PPI Minutes 2014-07-05

Agenda PPI BOARD MEETING

Started 05/07/2014 11:49 CEST ended 06/07/2014 17:59 CEST

05/07/2014: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL, Fox Room and Roof Garden unintended stay for unintended fire drill.

06/07/2014 Clarendon Hotel, Montpelier Row, Blackheath Village, London SE 3 ORW, Blackheath room.

1 - ATTENDEES

1.1 - Members of the PPI board

participating: Maša, Gregory, Koen, Anders, Bastian, Thomas, Stathis online via Mumble

excused: Others

unexcused:

1.2 - Others

none

2 - PROCEEDINGS

RoP: http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_Board/Rules_of_Procedure

Meeting opened 05/07/2014 at 10:49 BST by Thomas

Meeting closed 06/07/2014 at 16:59 BST by Maša

Meeting chaired by Maša

Secretary for this meeting is Anders

Quorum established with 6 out of 7 board members present.

Streaming started: Not possible

Recording started: yes

Postal votes: [Yes]/[No] No

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Agenda PPI – board Meeting in London

Saturday July 5

location: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL (+44 20 7405 1818)

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Begin 10:00 British Summer Time

2 International Pirate Organisations

2.1 Status of PPI (Maša, Koen)

Koen: The financial status is qurrently a mess, but still in work. TT214 more or less on schedule and on the agenda tomorrow.

2.2 Status and plans of PPEU – (Anders)

Anders: PPEU is p.t. down for count. The process to get PPEU on track again has started on the initiative of four of the board members, included the two vice-chair persons. There are plans for a new board meetings as soon as possible, probably July 2014. The goal is to get back on track to become a resource for Julia Reda and register as an EU political party.

2.3 Status and plans of Pirates without Borders – (Thomas)

What is PWB?

PWB is the abbreviation for Pirates Without Borders, also known as Pirates Sans Frontiers (PSF) in French or Piraten ohne Grenzen (POG) in German.

Who are PWB?

We currently have about 120 members from various countries. In our general assembly in Munich in March 2014, we elected a new board consisting of President Sebastian Schwarzweller, Administration Moira Brülisauer and Treasurer Pat Mächler.

What is the difference to PPI and PPEU?

PPI and PPEU are connections of worldwide and European Pirate Parties. PWB are a connection of individual Pirates from all over the world. Of course, the PWB support the work of PPI and PPEU and cooperate with them whereever possible and requested, as their mission is similar to ours.

What is PWB's mission?

Our slogan is "Iocus et contumacia", which can be translated as "Joy and Pride". Pirates from all over the world are united in their party commitment, and we want to create the structures to make that commitment even more rewarding, more effective, and simply more convenient. Also, on a bigger scale, we consider it a part of our mission to participate in shaping and defining a global "Pirate identity" by sharpening the profile on the one hand, raising awareness for the international character of the pirate movement on the other.

How do we do that?

First of all, we bring people together - be it in special presentations, in conferences or trainings for certain teams, or sometimes in events just for fun and social life. The more people from all over the world we can bring together, the better. Currently, this is a grassroots progress, but in the long term we plan to establish international coordinators who can report about the state of their own countries as well as give short abstracts of the countries general assemblys etc.

As Pirates, we also emphasize the importance of web and software material. Therefore, we support projects with an international focus. In the long run, we want to launch our own software projects for everyone.

Of course, we also simply state our opinion about international politics. We want to promote awareness about international trade agreements, the economic and ecological effects of globalization, and the state of human rights in various countries.

How can I participate?

Interested? Just contact us!

Twitter: @pwb_psf_pog

E-Mail: board@pirates-without-borders.org

3 Cooperation with other international PP organisations and parties

All: General discussions on infrastructures, both technical and organisational.

Maša: How about YPE?

Gregory: Conference for Young European Ambassadors. Attended the PPEU Founding Conference.They Gt funding from EU as an organisation.

Julia Reda will extend Amelia's rent contract until June 2015 so PPI can keep the HQ address.

YPE has there own technical infrastructure, servers, mailin lists, ...

Maša: What can PPI do to facilitate cooperation?

Thomas: Put together a patch work and make structures from that starting point.

Gregory: PPI have a lot of projects, but not very efficient p.t. due to lack of resources in the PPI resource network.

