PPI Minutes 2018 11 19: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 07:39, 17 January 2019

Minutes

Agenda PPI BOARD MEETING

--- [11/19/14:05]h CET ---

Mumble: mumble.piratenpartei-nrw.de

Room: "/international/pirate parties international/board meeting"

Audio recording: started by Bailey at 14:05

https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/owncloud/index.php/s/fFk5RgHQmHfrkPG

Video: none

Record of the meeting

1 - ATTENDEES

1.1 - Members of the PPI board

participating: Bailey, Michal, Ray, Etienne, Keith, Ladislav

excused: Guillaume (proxied by Kitty)

unexcused: none

1.2 - Others

Alternate Board Members

participating: Kitty, Gregory, farlistener

excused:

unexcused:

Guests

participating: Koen, Pirates on Air,, ThomasG,

2 - PROCEEDINGS

RoP: http://wiki.pp-international.net/PPI_Board/Rules_of_Procedure

Meeting opened at 14:05 CET by Bailey

Meeting chaired by Bailey

Secretary for this meeting is collective

Quorum established with 7 out of 7 board members present (including 1 proxy)

Streaming started: started/not possible https://piratesonair.net/live-stream/

Recording started: 14:05

Postal votes: Guillaume's vote given to

Notes on meeting process

[HH:MM] CEST: (name) entered the meeting [=> Quorum not established with X out of Y board members]
[HH:MM] CEST: (name) left the meeting [=> Quorum established with X out of Y board members]
[HH:MM] x-minute break by initiated by (name)

Meeting closed at HH:MM CEST by (name)

3 - APPROVAL ON THE MINUTES

Minutes of the last meetings <Please note that we must approve the past two board meeting minutes>

Last official board meeting

https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2018_10_22

Inter-GA meeting

https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2018_11_08

YES: Ray, Ladislav, Michal, Bailey, Etienne, Keith, Kitty NO: ABSTENTIONS:Gregory (Vote of Gregory goes beyond our 7)

Minutes approved? with 7 Yes, 0 No

4 - REPORTS

4.1 - Short report of the board members 1)

Board:

Guillaume: (not present)

Bailey: Recovering from the insanity that was GA weekend ;)

Keith: Been in the CZ Rep. Meeting with the mayor of Prague and numerous MPs and government officials from the Czech Republic. Sharing information on the TT and PSC conferences.

Ladislav: Organized visit of Keith in Prague (visit to the plenary session of the parliament, meeting with PPCZ chairman Ivan Bartos and several other MPs, courtesy call on newly elected mayor of Prague Zdenek Hrib).

Raymond: Business as usual. Since the last board meeting I have taken part in organizing and running our general assembly. In additon to that I have started research and planning to help us better communicate with our members.

Mike: Not much to report; I met with Ladislav and Keith in Prague on Friday, talks on PISECON, Think Twice

Etienne : Same old. Probably will be absent one week in december because of exams

Alternates:

Daniel : Not present

Gregory: Vsisited PP-DE GA this weekend, actively working currently on the Pirate Summer Camp 2019 in Poland July 20-28th and the upcoming GA of foundation 42.Preparing the PPEU Council Meeting in Iceland (2-3 December)

Kitty : Helping Ray to reviewing some communication software. They have been looking at Airtable and CivicCRM for customer relation management features.

Cédric Levieux : A bit present

Pirate Security Conference - Sharing of Call for Submissions

PROPOSED BY: Keith Goldstein

The call for papers is due by the end of this month. Is anyone thinking of submitting? We should advertise this on our website: https://pirate-secon.net/call-for-submissions-pirate-security-conference-2019/

Please forward this submission to experts who may want to speak. Already board members have forwarded this, and we can expect several to present.

Pirate Security Conference - discussion

Ladislav: I already approached one person that would make a good speaker.

Kitty: We need to bring Alex on board, who will make a final decision. It should be a standing committee that will handle conference events.

https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2017_12_28#5_-_Patronage_for_Pirate_Security_Conference_2018

As far as what it cost, we wrote 400 euros as our potential contribution, which is conditional on our funding available. We are working with Alex to get additional funding from other sources.

COMMENT by Ray: I'm highly opposed to sharing the call for papers anywhere in the form that it is. It says that PPI will organize the conference. That implies coordinate, plan, fund and run it. We do not have a board decision. On Dec 28th 2017 a minority of the board, 3 out of 7 members, decided - without any supporting documents - to offer the conference its patronage. That is very different from being the organizers. Furthermore I will suggest we bring up PSC up for a decision in the board. This time with supporting documents and reasoning. See proposed agenda item named "Think Twice #4 - discussion". - Ray

Guillaume's position is that he is for the organization of the conference, but not for financing them. He feels that there should be a standing committee to deal with them.

We should form a standing committee.

Someone from PPI could join the regular PSC planning committee. Otherwise, there will be some confusion and double work.

