Syntax highlighting of af27a02 ~( CommitteeMeetings/20130801)

# 20130801 - Oriental Tea House (Little Collins St.) #

## Planned Agenda ##

* Committe members intro
    * How we each become interested in free software
    * Current interests
* Brainstorming about where we'd like to take Free Software Melbourne
    * What are we doing well?
    * What aren't we doing so well?
    * What would we like to work on over the next few months?
* Sharing committee member phone numbers
* Guidelines for mail list usage.
* Pirate Party at the next meet-up.
* Software Freedom Day
* Meetup.com: Lev recommends highly, Ben S. a little unsure
* Other agenda topics for the next meet-up, including:
    * ownCloud

## Meeting discussion notes ##

* Where to take FSM?

* Things we feel we have been doing well include:
    * Still strong 3 years in
    * Name tags
    * New members; regular & casual members
    * Cater more as a discussion group among peers, so opinions are shared.
    * Topics are engaging
    * Non-regular meetings have worked well too: BBQ, games night
    * Website active, current topics listed.
    * No inappropriate conduct to date.
    * Having members of the Women in Free Software group participate.

* Things we can improve on include:
    * Delegation of chores: food, after meeting, clean-up.
    * Appeal to demographics other than young single men in CBD.
        * eg. parents, distant living
        * Key people have been missed, such as members of the Women in free software group.
    * Mailing list - make topics more clear?
        * include different mediums?
        * web forum apps?
    * Website polish. Suggestions include:
        * CSS styling improvements. See the [Twitter Bootstrap](http://twbs.github.io/bootstrap/) framework for examples of improvements that can make the site more readable and visually appealing.
        * Social engagement, such as [Planet GNOME](https://planet.gnome.org/), [Planet Fellowship of FSFE](http://planet.fsfe.org/) or [Planet Debian](http://planet.debian.org/)
        * Links to wiki topics pages, perhaps automated via a cron job or some such to always be up-to-date.
        * Possibly distancing ourselves from *Australian Free Software Association* which appear defunct. Perhaps the website base directory should serve as an index for user groups associated with "Free Software Australia", which aggregates all activity across the country?
    * Better structure in regular meetings
        * Predictable schedule
        * Food & drink, general stack organisation
            * Should we consider finding funding (perhaps through membership fees), and take a cut for a food budget?
            * Possibly advertise food options up front
        * Tidy-up at the end

* Outreach and Promotion
    * Aspects of software freedom to promote, including:
        * Privacy
        * flexibility
    * Take advantage of current events
    * outreach to specific, related groups
    * Posters could be placed around RMIT and Melbourne Uni.

* Determine how to engage more people, and interest those new to the idea?
    * *The Lifelong Activist* has been suggested as a good read.
    * Women in free software meeting
    * Social conduct, encouraging

* Ideas to give more thought to:
    * Funding for consistency WRT provided food and drink for meetings
    * Donations/activism to other groups.
        * Affiliation with other activist groups?
    * Remote access to meetings
        * Audio recordings
        * Live
    * Software Freedom Day, and other events.
    * Survey of members' preferences on meetings, such as:
        * Venue
        * time slots
        * topics of interest
        * format
        * Demographics of members
    * Aggregation of member blogs posts (see 'Social engagement', above).
    * We love the new room... although Alex says that getting it regularly could be problematic.

* Meeting agenda for 2013-08-15
    * Ben McGinnes, Pirate Party Australia
    * Regain some privacy from government and corporate abuse with GPG.
        * NSA, PRISM
        * key signing, WOT
        * Ask people to bring in photo IDs and certificate fingerprints.

* Software Freedom Day 2013
    * Lev eager for help/delegation.
    * Adam and somebody else (Ben M or Sven?) to assist.

* Other action items:
    * meetup.com
        * Alex to investigate and report back.
        * Syndication feed for events
    * New opening available for the role of *Walled-garden services ambassadors*
        * We will ask a member who already uses such services (eg. Twitter, Facebook) and who can publicise meeting notifications and special messages. 
    * Committee member phone numbers to be shared with each other. Alex to have his GPG fingerprint confirmed.

* Committee member phone numbers to be shared with each other. Alex to have his GPG fingerprint confirmed.{: page-href="wiki:///CommitteeMeetings/20130801"}