Committee Meeting - 21st October 2015

Ruby Australia Committee Meeting Minutes

21st of October, 2015 - 7:00pm AEST

Held via GotoMeeting

Committee Members Present

  • Sebastian VonConrad - President
  • Matt Allen - Treasurer
  • Mikel Lindsaar - Secretary
  • Rob Jacoby
  • John Barton
  • Amanda Neumann

Appologies

  • Melissa Kaulfuss - Vice President
  • Leonard Garvey

Agenda

  1. Welcome / Apologies / Agenda Amendments

    • Welcome to all people.
    • Apologies
  2. Previous minutes

    • Motion to accept last minutes as correct, proposed by Secretary,
      seconded by Matt and Rob, no opposition, passed.
  3. Matters arising from previous meeting:

    • Minutes to be written up and published - DONE
    • Rob to get assets to Sebastian for Ruby Conf sponsorship document - DONE
    • Sebastian to continue with Mel + Len on issue that came up at Rails
      Girls Sydney and work towards an appropriate resolution - RESOLVED NOW
    • Rob to work with team outside of meeting to do a snap sale to push
      ticket sales on Ruby Conf. - DONE
      • Early bird extended to Nov.
  4. President’s report

    • Working on sponsorship, we have successfully published a sponsorship
      prospectus. Raised $85,000 so far. Last year was about $130k so aiming
      for that. Little effort on this.
    • Discussions around RailsCamp, GST issue but that’s now resolved.
      Highlighted the necessity
  5. Treasurer’s report

    • Lots of invoicing and helping get Rails Girls done as well

    • Got the Ruby Australia credit card delivered

    • Need to do a sponsorship

    • Money flowing in from ticket sales

    • $4k GST refund

    • We are healthy, need to get some payments from debtors that we
      haven’t sent invoices to.

    • Conference is coming, we are paying things and not going to run
      into a cash flow problem it seems.

    • Need to get details from Pat on how to log in.

    • Sebastian: Can we setup a Google Apps account? Rob: Would be good
      to be able to do ruby conf emails via ruby.org.au

    • Yes we could get this done.

    • Action item for Matt to setup Google Apps account and work
      with Sebastian and Rob to set this up.

  6. Review Main Activities

    1. Ruby Conference - Rob Jacoby

      • Finalised the speakers
      • Hootsuite account setup to do social media for Ruby conf
      • Excitement about Mel and Liam MC’ing
      • Early bird until November
      • We are about 2 weeks ahead of last year’s schedule
      • Hope ticket sales will pickup somewhat now that CFP is done
      • Have given Mel a code for sponsors
      • Need tito login to make new events for Ruby Australia
      • Matta: We should be doing a lot of tweets, 2 a day and the
        committee we retweet - Rob: Agreed.
    2. Event Knowledge Project - Leonard Garvey

      • James Sadler and Len have been working to give knowledge to Tim
        with regards to RailsCamp.
      • Some confusion about GST, got a pragmatic solution on how to work
        it out. Sebastian: Also told them that if it was slightly negative
        that would be OK.
      • Will continue over the next month.
      • Rob: I’ve also started brain dumping things on RubyConf, Len: if
        you could send it to me then I can add to the guides.
    3. New People into the Community Project - Amanda Neumann

      • Mostly working this month on Sponsorship and Meetup organised.
      • Met with a bunch of people who are wanting to help and got a lot
        of feedback, we’ve been fairly busy since then
      • Identified a starting point - the website, colate the resources
        to find things and get in touch with the committee on events
        and info they need to know - we need input from the committee or
        other items regarding that.
      • Mikel: Make a slack channel on it
      • I’ll make a trello for this
      • Rob: Talk to Rachelle as well regarding this
      • Design needs a refresh, work with SEO as well, our website is
        something should be good enough for every event to announce it
      • Mel is consolidating groups for meetup.com so that this is all
        organised into a cental body
      • Getting juniors into Dev positions - still open for lots of
        discussion
      • Mikel: Mentioned fairfax / reinteractive mentoring idea on getting
        a list of developers and pairing up with juniors for a 3 month 2
        hour per week stint with company making time for it to happen. Will
        get more details next meeting.
    4. Ruby to the Business Project Update - John Barton