One example is http://parrot.pp-international.net

Current projects-/assets overview at https://ppi.piratenpad.de/IT-Stuff

Thomas: Establish a level that support structures and positive results getting live globally through PPI. PPI needs the vision, but first solve the challenges we are facing for the time being. We are maybe not communicating through the correct channels if members are not informed about PPI activities. -The BALI Conference in December 2013 is the basis for the discussion (referents comment).

All: Discussions on how PPI can include more members combining technologies for communication. One suggestion is to let each member with special needs adapt to the meeting proceedures of PPI and make them work like required to be efficient and be able to act in real time.

15 minutes break 12:02 to 12:17 BST (Honey Bee Roof Garden break)

Discussions above proceeds:

Task forces

Task forces: Most of them are before PPI was formally founded. Just a few still active.

Mailing lists and how to make them transparent. Nicknames are allowed due to the political situation in certain countries.

One list for broadcasting is suggested. PP-leaders list is for broadcasting only. If answered to this list it is re-directed to pp-leaders.discussions list.

Task forces: Most of them are before PPI was formally founded. Just a few still active.

Press work task force: Works fine – resp. Denis Simonet & Thomas Gaul

ACTA task force: Is dead.

Censor task force: Is it a task for PPI? Is it possible for PPI to promote anti-sencorship efficiently? PPI have too small resources both in human resources and financial means. Not working. Formerly connected to MyPirate.

Conference and event planning task force: Normally taken over by CAO (Thomas) resp.

Pirate Times (PT): Was started after a PPI initiative, but are now more an independent news source. PPI needs to inform PT about articles when needed. PT is an independent news entity and as such not connected to PPI anymore. Josef Collentine gets a lot of credit for the transformation to an independent news source tailor made for pirates and Pirate Parties on an international level.

Legal task force: Should be set up and with a new structure. Needs a relaunch. Suggested with both legal and economical legal experts. - Bastian

"New parties" task force: Hard to assist with the current budget. PPI has up to today recommended new start-ups to launch a web-site for new pirate parties so we know it is an official attempt to start up, or an official registered party. Registering excile parties has proved very difficult to do succesfully. There has been attempts, several mentioned. PPI might be able to ask for donations to establish parties with high costs through existing networks. Needed – See Open Space Converence in Paris. But no sponsoring possible. Gregory will invite for a meeting.

Pirate Party Europe task force: Succesfully established. See other discussions in these minutes for status of PPEU. One of Julia Reda's top priorities right now is to get PPEU as a advising unit for her office in Brussels.

Statutes task force: See http://wiki.pp-international.net/Statutes_task_force Joining with the Legal task force in the future.

Website task force: First priority is to have the technical infrastructure human resources in place to keep all services running at all times. According to Gregory only one responsible might be able to manage this if there is access to ad-hoc resources when needed.

Tech task force: See http://wiki.pp-international.net/IT/Website_taskforce - Gregory + Steve Wilson (PP-UK)

Text Production task force: An early task force for web site content and press releases. Most tasks are now handled by Pirate Times. Only website and wiki-stuff. Will be renamed Website task force (see above in this list of lists) - Responsible N.N.

Translation task force: Boris Turovskiy PP-RU is managing this task force. 80 members currently engaged in mailing lists in this task force. It works well through the mailing lists. Koen is a lurker on the list. Pirate Times has their own translation lists/groups.

Wikileaks task force: Not listed in the wiki. PPI do not admin this list and PPI does not know anyhing about the task force, but have some idea about some of the members of the list. More cannot be said about this list by any of the current board members.

PP-ops task force: Not listed in the wiki. Activist group as far as the current PPI board members are informed.

New task forces:

Socalizing task force: Responsible Jelena & Thomas

Pirate developers task force (like a github): Responsible Gregory

Wiki content task force: responsible Bastian

3.1 PPEU (Anders)

The following issues discussed before the 12:02 top floor Honey Bee Roof Garden break:

Anders: See 2.2

Maša: How can PPI cooperate with other pirate organisations?

Koen: We need more voluntares. It will be hard to do cooperations around the world with only the board members as resources. Which implies we need to engage people on national, regional and local levels.

Gregory: We need to include also YPE and others with infrastructure set up. Clearify the competences of different members and other organisations PPI will cooperate with.

13:00 Lunch break

Lunch break from 13:23 to 14:30 BST

Meeting started after long lunch break 15:00 BST by Maša

Continuing with 3 in the agenda.

4 General goals and plans of PPI (Maša)

4.2 Discussion

Maša: Listen to our members.

