Committee Meeting Agenda
16th April 2019
Attended
• Ryan Biggs
• Caitlin Palmer-Bright
• Pat Allan
• Matt Stevenson
• Sox
Apologies
• Rachael Goodenough
• Sharon Vaughan
- Regular Business:
. Finances (RB)
Ryan – Just grabbing roro/ Perth rails camp finance looks to be about 5.5k ticket incoming and we’ve made about $800 profit so far. 45 registered attendees. Rails camp looking good. In terms of money its all going out. Its’ just all ticking along fine. Can’t think of anything else we continue to pay for aside from pizzas and drinks for meetups. Everything is good
Pat – Nice to know we’re in the black for rails camp.
Ryan – Accom hasn’t been paid for just yet and 75% deposit still to be paid for the bus, but we’re still in the black
b. RubyConf AU (RG)
i. 2020 Pat – Rache can’t make it tonight. Sounds like she is keen to talk with previous organisers in the next week or so and we can provide context and advice.
c. Rails Camps
. RC 25
Pat – Perth is coming along, am I the only committee member going to be there?
Matt – I was a maybe but I can’t make it now
Ryan –Sorry pat
Pat – There maybe questions about why there are no committee members flanking the new President 
i. RC 26
Pat – We can talk about this further down in irregular business
d. Rails Girls (SV, SC)
Sox – Not really, still trying to push it along and get Angie some help.
Pat – She was talking to google about hosting?
Sox – Yep she just needs a venue and then we’re good to go. We’ve got people around it, I’ve called all the mentors. They’re all good to go. I’m going to liaise with Sharon about t’ing up a few different things as well. She hosts at Envato yeah?
Pat – yep
Sox – In Sydney its just hard to get a venue because security is a pain
2. Occasional Business
. Website (MS)
Pat – You showed us a nice preview of the website
Matt – It’s looking pretty good, appreciate the feedback about making it full screen, and the spacing and heading. I like the idea of switching off the membership stuff for now until we can come up with something better. I think it would be great to lead people into the mailing list with that, as you said there weren’t that many subscribers.
Pat - I’m not sure how they got on there to start with? Because the mailing list of the current website actually goes to the old google group.
Matt - Interesting
Pat – Which I kinda flagged when I started. I’ve added to trello. Do you think its possible to launch in the next few weeks?
Matt – Yep, happy to get it done with a few minor tweaks
Pat – Awesome great
Matt – No should be all good, I think its doing what its doing. It would be good to get more stuff on it.
Pat – Sing out if you need anything on the next couple of weeks, if we could have it shipped for Rails camp would be great, potentially if people are looking to hack on things, they can hack on that?
a. Sponsorship (SC)
Sox – Reworked the prospectus into the slide deck, thank you Pat for all your help, latest draft is in our slack. Would like to get it out first thing. Have been talking to people for next fin year sponsorship. Looking to get new companies for the next fin year. Think maybe a further conversation about taking onboard everyone’s feedback and review it for 2021. Already have some people who have spoken at RORO who have jobs from speaking at RORO and just the experience they’ve got from volunteering and who’ve they met from being at Ruby, I think we need to highlight ROI. Main drivers for people reducing sponsor are other languages, I’m all ears for feedback and suggestions
Caitlin – It looks really beautiful and professional.
Sox – Paid template, envato, all envato. I think the main difference is spelling back ROI. Speaking to them about what they get back.
Pat – Before I jump in, Ryan and Mat do you have any feedback on the prospectus
Matt – I haven’t looked yet
Sox – I looked at your website! Haha
Sox – The content is the exact same, its just a reworked format. We need to work on feedback from new sponsorships. Work out what we need to cover for the year. Bit of a retro and a rethink.
Ryan – I think it’s a better format than what the original prospectus was
Sox - the first rule of negotiation is don’t negotiate, I don’t how many people we have gone to specifically. Do we wait for people to come to us?
Caitlin – We had a list of ruby companies to contact last year, but I don’t think we actually did that
Ryan - This year we have Sox
Sox – I’ve seen the list; we work closely with a lot of people on that list. Its about having a conversation. I think if we send out, it’s a talking point and then we have options to lower. And then we can vote on it next month once we have good feedback. Haven’t been able to chat since we didn’t have a prospectus.
Pat - Sounds like there is consensus, not change price for now, see how companies respond
Matt - yep I give it a thumbs up
Sox - Do your homework before you come to class Matt
b. Documentation – n/a
c. Grants (SV) – n/a
3. Irregular Business
. 2019/2020 Sponsorship
a. Rails Camp 26 Expressions of Interest
4. Rails camp 26
Pat - One expression of interest. We DID have Tom Ridge almost put his hand up. Tom thought best to get settled in Adelaide first, so maybe we focus more on NSW now and then end back to SA when Tom is more settled. We did have a deadline for today but let’s push it out to the next meeting and see if we can drum more interest at camp. I am definitely keen for Cameo to take part.
