Ruby Australia - Committee Meeting - 20th Feb 2018 Minutes
Meeting Youtube Link
Previous Minutes
Attendees:
- Ryan Bigg (RB)
- Nick Wolf (NW)
- Rachelle LeQuesne (RL)
- Caitlin Palmer-Bright (CP)
- Namibia Lebron-Torres (NT)
- Lachlan Hardy (LH)
Apologies:
- Ana Djordjevic (AD)
- Toby Nieboer (TN)
Actions:
Rachelle:
Rethink exchange rate of Camp tickets to Conf Tickets.
Nick:
Make sure Caitlin has access to Campaign Monitor.
Look into registering for donations
Lachlan:
create proposal for putting all documentation in a single publicly accessible place.
Grants (Namibia)
NT: I’ve been networking with existing grant appliers, I spoke to Kath from Elixir Girls about a grant we can apply for, I’ll have to review the requirements with Toby to see if we can apply for it. I’ll be speaking to Sarah from Girl Geek Academy about grants and what she’s already done about getting grants for Rails Girls.
Once I have a comprehensive list of grants we can apply for I’ll share it with the committee.
Code of Conduct (Namibia/Toby)
NT: I have to meet with Toby to get ready for RubyConf, I have a few people in mind, I need to check with Toby if he’s reached out to anyone yet.
Sponsorship update (Rachelle)
RL: I’ve been fielding inquiries from some new potential sponsors, Some existing sponsors have had questions about RubyConf, and I submitted the Sponsorship Prospectus, I see Caitlin has commented and Lachlan mentioned we’d need to discuss individual sponsorshlp.
LH: What was originally the VIP idea, it started with “is there ways that an individual member can contribute and if so what do they get”, we’ve moved towards allowing people to pay $100 or less and have them listed as an individual sponsor. As they’re going to be sponsors it occurred to us that it would need to be listed in the sponsorship prospectus.
LH: Do you think using the term sponsorship would make that weird? How can we frame it?
RL: Like a paid membership
LH: I’m not sure if we can call it a donation because that has tax implications.
LH: We’ve tried to avoid giving benefits to avoid the 2 tiered membership caste system. It’s designed to be a way for people to give back that’s not time intensive.
RB: A brief Google suggests we can register for donations.
LH: Would we have to vote on that at an AGM?
RB: I’m not sure, Nick, do you know?
NW: I’m not sure, does the legislation you’re reading clarify if it’s just for a one off fundraiser or permanent registration?
RB: It can be for 3 years. It can be renewed and we just need to complete some documentation on funds raised and how they were distributed.
NW: Is that Secretary or Treasurer?
RB: Consumer Affairs would be Secretary, but money coming in Treausurer. Why not both?
LH: So it may be that we need to do some more work on this before we can accept individual donations.
NW: I’ll record that as a action for myself to look into registration for donations.
CP: We’re doing something similar with RailsCamp where people can buy diversity donations with their tickets to contribute towards extra diversity tickets. It’s probably linked enough to someone else’s ticket that it’s not a direct donation.
LH: Rachelle, given what we’ve said there is there any reason to mention it in the prospectus?
RL: The people I speak to are mostly concerned with having a presence at RubyConf and what they can get for free, I think as long as it doesn’t subtract from those, they’d be cool with it.
LH: Maybe we don’t mention it until we have clarity on what exactly we’re doing.
RL: For feedback, Caitlin you’ve a few more questions about wording it so it’s clearer about what they get and
the camp organizer bit you said how many are being sold because that impacts the camp.
CP: Yes, it’s worth considering that with more company sponsors it increases the number of tickets that are being given away from events. I know my budget is tight given certain combinations, that having to find space for 5 each people would be difficult and I wouldn’t want to have to increase the cost to have to do it. It’s worth considering that increasing the sponsors will require increasing the camp budget.
CP: Probably also worth indicating how those tickets are requested, it’s not simply that they can just show up.
CP: The current camp can only hold 112, we don’t want people to not have beds or for 20 beds to be held for potential sponsor attendees. I think we can solve this by sending them a sponsor ticket link that is $0 that they have to sign up for and it cuts off before you need final numbers for the camp thus giving other people the chance to buy those last few tickets.
NW: Does tito do voucher codes?
CP: You can create ticket types that are secret, free and limited, so my plan is to have one of those for each sponsor. It’s worth them knowing that they need to commit one way or the other.
RL: I almost need to have an information pack of what they’re entitled to and how they go about claiming that and deadlines, I’ll put that together.
CP: It doesn’t even need to be a deadline, just that they’ll be contacted with when camp is happening. It would probably pay to have a specific contact for each of the sponsors to provide the details.
NW: Some feedback I had was the ticket exchange section of the prospectus was difficult for me to understand.
RL: Looking at the camp bit I can see it’s not a straight forward exchange.
CP: Especially when camp prices can vary significantly.
NW: It’s also unclear if it’s 10 camp for 4 conf or 5 camp for 4 conf.
RL: I’m going to highlight that I need to rethink that.
NW: I’ll record that as a action for you.
CP: It might even be nice to just have a simple 2 camp for 1 conf exchange.
NW: Can someone use all 10 tickets on a single camp?
CP: No, I think that makes its too hard for the individual camp organizers given how much numbers could fluctuate.
NT: I did some quick math on tickets
NW: I’ll put those in the minutes.