Meanwhile: fire drill to test the functionality of emergency exits :D The full board was stuck at the roof of the venues for more than half an hour during an unintended fire drill. We established the fact that all fire exits were firmly closed and we was finally saved by the co-chair team, who managed to get contact through a roof window with attendants at a conference who happened to be visiting the mens room.

4.3 Results

Left building caused by end of meeting deadline set by the venue. Will be summarised in a later board meeting.

5 Internal structure

5.1 Office

OK for the next year. Shared with Julia Reda.

5.2 Legal entity in Brussels

PPI HQ vs. PPI. Discussions around who controls who's accounts. The board of PPI HQ consists Anders Kleppe, Thomas Gaul, Gregory Engels and Bastain Krone. The PPI board was elected during the Paris 2014 GA. So all members of PPI HQ are members of the PPI board.

5.3 Financial Issues

All signatures gathered to settle the official bank accounts today, except Jerry Weyer's and Nicolas Sahlqvist's.

Last known balance of Triodos bank account 7.491,67 € 12.01.2011

Cash balance: à Gregory

Plan A to open a bank account with the help of the PP-UK has failed

Plan B to open a bank account with the help of the PP-DE is accepted by the new German PP-DE board

Plan C to open a bank account with the help of the POG (PWB)?

Accounting is finished except last cash details.

In case we have a bank account, we can send out the requests for member fees asap.

We are working hard on the detection of the member data.

Question: What's about merchandising?

Merch is accepted as an accepted source of income to run PPI activities. All merchandise activities should, and will, be handled within the scope of the tasks PPI is approved by its members.

Bastian will involve a lawyer who is familiar with Belgium law on bank account and legal entity to clarify any open question.

5.4 Online infrastructure

See 2.3 for some of the online infrastructure. Any leftovers will be handled in later board meetings.

6 Social media (Gregory)

6.1 historical data

Gregory: Gives status of social media likes, reach and other stastistics.

• Facebook: From 2011; 800 to 8.500 as of today. Average reach per week about 80k people. 6.500 people per day average engagement. List of managers are available. We reach mostly young males. So there is a job to do to engage all age groups and genders.

• Twitter: Retweet rates approx. 20 per tweet. Password has never been changed, so it's hard to tell excactly who sends tweets on behalf of PPI. Password will be changed as soon as the board has established who wants to contribute to PPI's Twitter account.

• Google+: Anders is the main contributor, but has done a bad job since he was elected as board members. The G+ Community is some activity on and the contributors are any members of the PPI G+ Community.

• Youtube channel: Linked to Google +. Still missing some videos from the ThinkTwice in Frankfurt.

• GitHub:

6.2 current situation

• Facebook handled:

Admins: Koen De Voegt, Gregory Engels, Thomas Gaul, Jelena Jovanovic, Anders Kleppe, Andrew Reitemeyer

Editors: Nuno Cardoso, Pat Maechler, Travis McCrea, Yoni Jakob Brombacher Miller, Henrique Peer, Denis Simonet, Lola Voronina

• Google+ page and Youtube channel:

Handled by Anders Kleppe mostly, setup by Gregory Engels, several pirates invited to contribute as admins, Youtube channel managed by G+ admins and some people to upload videos from the ThinkTwice 2014 in Frankfurt, still not finished due to personal and technical issues.

6.3 goals

Will be handled at a later point of time as it requires a lot of work and cooperation between teams.

6.4 SM strategy/Communication strategy/plans

Will be handled at a later point of time as it requires a lot of work and cooperation between teams.

6.5 press work

Will be handled at a later point of time as it requires a lot of work and cooperation between teams.

Sunday July 6

location: Clarendon Hotel, Montpelier Row, Blackheath Village, London SE 3 ORW, (+44 20 8318 4321)

Begin 10:00 BST

Opened 10:15 BST, Three last members arrived 11:30 BST; Maša, Koen and Anders

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7 Conferences

7.1 ThinkTwice Conferences

Questions addressed ranged from technical issues with the TT214 conference site, practical information about proceedures of the conference, PPI's role as a co-organiser for the conference, sponsors and sponsorship packages, registration of particiapants to be set up at the site as soon as possible.

Results:

Contact submitters to the IGF and invite them as speakers at TT214. Maša will write a Letter of Invitation and find addresses (email) to everyone who submitted papers and workshops to the IGF.

