pointed out how to solve it. >> >> Er yes we did. We said it would be better to revert the changes, since >> the problems it created were greater than the non problems it solved. > > The changes made by Yahoo, Google, and other companies can't be reverted by us > and won't be reverted by them. We have to make our servers deal with it. > > Changing the From header to indicate that mail came from a list causes no > problems apart from apparently messing up thread identification in mutt and > prevents mail from being inappropriately put in the Gmail spam folder (and > various other ways of dealing with messages that fail DKIM). > > As for thread identification in mutt, if the dmarc_moderation_action option was > used then the threads would still be broken every time anyone sends a DKIM > signed message to it. Has anything been done about this? I'm still finding Linux-aus emails in my Spam folder and it looks like they're DKIM/DMARC failures. -- Andrew Donnellan http://andrew.donnellan.id.au andrew at donnellan.id.au From hugh at blemings.org Wed Dec 14 11:46:52 2016 From: hugh at blemings.org (Hugh Blemings) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2016 11:46:52 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] PSA: Messages sent through LA mailing lists being classified as SPAM In-Reply-To: References: <5696B96B.3080105@blakjak.net> <201601150013.51452.russell@coker.com.au> <201601150118.37692.russell@coker.com.au> Message-ID: <38d1caa2-e1e8-63c2-6b99-48e2a6af109e@blemings.org> On 14/12/2016 11:32, Andrew Donnellan wrote: > On 15 January 2016 at 01:18, Russell Coker wrote: >> On Fri, 15 Jan 2016 12:30:45 AM Tim Connors wrote: >>>> That appears to be the case. One other thing to note is that most people >>>> don't know how to configure these things. When we discussed this issue >>>> on the LUV list no-one pointed out how to solve it. >>> >>> Er yes we did. We said it would be better to revert the changes, since >>> the problems it created were greater than the non problems it solved. >> >> The changes made by Yahoo, Google, and other companies can't be reverted by us >> and won't be reverted by them. We have to make our servers deal with it. >> >> Changing the From header to indicate that mail came from a list causes no >> problems apart from apparently messing up thread identification in mutt and >> prevents mail from being inappropriately put in the Gmail spam folder (and >> various other ways of dealing with messages that fail DKIM). >> >> As for thread identification in mutt, if the dmarc_moderation_action option was >> used then the threads would still be broken every time anyone sends a DKIM >> signed message to it. > > Has anything been done about this? I'm still finding Linux-aus emails > in my Spam folder and it looks like they're DKIM/DMARC failures. My apologies, I've been trying to catch Steve and the admin team to discuss this further, the delay mine not theirs. Thanks for your patience! Cheers, Hugh From kathy at kathyreid.id.au Wed Dec 14 13:21:31 2016 From: kathy at kathyreid.id.au (Kathy Reid) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2016 13:21:31 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Media Team report 2016 Message-ID: Hi everyone, Please find att'd the Media Team report for 2016. As always your questions, concerns and feedback are warmly welcomed, Kind regards, Kathy Reid On behalf of the Media and Communications Subcommittee -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: media-team-report-2016.odt Type: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text Size: 307102 bytes Desc: not available URL: From vice-president at linux.org.au Sun Dec 18 15:16:02 2016 From: vice-president at linux.org.au (Linux Australia Vice President) Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2016 15:16:02 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia makes $10k donation to Software Freedom Conservancy Message-ID: <278cc1bd-00c7-5c57-f228-16353fedd098@linux.org.au> Hi everyone, We'd like to keep you briefed on a major donation Linux Australia has recently made to the Software Freedom Conservancy. At linux.conf.au 2016 in Geelong, Council resolved to donate to Conservancy to enable them to continue the excellent work they do; "Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization incorporated in New York. Software Freedom Conservancy helps promote, improve, develop, and defend Free, Libre, and Open Source Software (FLOSS) projects. Conservancy provides a non-profit home and infrastructure for FLOSS projects. This allows FLOSS developers to focus on what they do best ? writing and improving FLOSS for the general public ? while Conservancy takes care of the projects' needs that do not relate directly to software development and documentation" (from Software Freedom Conservancy's website) We've recently completed a donation of around $10k $AUD. This is in line with our 2016-2017 budget. I'd like to especially thank Karen Sandler, Bradley M. Kuhn and Brett Smith of the Software Freedom Conservancy for being so patient on this piece - while we committed at linux.conf.au to donate, we've deliberately held off to see if the $AUD would rise against the $USD - it