Thomas: There is a committee that is already organizing the conference. However, it would be great to have someone from the board joining the committee.

Keith: Which of our members would like to join the PSC committee? We can ask Alex if and when we can join?

List of members that would like to join the already existing PSC committee: Bailey, Keith

Ray: Should we formalize the statement that PPI is organizing it to PPI is one of the organizers. It actually already states PPI is organizing it, allong with several other organizations. Our concern was that it appeared that PPI was the sole organizer, which is entirely not the case. There was some concern between sponsorship, patron, and organizing. In general patrons pay, while organizers organize.

Should we be sure that the conference states we are patrons?

Bailey: we are OK with the current situation, since PPI has been involved with PSC for some time. We are supporters. Our name is attached to it.

Ray:"PPI are patrons of the PSC, and does not organize it."
As long as the board is aware of the difference between patron and organizer, we can move on.

Let's try to be positive about this. This is a really good project and good for the community.

PROPOSED BY: Raymond Johansen

PROPOSED ACTION: Discuss our involvement with the Pirate Security Conference, PSC hereafter.

https://redmine.pp-international.net/issues/392

Think Twice #4 - discussion

PROPOSED BY: Raymond Johansen

PROPOSED ACTION: Discuss whether or not to organize another Think Twice conference, TT4 hereafter.

https://redmine.pp-international.net/issues/393

Gregory: the German Foundation 42 is ready to support the organisation of ThinkTwice in the Czechia. http://www.42ev.org/ (in German)

PROPOSED TEXT: "PPI intends through a working group (standing committee on conferences) to author a plan that includes description, budget, resources and responsibilities for ThinkTwice 4 so that an informed decision can be made. The board will, after a decision is made, pursue an informal offer from PPCZ, which has not yet been formalized or confirmed - dated November 14th 2018 - to host TT4 in Prague in the fall of 2019 (perhaps in October)."
This has been an informal discussion with PPCZ, so it would be good to confirm formally with PPCZ to make sure that they can approve TT4. There is still a question about organization, who will organize the talks. The discussion is the extent to which this will be organized by PPCZ in conjunction with Foundation 42, PPI, and other organizations. Ongoing discussions should confirm exactly what role each organization will have.
Comment that we should have a list of volunteers for a working group, who can collaborate on these conversations and form a committee
We will make a decision on the proposed text, so we should vote on whether to form a committee and engage in dialogue with PPCZ, Foundation 42, and others to formalize a proposal of TT4.

YES: Etienne, Kitty, Keith, Mike, Bailey, Ladislav, Ray

NO:

ABSTENTIONS:

Passed unaninomously

RESPONSIBLE: Keith Goldstein (together with Ladislav and Mike) will form the basis for informal discussions with PPCZ to create a working group to help inform the board decision on TT4.

Change to Board RoP # 1 - Deleting §5 - point 3

PROPOSED BY: Ray

PROPOSED ACTION: Deleting §5 - 3 so that a minority of board members cannot decide on behalf of the majority and thus preserving universal democratic rules. https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Board/Rules_of_Procedure

https://redmine.pp-international.net/issues/394

PROPOSED TEXT: "PPI's RoP §5, point 3 shall be deleted so that a minority cannot decide on behalf of the board."
This was introduced prior to alternate board members. It was a problem that they could not create any decisions at all. It helped them to make any decisions back then. It is more of a safety rule, in case anything happens to the board (such as people dropping out).
There are two ways of securing quorom, one is securing proxies, and the other ensuring the alternate board members are present. This is an issue especially when there are decisions about money. During the decision for PSC, there were "only 3 members" (Point of order, actually 4 were present, as Dan was present and given a vote).

YES: Etienne, Mike, Ray, Kitty,

NO: Keith,

ABSTENTIONS: Ladislav, Bailey

Motion passed/failed: Motion is passed with Yes 4, No 1, and Abstain 2.

RESPONSIBLE: Keith Goldstein (proposed) will edit the Wiki to refect the boards decision.

Comment: "If a quorum of 4 present board members is not met, decisions require an unanimous vote. (At least 3 members of the board need to be voting for a decision to be valid.)", perhaps we need to have a new rule of proceedure to clarify the voting rules. We will consider this for the next meeting.

Change to Board RoP # 2 - Adding minimum criteria for agenda items

PROPOSED BY: Ray

PROPOSED ACTION: Adding minimum criteria for items proposed to the board in §5 - 2 Agenda https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Board/Rules_of_Procedure

https://redmine.pp-international.net/issues/395

Gregroy: RoP §2(2) should be fixed - the URL mentioned is not working anymore. As should be all other appearances of the tasks.pp-international.net should be fixed.

There should be some preparation work for the boards, and hence there should be minimum criteria for agenda items.

We should fix this link: http://tasks.pp-international.net/projects/ppi-board/roadmap

Paragraph 5, 5 should also be fixed.

It never states how board members should add agenda items, nor does it state whose job is it to publish the agenda.