Letter too Sponsors. Call companies, not including companies that are not fit with pirate core ideas, and then send an official letter for sponsoring the conference according to the sponsor packages in work in this pad https://ppi.piratenpad.de/tt14-sponsors - Responsible will be Anders and Bastian, Thomas and Gregory will assist in adjusting a suggestion to wording from Bastian.

Get a reasonably good overview of costs on PPI's side for the conference and schedule a meeting with Arif and the full board as soon as humanly possible.

7.2.1 Online GA

Thomas asked for a "online GA" in November.

long discussion about the wording online GA. We agree on Call for Proposals for agenda? Will be discussed the first online board meeting after these London RL meetings. Also taking into account the current statutes.

7.2.2 GA 2015

The PPI board have to inform all members that this board have a close to zero € budget for this board's term.

The proposals are in this pad https://ppi.piratenpad.de/agenda-2014-07-03

The proposals:

Iceland: Meeting the requirements for Rejkavik. Be aware of the budget. € 30.000,-

Estonia: Requirements for GA mostly met. Be aware of the alternative prices. Not clear what total cost is, but seems to be a bit less than € 5.000,-. The price might become lower, but it seems unclear where that might be done. No finance included in proposal.

Italy: Requirements met. Budget € 2.000,- and includes financing options.

Poland: Requirements met. Budget € 1.000,-, catering € 25,- per person per day is extra, and includes suggestions for financing the GA.

The PPI board are very thankful for all the great work done with all proposals and sends a special thank you to every single one that has contributed in putting these great proposals together.

13:00 Lunch break

Lunch break from 13:34 to 15:24 BST

8 collaboration with other NGOs

will be handled on the next on line meeting

===9 Roadmap for international lobbying at international organizations (Gregory)

• UN, WIPO, WTO, ITU, ILO, WHO and others...

Will be handled on the next on line meeting

10 PPI E-Democracy system / Interaction

Will be handled in later board meetings.

11 Other projects

N/A - Will be handled on the next on line meeting

12 AOB (urgent)

Stathis: As remote participant there were issues with his participation during the meeting in London. He wrote the following statement before the meeting:

What we can do

To continue to do what we did before the euroelections. The contribution of each one of us is very important. From our everyday microcosm – in real and digital life – we can create additional momentum for the movement.

In the field of communication with the members of PPI: Maybe it would be a good idea to form a questionnaire and ask Pirate Parties what are their thoughts, their priorities, what would they like PPI to do, beyond the typical.

We can also ask Pirate Parties if they are able to provide a responsible person for the translation of PPI’s posts or press releases, so that the visitors of the webpage of PPI have the option to read some of the news in their native language.

Design a kind of fast-paced pirate seminars. In order to convey the experience, PPI and PPEU could take the initiative to organize training seminars for the Pirates about the preparation, the creation and operation of a Pirate party (the basic techniques of internal organization, communication with media, issuing press releases, sources and methods of financing, political presence, etc.), in cooperation with the leaders of the movement. It would be good if these seminars could be organized in such a way as to be made within 2 days (eg weekends), at various times of the year and adjusted as needed by the interested parties. Let's record our experience and pass it freely to each other. Let's make things easier for future’s Pirates. In each country, usually, a core of 20-50 people start the whole thing and if they do not have access to the media, they struggle to organize and promote everything from the internet and that takes a lot of time.

Be the protagonists in issues relating to the internet. Snowden’s revelations, Sunde’s arrest, TTIP, and other issues like that offer us the oportunity for activity. Write a press release, organize a protest, do something. By the way, Oliver Stone, director, is preparing a movie about Snowden’s life and it would be good to contact him that we're on his side, recalling our thesis on whistleblowers.

In two years, in fact in less than 18 months, we will celebrate 10 years since the founding of the first Pirate Party. We could co-organize, with our MEP and the team of Greens / EFA, a series of events in the European Parliament. We ccould arrange a World Conference to commemorate this anniversary. We could design a lot, but until then each of us should offer the movement the best he can and show sympathy and solidarity, in a practical way, with the Pirate Parties that will participate in national or local elections.

Finally, as for the “Think Twice 2nd Conference”, we should send a message to all the party members of PPI informing them about the expanding of the deadline of the call for papers and asking to post it to their websites or send it to their members via newsletters. A translation to their mother language would be an added value towards the spreading of the event.

N/A - Will be handled on the next on line meeting

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Next Meeting: 20:00 CEST on 22/JUL/2014 - Meeting scheduled 08/JUL/2014 is cancelled.

Meeting Closed: 16:59 BST by Maša