Attendees:
- Ryan Bigg (RB)
- Nick Wolf (NW)
- Caitlin Palmer-Bright (CP)
- Namibia Lebron-Torres (NT)
- Lachlan Hardy (LH)
- Ana Djordjevic (AD)
- Toby Nieboer (TN)
Apologies:
- Rachelle LeQuesne (RL)
Actions
Toby/Namibia
Reach out to CoC sub committee Candidates.
Namibia
Talk at RoRo Melbourne about RailsCamp
Nick
Contact ACNC about donation legal requirements
Answer or source answers for questions for Caitlin
Lachlan
Shift docs into Github Pages
Ryan
Talk to Sydney RoRo Organizers about promoting RailsCamp
Ruby Conf (Mel)
Mel: I think it was a great success, lots of positive feedback, many new conference attendees said it was great, Seasoned speakers, including Sandi Metz found this one very special, which I see as success.
We had no incidents, the volunteers did an excellent job so Nicholas and I could get through the day.
We had 420 attendees, which were good numbers. We sold a number of tickets at the end which was good.
I think having it in Sydney was a scary choice, we probably got some that couldn’t go if it was else where, but if we were going to do it again it would be good to have it in Melbourne.
Has anyone else volunteered for next year?
AD: Toby has.
TN: With my new role it may no longer be realistic option for me.
Mel: it’s a full time job and it was a lot of stress. I’m not looking to do it again in the future. I am however happy to help people as best I can who are taking on the role themselves. I’d want to give them a realistic assessment of what’s involved. It’s more that a 2 person job.
Mel: Next we’re sending out the survey. We’re also planning to write some sort of blog post about what was involved. I know that Ryan and Nicholas will be meeting up to discuss budgets.
TN: Ryan, what’s the bottom line on the Conf?
RB: Xero is reporting a small profit, Nicholas’ spreadsheet is reporting a larger profit. I suspect it’s a bit of both so we’re going to compare transactions. Right now we don’t have an exact figure.
TB: That’s a pretty decent result.
Mel: We definitely didn’t make a loss and we cared about keeping costs to a minimum. We saved by not catering for the full attendees at the opening and closing parties.
AD: How many did we have?
Mel: 160 for the pool party, I’m not sure on the closing party.
TN: It seems we have a 25% drop between Melbourne and Sydney
TN: Any other questions?
NW: I just wanted to say as a volunteer it was lots of fun.
TB: Golf clap from all of us for an amazing conference.
Grants (Namibia)
NT: I spoke to Sarah from Girl Geeks about applying for grants. She put together a sample budget she’s used, it’s very detailed and puts us in a very good position to provide to organizations with information on where their money would be going. Everyone take a look at it, it’s a sample application for an event like Rails Girl which we can fill in and send with our applications.
NT: I also spoke to Rachelle about how we’ve reached out in the past. It seems private grants is the way we want to go. I’m going to research who is offering private grants. The next step is finding those orgs and applying for them now that we have a good grant application outline.
NT: I’m also going to wait to hear back from Toby about people who’ve run previous organisations to see if they keep their budget. For some applications we have to provide what the budget has been for previous events.
Code of Conduct (Namibia/Toby)
TN: Namibia, Myself, Lauren and Ryan acted as the ad-hoc disciplinary committee for RubyConf, but thankfully nothing happened. We need to clarify if the committee members can be on the sub committee. We want to approach some people to see if they’re keen to accept a role on the committee. I believe we’ve discussed some people before who were both diverse it terms of Ruby experience and Gender.
AD: I also suggested someone, who was interested in more information after I spoke to them at RailsGirls.
NT: I suggested a person who’s new to the community and eager to be involved. them being new reduces bias.
TN: I think they’re all good suggestions. Namibia and I will sit down and talk with each of them.
Sponsorship update (Rachelle)
TN: Rachelle has put together the new sponsorship packages, has everyone reviewed that? It talks about Camps, Hack days and Rails Girls. It lists all the different levels of sponsorship.