      • Survey
        • Didn’t complete the startup Victoria item.
        • Survey needs to be industry focused as the less focused it is the
          less likely it is to complete (gave examples of survey questions)
        • One question is “before this survey were you aware of Ruby Australia?”
        • Get a survey out that is fully anonymous
        • But we should be able to have a signup form for Ruby Australia
          membership
        • Need to be more representative of the community once we get the survey out
        • Want to get the questions approved, will do a pull request to the
          slack room
        • Amanda: Who does this go to? John: Anyone that has written Ruby.
        • Goal is to get thousands filling it out, need to leverage our
          contacts as a team and get it happening as a game in the community.
      • RMIT
        • Last few years have spoken to RMIT Systems Architecture class, they
          still only teach Perl as their one dynamic language, the survey will
          help show the number of jobs available to Ruby developers and they
          can switch off Perl.
        • RMIT Lecturer is interested in getting a talk from a Ruby person
        • Mikel: Could do an installfest at RMIT on this point
        • I’ll email them and suggest
  7. General Business

  • Beting companies sponsorsing events (John)

    • John: I personally feel that we shouldn’t align our community with betting
      companies
    • Mikel: I agree, but we can’t ban it as we don’t run all the events
    • Matt: Needs to be a clear statement, we don’t have a right to ban
    • Mikel proposed writing up a statement to this effect as a PR on the
      ruby.org.au website and then doing a mailing to the mailing list for
      any strong detractors - all agreed
  • RailsCamp ticket for committee members

    • Mikel: Pointed out some angst and upset about this
    • Matt: Maybe needs to be clearer on how this works with regards why, could
      have been announced better
    • Len: Should be clear these are purchased and not are free
    • Rob: More of a problem we announced without co-ordination at all
    • John: Most of the recent ballots didn’t fill up enough
    • Sebastian: I don’t feel we can announce we volunteer more than anyone, we
      don’t know that is true at all
    • Sebastian: We wanted to make sure we could hold a general meeting and felt
      it was important for committee members to be at the general meeting, we
      solved that by Committee members can always just arrvie for the GM
    • Sebastian: It is interesting that every other time we have run a ballot no
      one has missed out, so this is interesting.
    • Sebastian: I don’t think we need to mandate it.
    • Matt: I think this needs to be online
    • Mikel: We could do it online
    • Sebastian: we could link up rooms on this
  • Motion to revert previous motion to guarantee committee members tickets for
    RailsCamp - proposed by Mikel Lindsaar, Unanimously approved

  • Motion to rais at next RailsCamp at the AGM a move to an online AGM - proposed
    by Mikel Lindsaar, Unanimously approved

  • Shared Accounts

    • Leonard: Would be good to make a shared accounts list of some sort
    • Sebastian: we currently have a google spreadsheet, this needs to change
    • Leonard: I’d be happy to do an action item.
  1. Next Meeting

    • Wednesday the 18th of November, 7pm.
  2. Targets for following month

    • Help get Tito account resolved (Mikel)
    • Setup google apps account for Ruby Australia (Matt)
    • Get break even price / tickets sales details (Rob)
    • Write email to RMIT regarding training and installfest (John)
    • Do an investigation regarding how we can store shared passwords (Leonard)
    • Mikel to draft a statement for Ruby Australia re gambling and betting
      sponsorship and get it as a PR on the Ruby australia website for
      community feedback
    • Matt & Melissa to setup Meetup.com account under Ruby Australia
    • Mel + Mikel to work out funding policy for RailsGirls / InstallFest
      and DevelopmentHub style training / introduction events and distribute
      for next committee meeting vote
    • John to get written proposal and wheels in motion for Startup Victoria
      survey
  3. End of Meeting