PLUG Committee Meeting 2023-10-17

0. Opening

• Meeting opened by Patrick at 19:47 PM
  • VENUE: https://meetings.ucc.asn.au/b/plug
• Present: Peter, Nick, James, Patrick
• Apologies: Benjamin, Paul, Niall
• Absent:
• Guest:

1. Confirmation of Previous Minutes

• https://plugorgau.github.io/events/committee/2023/09-19/

2. Next Committee Meeting

• Possible adjournment to Tuesday 2023-10-24
  • Peter can’t make it
• Third Tuesday 2023-11-21 19:00 PM - In-person @James
  • Perhaps order pizza using PLUG card before meeting starts

3. Reports & Standing Items

• Financial Situation end of 2023-09-18 (Peter)

  • Balances:
    • Cash box
      • $679.10 current, $598.95 start of year ($446.30 start 2022)
    • Business Debit Card
      • $38.68 current, $167.17 start of year ($200.00 start 2022)
    • Bank Balance
      • $3404.24 current, $3610.89 start of year ($3885.20 start 2022)
    • Receivables
      • $10.00 cash being held by Nick as petty cash/float
    • Total Assets
      • $4163.03 (was $4418.01 start of year) ($4531.50 start 2022)
  • Statement:
    • Income
      • $40.00 this month, $0.00 last, $580.15 this year
    • Expense
      • ($57.35) this month, ($57.92) last, ($845.13) this year
    • Net Proceeds
      • ($17.35) this month, ($57.92) last, ($254.98) this year

• Membership Situation as of 2023-09-12

  • ? new members, ? returned, ? renewals
    • Need to nudge new attendees towards formal financial membership
  • Current Paid Members 24, was 29 at AGM
  • Expired Members 329, was 320 at AGM
  • Members on meetup.com 547, was 472 at AGM
    • lost our survey questions!

4. Events Status

• Review of recent events:

  • September 2023

    • PLUG-in-the-Pub Thursday 2023-09-28 PirateBar@Mount Hawthorn
      • ( ITLAPD-adjacent )

  • October 2023

    • Second Sunday PLUG+POSH: 2023-10-08 - Artifactory
      • Infra? or Projects/AV hack?
    • Second Tuesday talk: 2023-10-10 - BenjaminIDS: EMACS for Notetaking
      • EMACS using https://orgmode.org/ for notetaking
      • ACTION: James to process the video

• Upcoming events:

  • November 2023
    • First Tuesday 2023-11-07 PLUG-in-the-Pub https://www.champstavern.com.au/whatson
    • Second Sunday PLUG+POSH: 2023-11-12
    • Second Tuesday 2023-11-14
      • Raspberry PI showcase - possible if organize now (events.raspberrypi.com?)
      • ACTION: Promotion, calendars, post-meeting: Patrick, James, Nick
    • Committee Meeting Online: 2023-11-21 in-person
  • December 2023
    • Xmas BBQ? with PLUG+POSH? Second Sunday 2023-12-10
      • Patrick - Salad, buns/bread, sausages, onions
      • Peter - cheese/grated cheese
      • Niall? drinks?
      • Napkins? Plates? Sunscreen?
  • January 2024
    • Second Tuesday AGM 2024-01-09
      • 25th anniversary - incorporation registered 1998-09-14
      • Budget for food: up to $100 of pizza
      • Announce that there will be food

• Future talks?

  • Margaret: EMACS-based UIs for database applications (not until 2023)
  • Yuchen: Haskell-code-explorer (unlikely to be ready in 2023)
  • Locutus: Ian Clarke (Contact)
  • Aidan - Graphics work

• Other event info moved here for non actionable items. https://hackmd.io/O85j6jvpR8SlIKln1UD_AQ

5. General Business & Matters Arising

• Time to raise membership?

  • Will require UGMM and website redeploys
    • Concession: 15+ 20+ 25+
    • Full: 30+ 35+ 40+ 45+ 50+
    • Starting from: 2024-01-01? 2024-01-08? 2024-01-09?
    • Feedback from mailing list? also AGM announcement
      • Reminder that concession membership is available
      • ACTION: Nick, send draft?
    • New team, new financials
  • Was last set in 2012 and some considered it too low then: http://lists.plug.org.au/pipermail/plug/2012-January/081284.html

• ACTION: Event promotion: team effort - see previous minutes for details, e.g. https://github.com/plugorgau/plugorgau.github.io/blob/master/content/minutes/2021-05-18-minutes.md#5-general-business--matters-arising

  • ACTION: Paul will update all events in Meetup/Google calendar. Can email these once confirmed
  • Matt Richardson <matt@raspberrypi.com> ACTION: Promote relevant events on events.raspberrypi.com , need “Raspberry Pi ID” ?
  • facebook?

• ACTION Peter: pay DNS 2023-06-04: Invoice 0490 from White IT Solutions

• ACTION ???: approve p.r.n. card account topup to $200

• ACTION: Peter: Update PLUG addresses + update the address associated with the ABN (via ATO.gov.au?), ASIC (N.B. Benjamin’s new address)

  • Who/what/where to contact next?
    • https://connectonline.asic.gov.au/ , “Perth Linux User Group” ABN 58233849580
      • 2021 was President’s address
    • Bank using Treasurer’s address
  • Also AWS has old address: volunteer to fix?

• Subcommittee: Review of PLUG mailing lists Discuss with mailing list members. Reinstate plug-announce and ensure all active members are on it to enable us to meet legal requirements for announcing AGM. This would require regular updates as members join/drop out. Margaret to investigate using UGMM for official announcements - script written to extract email addresses of all current and overdue members, used for official announcement of AGM and call for nominations.

• Can we create a PayID for the PLUG bank account? This would be less error prone than typing the BSB + account number. We could create PayIDs for committee email address and maybe also ABN.

  • http://lists.plug.org.au/mailman/private/committee/2021-June/010370.html
  • Ask Bendigo Bank again, post-AGM-2024

• aws.amazon.com

  • Bill due first few days of each month
  • ACTION: (late 2023?) Nick: Contact Developer Marketing Manager for an event speaker+swag: quiz

• Plan is for PLUG to take over digitalocean.com bill directly

• New reporting requirements for tax-exempt not-for-profit organisations. * https://www.ato.gov.au/Non-profit/Newsroom/General/Straight-from-the-source---August-2022/ * ACTION: Peter to fill in online form

• https://associations.commerce.wa.gov.au/

  • Reports done up to 2023, next will be due post-AGM-2024-01

• ACTION: Paul: Linux Australia grant money, when have stabilised our events
• Ephemeral BBB instance, e.g. https://demo.bigbluebutton.org/gl/m-s-e73-zvh-5hy but with our own single-meeting build, run&record, download and teardown workflow
• update mailing lists: moderators
  • admin/committee busybee items: get people using bulk actions on mailing lists
• ACTION: Purchase a smaller/lighter cashbox, suitable for bringing to meetings.

6. New General Business

• Raspberry Jam event?
• upcoming Nov/Dec/Jan/Feb events
• card topup
• membership processing

7. Meeting closed by Patrick at 20:55

• Post-meeting busybee
  • Event calendars