350 * 5 = 1750
600 * 4 = 2400
That’s a $650 difference
We lose about $650 when we give away 4 conference tickets
Website redesign (Ana)
NW: Ana is an apology.
Events (Caitlin)
CP: It’s all going well without any major roadblocks. Tickets are on sale in case you missed it.
LH: I did miss it.
CP: How could I have made you not miss it?
RB: Could we potentially use Ruby AU’s mailing list for a notification?
CP: We could, if we’re happy using it in it’s current state.
LH: The question is do we have permission to use those addresses or not.
RB: We using it for RubyConf.
LH: If we’re already using it for stuff then I agree we should use it for Camp.
CP: How do I access that?
NW: I’ll put that as an action for me to make sure you have access to that.
RoRo Swag (Toby)
NW: I bought a t shirt and showed it off at the RoRo event. People liked it. It is being promoted.
RB: I saw a small amount of money come through from Red Bubble.
Documentation (Toby/Lachlan)
LH: We have the information, and it’s in written form, it’s there and we can improve it over time. I wanted to ask, is it worth our time to make a page on the website that points to the threads and and maybe unlock them? Caitlin, did you refer to that stuff with RailsCamp?
CP: Only the railscamp guide that Pat mostly put together and conversations with past camp orgs.
LH: We want to collate all that information, we also want to think about do we want to include camp budget templates for RailsCamp.
CT: I used Toby’s budget.
LH: It seems like these could be living documents that grow with each group or organizers, unless anyone has an objection, I’m going to put together a little proposal around putting everything in one public place.
Action for Lachlan: create proposal for putting all documentation in a single publicly accessible place.
Transfer of Domain
NW: I’ve submitted request through to DNSimple, Keith has done everything he needed to do to authorise that transfer, it is now showing as pending transfer. It appears to be progressing well.
RubyConf AU location (Ryan)
RB: We’ve held RubyConf in other locations and the attendance has been down which affects our income. If we have another Sydney level attendance event it would cause us some financial pain.
I think we should have it in the most heavy ROR city which is Melbourne. That’s my case.
CP: For the next one or all future ones?
RB: At least the next one, and each time we have it at the same venue we build that relationship, which streamlines the conference process. AV/Tech/Stenographer/Welcome to Country roles are all something we can cultivate by reusing the same venue.
CP: How many Confs have we had?
RB: I think this is the fifth one.
RB: Melbourne, Sydney, Melbourne, gold Coast, Sydney.
RB: I’m proposing it should just be Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne, Melbourne.
CP: I think it should be alternating Melbourne and Other.
NW: I like the idea of moving it around, but if each time we do that it creates significant financial impact I would be tempted to say we have it more regularly in Melbourne than in other locations. Melbourne, Melbourne, other.
NT: If we keep it at the same venue we might be able to get a discount on venue.
CP: I think that would still apply if for alternating years we still had it there.
LH: How significant is the financial impact?
RB:
Gold coast: 488
Melbourne: 576
Melbourne: 813 (That might be inflated)
This current one is about 342 and tickets are closing soon.
RubyConf is a massive revenue earner which allows us to do all our other projects. If we continue to have it in remote / fewer ruby developer locations, I know if it was in Melbourne we at Culture amp would send about 40 instead of 10. Red Bubble, REA, Envato would be in the same bucket.
LH: I am concerned it will be seen as a loss to the community if we stop having them elsewhere. I like Caitlin’s 50/50.
CP: That seems like a Pro Melbourne balance. I’m aware I’m the only non Melbourne person in the committee.
LH: That’s something I thought about. Typically we’ve striven for the committee to be divided across the country.
NW: My concern is that if the trend is that Melbourne Confs are profitable and non Melbourne are not it seems iffy to say we want to have very expensive conference that has a significantly negative financial impact on us every two years.
CP: Did the Gold Coast one have a negative impact? Obviously we have sponsors for a reason, and the community is not just Melbourne and I think that would be a massive slap in the face to anyone that’s not from Melbourne.
NW: Yes, I’m definitely opposed to we just brand it in Iron “Conferences are only in Melbourne” but I’m just concerned that if Melbourne is our biggest money maker, I’m concerned about the long term financial impacts.
CP: I think it’s a bit premature to be deciding for the future, I think it makes sense to have Melbourne as the default if no one wants to plan in a different city and I think it’s reasonable to say the next one is 100% in Melbourne, after that we reassess.
RB: This Sydney Conf is at a small plus at the moment, normally it’s a larger one or more. We’re getting a significant amount less than normal.
CP: I think Sydney has definitely lost it’s right for like 4 years or something.
LH: Okay, I think we can definitely say that the next conf is in Melbourne, but I think we need to look at it more before we decide it’s always going to be in Melbourne.
Motion carried that RubyConf 2019 will be held in Melbourne
and review for later conferences.
Calls for new items.
CAV registration (Nick)
NW: I’ve completed the registration.
Mailbox (Nick)
NW: We’re getting mail for someone from David Jones, so I"m going to try and unsubscribe to that.
NW: We also got an email about the renewal of the P.O. Box which I’ll pay soon.
Westpac (Ryan)
RB: We’re all done with Westpac in terms of getting our cards and accounts changed over.
NW: I assume this doesn’t change our desire to switch to Commbank.
RB: Abso-fucking-lutely. They could come to my house and cook me dinner each single night this week and massage my feet afterwards and I would still switch to Commbank.
NW: Any further business? Okay then we’ll close the meetings.
Meeting Closed.