hasn't, and is unlikely to in the near future. Find out more about Software Freedom Conservancy at https://sfconservancy.org Kind regards, Kathy -- Kathy Reid Vice President Linux Australia vice-president at linux.org.au http://linux.org.au Linux Australia Inc GPO Box 4788 Sydney NSW 2001 Australia ABN 56 987 117 479 From brent.wallis at gmail.com Tue Dec 20 21:04:59 2016 From: brent.wallis at gmail.com (Brent Wallis) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 21:04:59 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Fwd: [LA-Jobs] Linux Systems Engineer at The Linux Foundation In-Reply-To: <20161220020551.F328CC7@linux.org.au> References: <20161220020551.F328CC7@linux.org.au> Message-ID: K... have I been bat stupid and blind? (kind reminders if I am plse :-) ) But who and what are the "Linux Foundation" ??? Where is their place in the Linux timeline and what are they? A business, or entity aligned with ours? BW ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: LA Jobs List Date: Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 1:05 PM Subject: [LA-Jobs] Linux Systems Engineer at The Linux Foundation To: jobs at lists.linux.org.au A new job has been posted on the Linux Australia website. http://linux.org.au/linux-systems-engineer-linux-foundation =================== Job Description ========== The Linux Foundation is looking for a Linux Systems Engineer to join the Certification IT team. The Certification IT team is responsible for the development and support of the Certification Platform which hosts various skills based technical exams. For more information about our service, visit https://training.linuxfoundati on.org/certification. This role is a full time remote position. All we ask is that you are based in Australia. Salary range is $95,000 to $109,000 excluding superannuation. The Linux Foundation is an equal opportunity employer. To apply for the role, send a short email with your resume attached to it-jobs at linuxfoundation.org. Job Responsibilities ============ - Assist in design, development, testing, implementation, deployment and maintenance of distributed systems across multiple regions within different Cloud providers. - Provide level 3 technical support to Linux Foundation support staff on platform operational related issues. - Document technical design and processes for Linux Foundation team members. Skills and Technical Experience ==================== - Advanced Linux system programming in bash and python. - Linux systems management using SaltStack and the SaltStack API. - Low level Linux system administration experience with CentOS, Ubuntu and openSUSE with excellent troubleshooting and problem solving skills. - Experience using git for version control. - Experience with AWS services EC2, CloudFormation, SQS, S3, VPC, IAM and Route53 in a production environment. - OpenStack experience running in a production environment. - Experience with building and deploying Docker containers within production environments. - Python experience in building HTTP API clients and servers. - A demonstrated ability in writing technical documentation for team members to communicate complex design, concepts and workflows. - Ability to work autonomously from a remote location with team members being located in the United States, Canada and Australia. =================== _______________________________________________ jobs mailing list jobs at lists.linux.org.au http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/jobs -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrew at sericyb.com.au Tue Dec 20 21:12:12 2016 From: andrew at sericyb.com.au (Andrew Pam) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 21:12:12 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Fwd: [LA-Jobs] Linux Systems Engineer at The Linux Foundation In-Reply-To: References: <20161220020551.F328CC7@linux.org.au> Message-ID: <11132016-d2de-1a3a-9b46-48e955f9e409@sericyb.com.au> On 20/12/16 21:04, Brent Wallis wrote: > But who and what are the "Linux Foundation" ??? > Where is their place in the Linux timeline and what are they? Founded in 2007, which is nearly 10 years ago now: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation Hope that helps, Andrew From mattcen at gmail.com Tue Dec 20 21:16:47 2016 From: mattcen at gmail.com (Matthew Cengia) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 21:16:47 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Fwd: [LA-Jobs] Linux Systems Engineer at The Linux Foundation In-Reply-To: <11132016-d2de-1a3a-9b46-48e955f9e409@sericyb.com.au> References: <20161220020551.F328CC7@linux.org.au> <11132016-d2de-1a3a-9b46-48e955f9e409@sericyb.com.au> Message-ID: In answer to your first question, Brent, yes. A quick web search would've prevented you from wasting the time of everybody on this list. Incidentally, and oddly, https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about says it was founded in 2000, in contrast with the Wikipedia article. On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 9:12 PM, Andrew Pam wrote: > On 20/12/16 21:04, Brent Wallis wrote: > > But who and what are the "Linux Foundation" ??? > > Where is their place in the Linux timeline and what are