Ruby Australia - Committee Meeting - 19th June 2018
Attendees:
- Caitlin Palmer-Bright (CP)
- Matt Stevenson (MS)
- Nick Wolf (NW)
- Sharon Vaughan (SV)
Apologies:
- Lachlan Hardy (LH)
- Toby Nieboer (TN)
- Ryan Bigg (RB)
- Rochelle LeQuesne (RL)
Roles for New Members
CP: We currently have 3 well defined roles and one uncertain role. The roles are website, grants, sponsorship and events liaison. The event liaison role at the moment isn’t as much work as normal because of the density of event organizers who are also on the committee.
CP: There is also a need for a social media role. Does anyone here love their twitter?
MS: Do we have a brief about what the role is meant to look like at the moment? How much discussion is meant to take place? How much time it would take?
CP: It would be very minor, it would most likely be slightly more frequent leading up to events, it should mainly be making sure we have a presence online.
SV: Even just tweeting who’s going to be talking at a meetup would be good.
CP: Yeah, who’s going to talk, links to the meetups, links to videos. I think 2 to 3 tweets a week. Anything that needed follow up you could just pass on to the right person.
NW: At the moment we’re at 125 tweets total, the last tweet by the account itself was over a year ago.
SV: I feel we can do better than that.
CP: It’s a role I’m happy to do, but we might wait to see if anyone else is interested in as well. We’ll put in it the committee slack channel to see if anyone else is interested, otherwise I’ll take it.
CP: Sharon, how are you feeling about being the Grants rep?
SV: Yes, I’ve both written grants and gotten grants before. Namibia said she had some things to pass on.
CP: Yes, I think speak to Toby or Namibia directly for that.
CP: Matt, are you keen to be in charge of the website?
MS: Yes I am.
CP: Rachelle is extremely good at her sponsorship role and she’s ready to continue that.
NW: Rachelle is an institution of bringing in funds.
CP: That leaves Lachlan with Events/Documentation which ties in well with what he’s working on at the moment.
Grants
SV: I’ve spoken to a few people and will reach out to Toby and Namibia about getting caught up on where we’re at.
CP: I know that Namibia was also looking at some diversity in tech grants that we could direct towards diversity tickets
Code of Conduct (Toby)
CP: This is with Toby so we don’t have any direct updates on this.
Sponsorship update (Rachelle)
CP: We’ve heard from a potential sponsor who will get back to us this year.
Website redesign
NW: Related to this, we previously had a web vault in 1password, but they’ve now been added to the team vault.
CP: We have a style guide, Matt, you’re welcome to do as much as you want or use a team as much as you want. Also you should be able to arrange a handover with Ana.
MS: Who do I speak to about getting access to the repo?
NW: I can do that.
Events
CP: We’ve had a RailsCamp since last meeting which went excellently. We do want to make sure we have a bit of a focus on talks given how that’s important to sponsors and people’s employers.
MS: There was also lots of mentoring and knowledge sharing.
CP: For RubyConf we also have volunteers, Myself, Toby, Sharon, Pat and Sam, with Pat as lead organiser.
Documentation (Toby/Lachlan)
CP: We have Toby and Lachlan as apologies, so we don’t have any update on this at the moment.
RubyConf 2019 (Caitlin/Sharon/Toby)
CP: We just discussed this.
Survey on why people attend (Lachlan)
NW: At the last meeting Lachlan was interested in discussing a survey about why people join and attend
SV: I think it would be extremely valuable to also send to sponsors as well.
RailsCamp 24
CP: Toby and I are organising this for Tasmania.
NW: Have you had a chance to reach out to John Dolton in Tasmania about this?
CP: I believe Toby has reached out and he’s happy to provide some help, but not as a full on organiser.
Individual Memberships (Nick)
NW: I’m keen to arrange a catch up with someone on the committee of what a membership would look like and what non material benefit it would provide.
CP: Early access to tickets.
MS: Custom Badge on the Forum
NW: A bonus sticker.
NW: Toby also mentioned a discount on the tickets, but I think that shifts into material benefit.
CP: Do we have a ballpark figure of what we’d be looking at for cost?
NW: The amounts that have been thrown around before is $100 a year.
SV: What other precedents are there for this? There is Vic Women in ICT that has a membership, also Girls in Tech, I believe they have a membership based as well.
CP: For me 30 - 50 is more accessible.
SV: Because RubyAU is a NFP it might actually be a tax deduction for that.
NW: We’re currently a NFP but we don’t have DGR (deductible gift recipient) status.
CP: I think the $30 - $50 means people will be happy to do it without much thinking about it.
MS: Is this something we could add to the survey?
NW: Good idea.
Ruby Australia Twitter account
CP: Ryan, as you’ve joined us, I’m considering taking on the twitter account unless you or someone else is particularly interested.
RB: Thanks for doing that.
Sponsor requesting Workshop rights for Emerald Sponsorship level
NW: My understanding is that previously there was a single Ruby membership, Both Ruby level and Emerald level numbers have been expanded this year.
NW: A potentially sponsor is currently unsure about Emerald level this year, but is interested in running a workshop adjacent to RubyConf, and if that was a feature of Emerald level they’d be interested again.
CP: It seems some of this came from Ruby and Emerald levels being 1 of 4 before to now being 1 of 8 which is a big shift. The current idea is this workshop would be run as an addon.
CP: We need to consider what level this would be ( Ruby or Emerald ), how would it work for revenue, do we have the capacity to run an extra event
RB: I believe location would be the responsibility of the sponsor.
NW: So to clarify, the workshop is an addon that the attendees pay for rather than the sponsor pays for?
CP: Yes. My take is it would be included in Ruby level, because otherwise we couldn’t run enough addons. Presence at RubyConf is the biggest reward we have.
NW: I think limiting it to Ruby level sponsors is a good idea.
CP: We might consider reducing the number of sponsor levels, instead of 3 and 5 down to 2 and 4. We’d want the sponsors to set the price per head of the event.
NW: Where would the funds go from those events?
CP: My take would be back to that sponsor.
SV: Women in ICT have a tiered system where the level of sponsorship determines what type of workshop you can put on. Bronze level means a 45 minute workshop. We had to go through a proposal to run it though.
NW: If we do this, I’d want the Ruby sponsors get it advertised and marketed by us as part of RubyConf, but they handle all of the logistical requirements for it. They provide venue, time, resources.
CP: Yes, we simply provide them guidelines such as what days are available and such.
NW: So from this do we want to have Rochelle reach out to existing Ruby sponsors to see if it’s something that interests them as a Ruby level sponsor and you to check in with the other event organisers about their thoughts.
CP: Yes, but we’d also want Rochelle to reach out to any potential Ruby level sponsors.
SV: Airtasker did an amazing job organising the Hack after this years RubyConf.
Call for new items
RB: We’ve officially transferred from Westpac to Commbank.
NW: I’ve removed old members from Slack and 1Password.
NW: We received a single piece of mail but it was a Welcome pack from ti.to