NW: The only thing that I didn’t understand was the exchange around RailsCamp to RubyConf tickets.
TN: that’s now clearer. I’ve been thinking we should increase the number of high level packages on offer. We may not sell them all, but if we do it would be awesome. Rachelle has discussed it with Envato who are fine with it as long as they didn’t lose existing perks.
TN: Catch me up on the individual sponsorship situation?
CP: Also the discussion around tax deductability of it.
NW: I was hoping to contact ACNC, but I haven’t reached out to them yet. It does appear we can look into applying with them.
CP: Many people have been purchasing multiple diversity donation tickets with RailsCamp.
TN: Just to confirm, why did we decide to remove it from the sponsorship package?
LH: Just some concerns about the legal perspective.
TN: I think if we specify what you get “basically nothing” then that should be fine.
LH: I think we just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be rorting the tax office or anything we’re not allowed to do.
Website redesign (Ana)
AD: We did say 3 months and it’s been 3 months. It’s been challenging to get people who are keen to help. I wonder if the people who’ll be taking over would want to use tachyon.
LH: Do you think a hack day could help to get things done as an event? Can the work be divided easily?
TN: Do you think having a day that we promote at RoRo would help?
AD: I can work on an elevator pitch.
AD: I did raise it at RubyConf Hack day and Ryan helped me which was inspiring.
TN: Yay Ryan, and he’s not even at his desk to hear us say nice things about him.
Events (Caitlin)
CP: Mainly just me working on RailsCamp. Numbers are down though. We need to finalise on the 13th. It would be great for people to do a shout out at the RoRos. I was quite surprised to see an 11 year old girl had bought a ticket and booked flights. Thankfully she’s bringing her own chaperone. From that we may want to update the website to specify that everyone is welcome, “Unless you’re under 18 and unsupervised by a parent or guardian”. So I’ve added that to make it clear that we do not have planned activities.
NT: Can you overestimate by say 5 and then have 5 backup tickets?
CP: Unfortunately we don’t have the budget for extra food and t shirts. I’m not sure how to make people see it who haven’t already seen it.
TN: Social media is going to be valuable here, and it may be that you have to order 100 t shirts because it’s cheaper than ordering 89.
CP: I’ll be happy if we get to 50, I just want to beat Darwin.
TN: Do you have volunteers?
CP: Yes, we’ve going well on that front.
Documentation (Toby/Lachlan)
LH: We need to decide if we want to go with a repo or use the forum. I feel the repo is the better option.
AD: I agree.
RB: Repo is better.
TN: I tend to agree as well.
LH: Okay, regardless of what we choose we should make it clear where these things can be accessed. We want to steer people towards it and encourage people to update it. I think using the Repo encourages people to export the budget csv and we can load it up.
CP: I feel like we should have a subdomain that is a repo, github pages style.
TN: Do like.
LH: Sweet idea.
NW: I like that.
Transfer of Domain (Nick)
NW: Now complete. also renewed the P.O. Box.
Calls for new items.
JS Community
CP: I was contacted by the JS community up here and they had questions about establishing an an organisation. Like do we have DGR/TCC certificates/ anyone on the payroll/ did we register with ACNC.
NW: if you can drop those in the slack I’ll either answer them directly or find out who can.
Camp promo
TN: Namibia can you promote the camp at this RoRo and Ryan can you reach out the Sydney organisers and ask them to do the same.
RubyConf
TN: I am willing to organise if it’s more than two organisers.
LH: Should we be doing a call out?
TN: We should be doing discussions at RailsCamp and RoRo to build an organising group. If we say we have 2 already and are looking for more to join that should gather attention.
CP: I will consider doing it, I think we advertise it as one of six.
AD: I can be one of six.
TN: Lets aim for post rails camp for us to have 5 to 6.
Committee positions
CP: We have 3 roles coming up at RailsCamp. Mine, Ana’s and Lachlans.
TN: We should mention in the next minutes that there are positions becoming available
LH: wouldn’t it be great if one of them was filled by someone who wasn’t from Melbourne.
Meeting closed