Minutes of October 2008 meeting

Autscape Management Committee Meeting Minutes

Meeting Date: Tuesday 28th October 2008 09:30-11:17

Present: Larry, Ruth, Yo, Martijn, Debbie, Peter, Robin, Trish

Absent: Andre, Selina

Apologies:  Yo needs to leave at 10:30, Ruth at 11am.

Observing: Kitt

1.0 The committee approved the minutes of the September 2008 meeting.

2.0 Ratify decisions taken on list: 

2.1 Autscape to be held on Tuesday 18th to Friday 21st August 2009.

2.2 Chair, vice-chair, treasurer and Yo will be the authorised signatories for the Autscape 
bank account.

2.3 Ruth to be childcare subcommittee chair.

3.0 2008 accounts approved.

4.0 The proposal to discuss the venue was postponed.

The following motion was withdrawn:
We agree in principle to book ahead for 2010 as soon as it becomes practicable to do so, 
that is to say pending discussions on the sub committee and subject to budget constraints.

5.0 Proposal Voting

5.1 It was agreed that any committee member who cannot make a meeting will have their 
availability given a greater weight when deciding the next meeting.

5.2 It was agreed that the full meeting log (IRC Record) will be made available to any 
committee member who cannot make a meeting subject to its being intact and strictly 
confidential.  For: 3, Against: 2, Abstain: 3.

As Yo would need to leave at 10:30 the agenda was reordered at this point.

6.0 Subcommittee chair reports
Some of these comments may be out of order to allow for readability.

Constitution: Yo reported that progress on the constitution subcommittee was slow. 
We need a registered address.  This will be discussed among other matters when Robin 
(with Larry if available) visits the accountant.   Thread to be started to talk about 
the items Robin will need to discuss with the accountant.  

Larry commented that we need definite agreement from committee members to become directors; 
not becoming a director has the practical effect of resigning from the committee when the 
time comes. 

Fundraising: Yo also reported that the Fundraising subcommittee is in need of volunteers.  
Debbie volunteered to draft the Three Guineas Report.

Yo leaves.
It's 10:30 break for 15 minutes.

Meeting resumes at 10:45.

6.0 continued:

Childcare:  Ruth reported that we probably would not be using last year's childcare 
provider this year.

Programme:  Martijn will soon be starting a discussion on the theme for the 2009 autscape.  
Calls for theme proposals will be sent to the chat and plan lists.

Publicity: Nothing to report.

Technical:  Debbie reported that some progress had being made towards moving to the new 
hosting service, we hope to have completed this work by Christmas.  The new hosting service 
is Xen hosting provided by Jump.  

An archive area of previous years' programmes is in the planning stages; this was discussed 
on one of the lists last year. 

Martijn and Debbie agree to discuss the IRC channel off list. 

Venue: Peter has nothing to report on the 2010 venue.  

The first draft of content for the venue webpages has been sent to the venue list for 
improvement.  

All reports were accepted.

7.0 Progress Reports

7.1 Three Guineas Report. This was raised by Yo as part of her fundraising subcommittee 
report.

7.2 The General Committee Member description is ongoing (Ruth).

7.3 The complaints procedure is ongoing (Larry).

8.0 AOB

Martijn reports that Andre would like to resign from the committee.  Andre will send a 
formal email to the committee list. Andre hopes to become involved in some subcommittees 
especially publicity and programme.  

Ruth leaves meeting.

Before leaving Ruth suggested that meeting times should be planned about two months in 
advance taking into account people's regular work and events like holidays, but generally 
people arrange their lives to be at meetings, not the other way around.  

During the emerging discussion, several people commented they could not predict their 
availablity that far ahead.  Martijn thought it would be good to plan the meeting further 
ahead than we are doing now but possibly not months ahead.  Larry would like to try to 
set an outline of dates ahead, maybe setting two alternatives for each month, and will try 
to do better at setting the date in advance for next month. No conclusion was reached.

The meeting closed at 11:17.