[H-GEN] Vice President's report

[Russell Stuart]

On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 20:11 +1000, Matthew Franklin wrote: 
> === Vice President's Report ==
> The numbers don't look good.

Just a reminder we are having an Exec meeting at 2PM tomorrow so discuss
this.  All are welcome to come along and put your 2c in.  I'll try to
ensure I have #humbug on irc.humbug.org.au open for those who can't make
it.

It seems like an appropriate time to discuss these points, so I have
added them to the agenda
http://www.humbug.org.au/Exec/Minutes/20110625 :

On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 13:21 +0100, Benjamin Fowler wrote:
> membership renewal and payment is more complex than it needs to be.

> vote when not present at general meetings

On Fri, 2011-06-24 at 07:47 +1000, Nick Lawrence wrote:
> One way to simplify membership could be mulit-year membership. 

On Fri, 2011-06-24 at 11:33 +1000, Carl Adams wrote:
> distro respin that installed as a network firewall,  
> caching server, and NAS 

On Fri, 2011-06-24 at 11:52 +1000, Arjen Lentz wrote:
> I'd be more than happy to help convert more Netbox desktop cases into
> kiddie computers, in fact I was aiming to do so with some of their
> current batch, just haven't had a chance yet to pick any up.

Regarding the respin / NAS / whatever, these things are enthusiastically
supported by the executive, up to and including providing seed money.
Humbug is ultimately about people with common interests doing fun things
together, and this is an obvious example of just that.

Here is my perspective on the AGM and membership discussions. Humbug is
different things to different people.

1.  To the 10..20 people who turn up at each meeting, it is a social
    club, an open source show and tell, and an excuse for a fortnightly
    dinner with friends.  It is occasionally  substantially more - such
    as when we ran LCA 2011.  There have been attempts to make it
    regularly more by people such as myself and Clinton, but they
    haven't met with much success.  And besides, if the 9 odd years I
    have been associated with Humbug is any guide, this is what Humbug
    has always been.

    The number who come along to this have been declining for years, but
    nonetheless the people who continue with the tradition enjoy it and
    want it to persist with it for as long as possible.  The concern
    about membership numbers has peaked because we are now tripping over
    inflection points in our constitution to do with quorums, meaning if
    we don't change the constitution we will be hamstrung.

2.  Humbug is an online community, primarily reflected in it's very
    active irc channel, and to a lesser extent the mailing lists.
    This is all you expat's get out of Humbug.  It is effectively just
    a place in the cloud old friends can congregate.  The infrastructure
    needed provide it is currently supported by people in (1), but it
    could easily be moved to a lower maintenance home.  While I am
    around I will do my best to ensure that infrastructure is always
    around in some form, even if the physical meetings go by the
    wayside.

The AGM is about the people who go to physical meetings getting
themselves organised.  We really do need people to turn up to this AGM
so we can fix the quorum problem.  And remember, currently it is the
people who attend the physical meetings that maintain the infrastructure
needed to provide the virtual presence.  That includes paying for it.

On Fri, 2011-06-24 at 00:53 +0100, Benjamin Fowler wrote:
> But then I suppose you'd risk blowing your dough if HUMBUG keeps
> haemorrhaging members (which I hope doesn't happen).

In my view it would go to provide things like VM's, domain names,
backups and so on while the club continues to exist in the virtual
world.  To me looks like that will continue to exist for decades.  If
anything it is getting stronger.  But failing that, it would probably go
to Linux Australia.

On Fri, 2011-06-24 at 00:53 +0100, Benjamin Fowler wrote:
> That way, it isn't a show stopper if we have a few lean years.

It would take a _lot_ of lean years, and your current president has
garnered a reputation for being very tight with the club's money.

On Fri, 2011-06-24 at 09:57 +1000, Julian DeMarchi wrote:
> I can kindly ask my company to donate a VM for your cause.

We currently have a VM, or at least a chroot in someone else's VM,
donated to us.  We don't use much.  The main load is created by the
hourly backups.  However, this offer won't be forgotten if circumstances
change.  Thank you.