they? > > Founded in 2007, which is nearly 10 years ago now: > > https://www.linuxfoundation.org/ > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Foundation > > Hope that helps, > Andrew > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > -- Regards, Matthew Cengia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrew at donnellan.id.au Tue Dec 20 21:17:56 2016 From: andrew at donnellan.id.au (Andrew Donnellan) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 21:17:56 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Fwd: [LA-Jobs] Linux Systems Engineer at The Linux Foundation In-Reply-To: References: <20161220020551.F328CC7@linux.org.au> Message-ID: On 20 December 2016 at 21:04, Brent Wallis wrote: > K... have I been bat stupid and blind? > (kind reminders if I am plse :-) ) > > But who and what are the "Linux Foundation" ??? > Where is their place in the Linux timeline and what are they? > A business, or entity aligned with ours? They're a trade association of companies with an interest in Linux development (including my employer). Among other things, they employ {torvalds,gregkh,akpm}@linux-foundation.org... -- Andrew Donnellan http://andrew.donnellan.id.au andrew at donnellan.id.au From andrew at sericyb.com.au Tue Dec 20 21:31:35 2016 From: andrew at sericyb.com.au (Andrew Pam) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 21:31:35 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Fwd: [LA-Jobs] Linux Systems Engineer at The Linux Foundation In-Reply-To: References: <20161220020551.F328CC7@linux.org.au> <11132016-d2de-1a3a-9b46-48e955f9e409@sericyb.com.au> Message-ID: <054a1103-f1db-7819-1fdf-43480bf39691@sericyb.com.au> On 20/12/16 21:16, Matthew Cengia wrote: > Incidentally, and oddly, https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about says > it was founded in 2000, in contrast with the Wikipedia article. That's because they claim organisational continuity with the Open Source Development Labs, while Wikipedia considers Linux Foundation to have become a new entity in 2007 at the time of the merger with the Free Standards Group. Cheers, Andrew From brent.wallis at gmail.com Tue Dec 20 21:44:31 2016 From: brent.wallis at gmail.com (Brent Wallis) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2016 21:44:31 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Fwd: [LA-Jobs] Linux Systems Engineer at The Linux Foundation In-Reply-To: <054a1103-f1db-7819-1fdf-43480bf39691@sericyb.com.au> References: <20161220020551.F328CC7@linux.org.au> <11132016-d2de-1a3a-9b46-48e955f9e409@sericyb.com.au> <054a1103-f1db-7819-1fdf-43480bf39691@sericyb.com.au> Message-ID: My apologies to all.... I should have kicked out the rhetorical angle a little harder... my bad ;-) BW On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 9:31 PM, Andrew Pam wrote: > On 20/12/16 21:16, Matthew Cengia wrote: > > Incidentally, and oddly, https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about says > > it was founded in 2000, in contrast with the Wikipedia article. > > That's because they claim organisational continuity with the Open Source > Development Labs, while Wikipedia considers Linux Foundation to have > become a new entity in 2007 at the time of the merger with the Free > Standards Group. > > Cheers, > Andrew > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chair at hobart.lca2017.org Wed Dec 21 14:57:24 2016 From: chair at hobart.lca2017.org (Christopher Neugebauer (linux.conf.au 2017)) Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2016 14:57:24 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] linux.conf.au 2017 doesn't have many tickets left! Message-ID: There?s less than four weeks to go until linux.conf.au lands in Hobart. Can you believe it? As well as it being very very close indeed to the conference, we?re starting to run low on tickets. In fact, we only have only 150 tickets remaining. We don?t plan on increasing that number, either. If you?ve been planning to get a ticket to linux.conf.au, but haven?t bought your ticket yet, now is a great time to do so. Our various ticket options can be found at https://linux.conf.au/attend Our accommodation options can be found at https://linux.conf.au/attend/accommodation -- note that whilst hotel accommodation on-site at our venue has sold out, our budget option at the University of Tasmania accommodation still has space, as do off-site hotel options. -- --Christopher Neugebauer Conference Director - linux.conf.au - January 2017 - Hobart Tickets on sale now! https://linux.conf.au/attend From paulway at mabula.net Mon Dec 26 20:54:35 2016 From: paulway at mabula.net (Paul Wayper) Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2016 20:54:35 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Parity error between nominations and candidates? Message-ID: Hi all, I fear I've forgotten the answer to this, so here's a stupid question: why are some nominated people not candidates in the election even if they've got two nominations? Is it because the candidate has to accept the nomination, and those candidates haven't accepted the nomination? For example, Michael Still was nominated for the committee by two people, but isn't a candidate? It would be good for any future voting system that Linux Australia sets up to include information like that to help idiots like me understand the parity error :-) Thanks in advance, and have a good holiday, Paul From katie at glasnt.com Mon Dec 26 21:22:21 2016 From: katie at glasnt.com (Katie McLaughlin) Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2016 21:22:21 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Parity error between nominations and candidates? