Attendees
• Caitlin Palmer-Bright
• Rachael Goodenough
• Patt Allan
• Ryan Bigg
• Sonya Corcoran
• Sharon Vaughan
• Matt Stevenson
Apologies
• Lachlan
Committee Meeting Agenda
15th January 2019
Regular Business:
1. Finances (RB)
Ryan – Good position for the conference. Assuming a surge in tickets before the closeout date.
Pat – Amount will drop overall once we workout conference expense
2. Website (MS)
Matt – looking good. Coming together. Aim to do the mobile responsive stuff this weekend. Hopefully get something up and running for a grand reveal. Only questions at the moment is how we do the site map? At the moment just the design will be easier than rejigging the whole thing.
Pat – Looking forward to seeing it, haven’t seen the design images or anything so it will all be completely new
Matt – It’s loud, it’s fun, it’s whimsical 
Sharon – Can we have a preview?
Matt – Yep can send through some screen shots
3. Documentation (LH)
Pat – No changes
4. Grants (SV)
Sharon – No real update, I’ve been caught up with work and conference stuff. Every time I go searching there are particular requirements we don’t fall into sadly. Generally (imo) we need to reevaluate what we are doing with sponsorship or donation. I think it needs an overhaul. Try a different angle? Maybe trying LaunchVIC and getting a contact in there?
6. RubyConf AU (PA, CBP)
i.2019
Pat – We’re sitting on 250 attendees. Half of where we were expecting. If the room isn’t full, its still going to be a fantastic event. Speaker and social events are all booked, those tickets are going quite quick.
This is the last week for tickets. We might do “last minute” tickets but they wont get a tshirt. Make sure when talking to peeps that you tell them they should buy this week. Greatly appreciated all the RT
g. Rails Camps (LH, PA)
i.RC 25
Pat – Sam, Celia and Vanessa are getting ready, already, they’ve got a venue sorted. Details are up - May 10 to the 13th. Tickets are available already but its not announced. They are streaming ahead which is brilliant.
h. Rails Girls (LH, SV)
Sharon – Was thinking of running another before the next camp, I just feel like it’s a nice combo. Rob is onboard for it, Ill prob have it maybe a month before then. Early April?
Pat – Does anyone know of other RailsGirls events happening elsewhere?
Sonya – I got in touch with Angie who organises Sydney, going to help and coordinate the next one or two this year
Sharon – I’m going to get in touch with Sydney. Floated an idea past Toby, it would be nice if we could run closer together so we can do a big campaign. Nice to smash it out there, a really big blast of contact. The idea that we can get the best number to order of tshirts, so we can hit that critical mass if we order tshirts at the same time and get a good price.
2. Irregular Business
a. Lachlan (PA)
Pat – Lachlan has stepped down from the committee. His position will be up for grabs at the next AGM meeting.
b. Update website with new committee members (MS)
Pat – Mat is on the ball and tracking down bios
Mat – Will grab bios and pics off twitter if that is easier. Thank you for the Trello card, Pat!
c. RubyConf AU 2020 Expressions of Interest (PA)
Pat –I don’t know if anyone has had the chance to look over it. Its on trello too. If people are happy with that brilliant we can start publishing, keen for people to chime in with any thoughts.
Caitlin – I think, if we are struggling to get people in Melbourne, can we justify running a conf outside of Melbourne. Consider what the financial situation is after the conference. Brisbane is supposed to be next on the list? But would we get the numbers to justify running it? Potential change to 1 day, would that make it more affordable? But would people bother to come for a 1 day conference.
Pat – What the next conf look like is a massive question. Bunch of stuff to discuss. Prob not right time to get into it. Should we seek out people who might be interested in running it? I’m not making any promises about where it must be located, I feel like we as the committee make the final call, so we can negotiate with interested people and take it from there. I guess do we start asking now?
Caitlin – Doesn’t hurt to have something like this, we need to have this discussion quite soon so we’re in the position to consider. The where dictates who might be interested. Not everyone will be confident in planning not in their home town. Good to send out as is and see what we get back and then go from there.
Pat – Any other thoughts?
Matt – Do we include conf questions in the community survey
Sharon - I think that will be useful post event.
Matt – Good point. Easier to get smaller amounts of data than one big chunk.
Pat – So we’re fine sharing the information out, will make a few tweaks.
d. Community Survey
Matt & Caitlin – Yes we have discussed
Caitlin – Get a snippet of what is conference specific to send out after the conference. Then maybe a month or two after send out a more generic survey (rails/volunteering/committee/meetup)
Pat – Do we want to put it all together? Do we want to understand the community demographics, who do they work for and other questions like that. I had a look at the survey from John Barton*? put together a few years ago
Matt – We’ll do a review of it, then we can understand if we are we collecting the right details? Aka Is it what we are looking for, what’s relevant for ruby Australia. It provides value to understand the experience to help us make decisions what conference talks might be accepted, what should be promoted on twitter etc. Things like that
Pat – That sounds smart. Looking forward to seeing the questions. Understand that it’ll happen after the conference.
e. #aabill (PA)
Pat – We received positive responses from our statement, even if they were just emojis. I feel like that the next step is to write that up and flesh it out and send it to politicians. Because if we are an industry body, that is the best way of getting our voice heard. I’m happy to sort that out.
Caitlin – Do we want to consider a petition? A ruby Australia community petition?
Ryan – Like that idea
Sharon – We can do that at rubyconf, where they sign in. We can have the petition there to sign
Matt – It gets it in front of people when they’re attending. Acknowledge that this is important. Great idea Sharon.
f. Email to Ruby AU Members (PA)
Pat – this can be postponed. A lot of the things that I want to put in that email are delayed anyway, the survery, aabil, results from last AGM are fine with waiting. Maybe we can get some work on the next sponsorship perspective. Fine with that email happening mid or late February.