Matt – I think we promoted it in the survey as well, might be worth looking through the responses
Pat - People happy for us to sit on that for another month
a. Community Survey
. 71 responses thus far.
Pat - 71 responses so far but I feel we could triple that to be honest, so if you want to tweet about it if you haven’t already that would be brilliant. I’ve contacted all the meetup organisers so both Mitch and Nigel in Brisbane, Sox made sure it was promoted in Sydney, reached out to Adelaide, Canberra has not had a meet in a few years, reached out to Bruce in Perth. Ryan has just roped me in to host the next Melbourne Ruby Meet.
Ryan – thank you Pat
i. More promotion required.
Pat - I pushed deadline out to maybe Rail Camp but certainly beyond April into May so we have time to make noise to get people to fill it out. Any help promoting would be wonderful
b. General Meeting
i. Who from the committee will be present?
ii. 0 nominations thus far.
iii. 2 proxies registered thus far.
Pat - As we realised at this start of this, I will be the only committee member there which is sad, but I will soldier on. We’ve had no nominations for positions, but also make noise and ponder who you think will be good. Caitlin who can we find in BNE?
Caitlin - Is there a constitution, is there a requirement for a certain amount of committee members who can be there?
Pat - I’ve been going backwards and forwards on the constitutions
Ryan - Is it for general members or committee members, nope just committee members that means. As long as there is a chairperson from the committee, and a president is a very suitable person to run that meeting.
Pat - I’m always running the meetings anyway so sure ha-ha. Think about potential people to nominate, and perhaps all of you would like to vote, and if you would, you should register someone as a proxy, and if it’s me that’s fine. It would be nice to hit 75%, I’m not worried about hitting but it would be good to have votes from the rest of the committee there. I don’t have anything else to raise around the general meeting.
b. Re-jigging general member focuses
. Meetup Organiser Liaising
i. Industry/Policy Liaising (e.g. #aabill, assisting juniors)
ii. Documenting processes
iii. Improving mailing lists, email checklists
iv. Many tasks assigned across all general members.
Pat – I was thinking about how we direct the energy of our general members, in some cases we’ve done a great job around, but a lot of the other stuff can be done by group and maybe we delegate specific tasks out? These don’t need decisions now just want to throw ideas around and we can ponder them or if you have feedback now that something like that would be a good - dedicated roles, someone in liaisons to talk with meetup organisers to show the latest stuff to promote from Ruby Australia (how can we help the Meetups), industry or policy liaison person or focusing on helping juniors. Ultimately, how can we build a better industry? One thing I would love to have done is documenting processes?
Matt – I feel like some of that might be in the forum topics for the roles. I think we have a starting point, I like formalising and versioning somewhere, so if we do want to share with other orgs it could be some good crossover.
Pat - Another thing, the mailing list is in a in a bit of a chaotic state, 240 people on the generic Ruby Australia list which is what we have used to communicate in the past but we have 1000 people in slack, we have a 1000 people on the ruby conf list? I’m working through but it’s still a mess.
Matt - What’s the objective do you have a broad objective? Should we change our signup for slack, aka can you please opt in for our mailing list so we can keep you up to date on this and that. Make the general one appealing instead?
Pat – We don’t have a rails camp mailing lists for announcements for example, Vanessa was like, “how we do promote to ex-rails camp attendees”? We don’t have that, but we have an obligation to have a clear list of who our members are. I don’t think we have it, but Mat as you said there are a lot of spam users there. I feel like all of that needs some tidying. We have a legal obligation to let people know when AGMs are happening on when they’re constitutional changes happening. We have to notify people of these things. If we have a mailing list instead, that feels like a better approach. Does that sound good or sound terrible?
Matt – Figuring how out many people we have in total, if we export from campaign monitor that haven’t bounced in the last 12 months and then grab all the slack email addresses if we can and forum accounts, figure out how many totally members we have and then how can we broadcast – “hey we need a channel to reach you on, what’s the best way for general announcements only and opt in to other events one”?
Pat - Anyone else with thoughts? Find al the emails, send a once off, “you’re a member, we want you to subscribe to these things, aka do we have to email you or is an opt out list?” Is it a transaction email versus a marketing email?
Matt – “You’re a member and we’re obliged to keep records and make contact”
Pat – We also need to give a way to say “I don’t want to be a member anymore” - any other ideas around that?
c. Thank you Caitlin & Sharon 
Pat - I guess the last point is just to say thank you Caitlin and thank you Sharon.
Caitlin – It’s been amazing 2 years, didn’t really know what job I was signing up for,
Ryan - You can put your hands up for rails camp
Caitlin - That’s the plan
Ryan – cough * Tom Ridge* cough
Pat - One other thing to keep in mind, Ryan’s role will be due to for nomination in November, so if a general member wants to come in now and be an apprentice to Ryan? Alright, we’re done, we’ve hit the hour mark.