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi > Is it because the candidate has to accept the nomination > and those candidates haven't accepted the nomination? Yes, that's correct. See Section 15) 1. a. of the Constitution (https://linux.org.au/constitution) (emphasis mine): > Nominations of candidates for election .. must be made in writing, signed by 2 members of the association and > **accompanied by the written consent of the candidate** There are a number of candidates who did not accept their nomination. The people listed under the Candidates section are those who have accepted nomination, and can be voted for. Hopefully this clears things up. - Katie On 26 December 2016 at 20:54, Paul Wayper wrote: > Hi all, > > I fear I've forgotten the answer to this, so here's a stupid question: why > are > some nominated people not candidates in the election even if they've got > two > nominations? > > Is it because the candidate has to accept the nomination, and those > candidates > haven't accepted the nomination? > > For example, Michael Still was nominated for the committee by two people, > but > isn't a candidate? > > It would be good for any future voting system that Linux Australia sets up > to > include information like that to help idiots like me understand the parity > error :-) > > Thanks in advance, and have a good holiday, > > Paul > _______________________________________________ > linux-aus mailing list > linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au > http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From katie at glasnt.com Thu Dec 29 20:38:20 2016 From: katie at glasnt.com (Katie McLaughlin) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2016 20:38:20 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia AGM is just over 2 weeks away! Vote! Message-ID: Hi everyone! Just a quick reminder that the AGM is only 17 days away, and that means it's voting time! It's really important that if you're a member of Linux Australia that you have your say on who you want to represent you. https://www.linux.org.au/membership/index.php?page=view-election&id=23 See the below Notice of AGM. Cheers, Katie ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Linux Australia Secretary Date: 10 December 2016 at 15:57 Subject: [Linux-aus] Notice of Annual General Meeting, Monday 16th January 2017 1800hrs, Wrest Point, Hobart To: null , null , council Dear Linux Australia Members, Pursuant to Clause (24) of the Linux Australia Constitution [1], I hereby give notice that the Annual General Meeting of the organisation will be held Monday 16th January 2017 at Wrest Point, Hobart at 1800hrs (or as advised closer to the date), as part of linux.conf.au 2017. Specific room will be advised closer to the date. The meeting will: 1. confirm the minutes of the last preceding Annual General Meeting (to be forthcoming when the Agenda is advised) and of any Special General Meeting held since that meeting (nil SGM held), 2. receive from the Council reports on the activities of the association during the last preceding financial year 3. elect office-bearers of the association and ordinary committee members, or to announce the results of a ballot held prior to the Annual General Meeting under clause 15(5) - see [2] 4. receive and consider any financial statement or report required to be submitted to members under the Act A formal Agenda, including reports from office-bearers, will be compiled and distributed in due course. I also hereby call for any agenda items to be tabled for discussion at the Annual General Meeting. With kind regards, Sae Ra [1] http://www.linux.org.au/constitution From vice-president at linux.org.au Fri Dec 30 10:46:40 2016 From: vice-president at linux.org.au (Linux Australia Vice President) Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2016 10:46:40 +1100 Subject: [Linux-aus] Linux Australia 2016: by the numbers (an infographic) Message-ID: <9e37ab90-a038-ad24-d28f-d1cf6ce77a5a@linux.org.au> How many financial transactions did LA handle this financial year? How many Twitter followers do we have? How much of our total expenditure was on insurance? Now you can have the answers to these questions and more in this handy infographic! Source available at; https://github.com/linuxaustralia/infographic (svg also available) As always, comments, questions and feedback warmly welcomed. Kind regards, Kathy -- Kathy Reid Vice President Linux Australia vice-president at linux.org.au http://linux.org.au Linux Australia Inc GPO Box 4788 Sydney NSW 2001 Australia ABN 56 987 117 479 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: la-infographic-2016.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 1707496 bytes Desc: not available URL: