12th of November, 2017 - 2pm
Held at Rails Camp 22 – Camp Toolangi, VIC
Committee Members Present
Lauren Hennessey – President
Toby Nieboer – Vice President
Jo Cranford – Treasurer
Anton Katunin – General Member
Nick Wolf – General Member
Caitlin Palmer-Bright – General Member
Apologies
Ryan Bigg – Secretary
Rachelle Le Quesne – General Member
Attendeees
- Ben Turner
- Edward Tippett
- Eaden McKee
- Melissa Kaulfuss
- Sebastian von Conrad
- Sophie McDonald
- Keith Pitty
- Nick Wolf
- Steve Gilles
- Kevin Yank
- Dan Cheail
- Nadia Vu
- Eleanor Kiefel Haggerty
- Andrew Noll
- Michael Pearson
- Ana Djordjevic
- Mitchell Buckley
- Geoffrey Donaldson
- Mark Ryall
- Annette Drapalski
- Marta Scaramella
- Agnieszka Slota
- Namibia Lebron-Torres
- Anto Dominic
- Micah Boyd
- David Forer
- Brett Rapp
- Ali Graham
- Chris Bukowski
- Lachlan Hardy
- Elle Meredith
- Max Craigie
- Tess Peer
- David Allen
- Sharon Vaughan
- Keira Hodgkison
- Dan Medcraft
- Richard McGain
- Zyrah Bernadino
- Sam Margalit
- Pat Allan
Introduction
Meeting being run by Lauren Hennessey with minute being taken by Caitlin Palmer-Bright in Ryan Bigg’s absence.
Welcome to Country
President’s Report
Welcome to country
It’s been an exciting time as President of Ruby Australia and I’m here to update you on the progress we’ve made.
Before I address our 2017 goals, I’d like to take a moment to thank the serving committee for the last 6 months:
Vice President Toby Nieboer
Treasurer Jo Cranford
Secretary Ryan Bigg
General Member Rachelle LeQuesne
General Member Anton Katunin
General Member Caitlin Palmer-Bright
General Member Nick Wolf
I have enjoyed working with this wonderful bunch of people and am tremendously proud of what we’ve accomplished. I approach the end of my run as President with bittersweet anticipation. I can sleep soundly knowing my face made it onto a RailsCamp t-shirt, whether that was on purpose or not.
Jumping straight into our work for the last 6 months:
Refine the yearly sponsorship model
Rachelle has been very successful in her role as sponsor liaison. She’s created strong relationships with sponsors, making sure we’re meeting our sponsor commitments across all events and communications with our members. Apart from the sponsorships we have locked in, Rachelle is speaking to a few other companies and we encourage anyone here working at a company who isn’t yet sponsoring to lean on your employer. You can find the sponsorship prospectus on the website.
Website Redesign
Lauren Hennessey:
We have concluded a short contract with Deming Factor which has provided us with a lot of design work and a style guide which we are now going about coding up.
He’s also fixed some security issues we had with the membership database, which we are now Really Truly Readytm to start populating.
Anton Katunin:
Ruby.org.au work
⁃ rewritten code models
⁃ fixed security vulnerabilities
⁃ membership opt-in/out functionality
⁃ members CSV import (PR)
Website Redesign
⁃ Started in July
⁃ Iteration 1: Summary of findings
⁃ identified roles
⁃ restructure
⁃ new functionality
⁃ Iteration 2:
⁃ Sample designs
⁃ Style guide
⁃ Iteration 3:
⁃ project is under estimated
⁃ too expensive too complete in the full scope
⁃ After work
⁃ Great input from Richie
⁃ Richie finalised style guides
⁃ What now
⁃ Content/page restructuring
⁃ New beginners page, Rachelle is working on it
⁃ Integrating style guide into rails app
⁃ Implementing style guide
Online Video
⁃ moved videos from Vimeo and Eventer services to YouTube
⁃ organised YouTube channel playlists
What next?
⁃ All meet up to use RubyAU youtube channel. That would promote talks to a wider audience (Brisbane/Sydney)
Labels
⁃ a personal project trialed at Melbourne RORO
⁃ https://github.com/antulik/cobber
⁃ Synchronises meetup attendance with RubyDownUnder
⁃ You can customise image and your tags (there is a guide)
⁃ you can preview your customised tag online
⁃ RubyAU reimbursing printer expenses which will be property of RubyAU
⁃ there is a guide on how to get started
⁃ Sydney RORO had it twice now, (next tuesday is third)
⁃ Melbourne RORO trial trialed icebreaker last mont
What next?
⁃ continue on icebreakers
⁃ find a way to get feedback from members
⁃ make sure users of the system contribute back
⁃ fix PDF generation on heroku
Code Of Conduct
Lauren Hennessey
Refine our Code of Conduct to be clearer and instate internal protocol for handling complaints and breaches
Toby has done truly excellent work on the new CoC, which is currently being trailed at this very camp! I think this is a solid base we can build on, no CoC can ever be a perfect set of rules, but we now have a document which is a lot clearer and has internal reporting and responding guidelines.
Toby Nieboer
- Lauren identified the need to update and modernise the CoC
- It didn’t cover reporting and enforcement, and without a plan to respond to incidents you don’t have a good CoC
- Past instances where a violation has occurred and they didn’t know who to report it to, and the people who received the report didn’t know what to do or what they had the authority to do
- Constitution (voted in at SGM) had reporting and grievance process.
- New CoC includes
o Examples of expected behaviour
o Specific examples of unacceptable behaviour and who it applies to
o Complaints that won’t be acted upon eg. Allegations of reverse racism or sexism
o Includes reporting guidelines in a separate document
o Specific time frames for addressing a report
o Set of enforcement guildelines for event organisers and disciplinary subcommittee - Certain parts have been derived from Django code of conduct (a comprehensive and transparent CoC, with an annual report of reports that have been received and how they have been actioned), from RubyNZ and ?
- Feedback from within the committee, members of the community who have run past events (camps/confs) and feedback from organisers of perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney meetups
- We will be publishing all three documents for the community to receive feedback.
- Sebastien: are we going to be doing an annual report?
- TN: it would be a good example for us to emulate
Roles of General Members – Lauren Hennessey
-
Roles of general members – giving these members more definition within their roles
-
Sponsor liaison, event liaison, event manager and documentation
-
We believe it has been relatively successful and recommend it continues with the next committee
-
Needs some restructuring as some roles required more than others
-
Benefit to having one or two ‘floating’ members taking on some of the work from the more demanding roles
-
We discussed an immediate past president role to serve for 6 months after their president but decided it was better to leave as an ad hoc role without the need to change the constitution
-
Caitlin has done an audit on RSA laws in all states and territories
-
Nick has looked into an annual pass for Ruby AU events
Ruby Conf Update
Mel Kaulfuss
- Ruby conf in Syndey next year on March 8 and 9
- One confirmed speaker, Sandi Metz (event was scheduled around her, as was location based)
- Team is all from Melbourne
- 130 tickets sold so far despite having not announced any other speakers
- Venue locked in, opening and closing party nearing confirmation
- Nadia heading up cfp – 196 submissions
- Aiming for 20 minute talks and padded with breaks, total of 11-16 speakers
- Single track – no FOMO!
- Early bird tickets still open
Rails camp Updates
Rails Camp 21 - Sebastian von Conrad
- Successful SGM, first Ruby Australia meeting held in a pool!
- Small camp, first in the NT so we have now held camps in all states and territories
- Camp was run at a loss but not a huge one
- All in all it was a good camp and we are looking back with delight and fondness
Rails Camp 22 – Toby Nieboer
- Pretty good turn out (86 tickets sold) – not as many as we would have liked but not disappointing in any respect
- Going close to breaking even with budget
Rails Camp 23 – Caitlin Palmer-Bright - Very early stages of planning. South East Queensland, most likely in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland
- More details to be coming up in the next few months
Rails Camp 24 – Lauren Hennessey
Aiming for Tasmania, we are looking for people (especially anyone in Tasmania) to help organise - We’re looking at about late October/early November, likely to be significantly remote organisational element
Treasurer’s Report – Jo Cranford
- Bank account is pretty healthy, a little over $200K. All sponsors other than one outstanding have paid
- 1 ruby, 3 emerald. Would be nice to have a few more sapphire sponsors
- $40-50K in the bank at the end of the last financial year which was a nice buffer
- enough moneey to allow us to sponsor our events (camps, rails girls, meetups)
- we finally managed to sort out our debit card situation so we have physical cards we can give to people to use
- TN – a round of applause to thank Jo for her service as treasurer over the past 2 years
Committee Member Elections
Three positions vacant:
• President (12 months)
• Treasurer (24 months)
• Secretary (12 months)
• 2x General Member (12 months)
President:
Toby is nominated by Keith. Jo seconds. Toby accepts
Elle nominates Lachlan. David seconds. Lachlan Accepts.
Toby Nieboer is elected as President of Ruby Australia
Vice President:
Michael nominates Lachlan. Steve seconds. Lachlan accepts
Toby nominates Caitlin. Nick seconds. Caitlin accepts
Lachlan Hardy is elected as Vice President of Ruby Australia
Treasurer
Jo nominates Ryan Bigg. Toby seconds. Ryan had accepted prior to the meeting.
No other nominations.
Ryan is the new Treasurer of Ruby Australia
Secretary
Toby nominates Nick. Lauren seconds. Nick accepts.
No other nominations
Nick is the new Secretary of Ruby Australia
General members 2x 1 year, 1 x 6 month
Lauren nominates rachelle. Toby seconds. Rachelle accepted prior to the meeting.
David nominates Namibia. Caitlin seconds. Namibia accepts
Michael nominates Ana. Toby seconds. Ana accepts
Toby nominates Sharon. Lauren seconds. Sharon accepts
Lauren nominates Sophie. Toby seconds. Sophie accepts
David nominates himself. Tess seconds.
Elections are paused for the announcement of a Tiger Snake between the two main dorms.
Rachelle and Namibia are elected as General Members of Ruby Australia for 12 months.
Ana is elected as General Member of Ruby Australia for 6 months.
General business
Steve – ticket prices need to be more affordable. I would like to put to the floor that we put more money into camps and confs to make more affordable.
Mel – the conference is for the large part a fixed cost no matter how many people show up, and it’s impossible to budget precisely without knowing numbers
Toby - $200K sounds like a lot but it goes very quickly
Jo – the amount that has been allocated is set per event, and its’ up the event coordinators to determine ticket costs, and how many bells and whistles, diversity tickets etc they include to fit their budget
What is the consideration for people in remote areas?
Tess - the ticket price was brought up as an issue of controversy but I’d like to thank Toby for his efforts to make that an accessible camp
Lauren - Members are encouraged to speak with the committee directly for any further discussion on this.
Keith – on behalf of everyone else would like to thank the outgoing members of the committee for the work they’ve done
Jo – would like to make a special mention to thank Lauren. Have brought a lot of energy and direction to the committee, awesome job
Meeting closes at 3:36