Autscape Management Committee Meeting Minutes
Date: Monday 23rd February 2009
Present: Larry, Trish, Martijn, Yo, Peter, Robin, Debbie (some of meeting)
Observing: Icefire
Apologies:
Absent: Selina
The meeting started at 09:32 and ended at 11:49. There was a break from
10:31 am to 10:48 am.
1.0 Statements
1.1 Ruth resignation
Larry announced that since the last meeting Ruth has resigned from all
her Autscape committee duties, including Vice-Chair, the Autscape
committee and childcare subcommittee.
1.2 Downtime of web server and mailing lists
Peter explained that the first part of the server move was to ask Ian
to change the DNS servers from the old ISP to the new server. This
should have been absolutely straightforward, but something went wrong
and the registrar marked the domain as 'inactive'. The error can only
be fixed once a day, and the registrar failed to make this fix in a
timely fashion. It did get fixed but only after a few days.
2.0 Ratifications
2.1 The minutes of the commitee meeting held on on Sunday January 25 2009
were approved.
2.2 The committee agreed that Trish should become the new childcare
subcommittee chair.
2.3 The committee agreed that registration should open in mid to late
April (ie. it can open even if the programme isn't finalised).
2.4 The committee agreed to provide one presenter's worth of funding per
presentation. (This funding is for one day only as per last month's
minutes, item 2.3.1.)
3.0 Proposals
3.1.i The committe agreed to waive conference fees for carers.
("Conference fees" means printing, stationary, childcare susidy etc)
Yo was concerned that we should not differentiate between
participants and presenters in subsidising their carers and asked
for this objection to be noted.
3.1.ii The committee agreed that Autscape cannot afford to subsidise
accommodation for carers.
3.1.iii The committee agreed that offering to help people get funding for
their carers was a good idea in principle, but it did not have the
resources to actively help individuals.
4.0 Delegations
4.1 The committee agreed that Trish should contact the luminarium people.
Trish commented that she had been in communication them already.
5.0 Approvals/Decisions
5.1 Ruth's resignation left only three authorised signatories for the
Autscape bank account. The committee voted to add a new fourth
signatory.
5.1.1 Peter was selected as the fourth signatory.
[Debbie left the meeting at this point.]
5.2 The committee decided not to co-opt a new member at this time.
5.3 Trish's revised general committee member job description was approved
[Now on the web site: http://www.autscape.org/organisation/general ]
5.4 The committee considered the intended readership of the agenda and
minutes. While they are intentionally public documents, the committee
felt that they should request (but not require) that the minutes and
agenda not to be recirculated outside of the official mailing lists.
The committee recognised that once published, there was no way to control
the distribution of these documents.
6.0 Progress Reports
6.1 Robin has posted a draft budget to the committee list. Robin reported that
the finances were in a healthy state.
6.2 Some committee members emailed their progress reports to the committee
before this meeting.
Childcare: No report as Trish has only just taken over as subcommittee
chair. She is investigating the progress the childcare committee had made
to date.
Constitution and Fundraising: Reports as per committee list.
Programme: Draft call for proposals is ready and posted to the Prog SC on
20 Feb, but got no comments. Just posted to main committee list for
comments. If everyone is okay with it, I need to first get the programme
section on the website updated (need to email Peter), and then it's ready
to be distributed.
Publicity: The AU announcement was sent out the day before.
Technical: The change to the new Autscape server was completed on
Wednesday night. It took Peter and Debbie longer than expected. The
testing done by Roger and Alexis was invaluable. The proposal form and the
registration system need redoing. The proposal form should be working by
the time the CfP goes out.
[Yo left the meeting at this point]
Venue: The days-only rates were passed to the treasurer.
6.3 No progress on the data protection policy.
6.4 Trish has completed the letterhead. Trish stated that Debbie would put
it in an accessible place.
Larry closed the meeting at 11:49.