PROPOSED TEXT: "The board adds a point 5 to PPI's RoP §2 Agenda, stating the following: Proposed agenda items should, when natural, contain a) proposed action/title, b) background/history, c) reasoning, d) proposed text and e) responsible person, f) links to external documents and URL's to other sources of information and g who proposed the agenda item) . Whenever possible proposed agenda items should be sent to board@pp-international.net 72 hours before the meeting, giving the general secretary time to create the agenda and invitation. The invitation shall contain the agenda."

Request to see if Gregory can propose a revision to the ROP for the next board meeting. He agrees to propose a revision.

TO DO: Gregory: draft up a clean up RoP prooposal.

Point that even if someone does not follow the RoP, their item can still be added to the agenda. The proposal includes "when natural", which should allow flexibility. Gregory is not sure if it needs to be part of the RoP, but it is a good idea to have. What is missing is a list of a board decisions. We should have in the Wiki a list of the board's decisions. This way someone could look up each decision without having to go through the minutes. It would be good to present the decisions separately parallel to the minutes. They don't need to include all of the reasoning, just the decision <and a link to the minutes they come from>.

RESPONSIBLE: Keith Goldstein (proposed) will edit the Wiki to refect the board's decision next week . If the board considers this proposal, "==Change to Board RoP # 2==", to be a good template we could consider publishing it as a template/example on the wiki too. (?)

Point of order that this preparation may not be ready until after the next board meeting, due to the PPEU meeting in Iceland.

Electing Positions

Treasurer and General secretary

Michal is willing to do it, but he will probably need a lot of help.

In some sense, we need to divide the work up.

There is a need for a vice-treasurer, but we need one vice

Keith can be one of the vice-treasurers, but we could use another person. He is suggesting two vice treasurers.

Vice treasurers do not need to be elected. The treasurer can appoint as many vice treasurers as she or he would like or needs.

Candidate for Treasurer: Michal Gill

YES:Etienne, Kitty,Ladislav Keith, Bailey, Ray

:NO: 
:ABSTENTIONS: Mike
    
    *Congratulations to Mike who is our treasurer.
    *Keith is appointed by the treasurer to be the vice treasurer. Other volunteers are welcome to apply.
    *We could probably use the help of others from outside the board to assist with the duties of Treasurer.

Candidate for General secretary: Keith Goldstein

Keith is willing to do it.

:YES: Etienne, Ladislav, Mike, Kitty, Ray, Bailey
:NO: 
:ABSTENTIONS: Keith
    *Keith remains the General Secretary.
    *Keith will appoint someone, either from within or outside the board. 
    
*Vice Secretaries   
*Comment that the General Secretary should appoint people who will take responsibility for specific standing committees. It is not necessary to vote on each person.

Standing Comittee for the revision of Statutes https://ppi.savvy.ch/t/special-commission-for-the-revision-of-the-statutes/84 --
Etienne volunteers to be secretary for the revision of the statutes.
A big thank you to Etienne for volunteering for this position.

Standing Comittee for ECOSOC and International NGO activities https://ppi.savvy.ch/t/standing-committee-for-ecosoc-and-international-ngo-activities/85

https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=Decisons_of_GA#Standing_Committees "Every standing committee should have a support of a PPI board member who is responsible for it."

Keith will communicate with board and others about this working committee before our next

Board meeting location : test Discord

*PROPOSED BY: Etienne Evellin

https://redmine.pp-international.net/issues/396

PROPOSED TEXT: "Before choosing its meeting tool, the Board will meet on Discord twice and then proceed to the vote of the Board Meeting Location motion.

Therefore, the motion 'Board Meeting Location' is postponed until the end of the test."

This is just for a test at the moment. There is a discussion of having this on our own server, to enable plugins. There is a plugin to record the meeting.

The following agenda item is dependent on the test of Discord. We cannot decide on which location/tool to use without first testing them.

:YES: Kitty, Etienne, Keith, Mike, Ladislav, Bailey, Ray
:NO: 
:ABSTENTIONS:

: Motion passed unaninimously

*RESPONSIBLE: (to determinate) Etienne for e-mail and instructions, Q&A on how to use Discord... Cedric for technical purpose, like meeting recording

Board Meetings Location

Where should we host our board meetings this year?

PROPOSED BY: Ray

PROPOSED ACTION: The board shall discuss whether to continue using Zoom, go back to Mumble or test Discord and subsequently make a choice for meeting tech thereafter.

https://redmine.pp-international.net/issues/397

PROPOSED TEXT: "The board has decided to a) use Zoom OR b) use Mumble OR c) test Discord for 2018/19 or until such a time an Open Source solution becomes readily available."

<Vote postponed until after we test (3rd board meeting from now).>

The next board meeting will take place on Discord, unless we receive information that we need to use Mumble.

RESPONSIBLE: Etienne and Cedric

UNCSOCD

Author/proposer: Keith Goldstein
http://bit .ly/ un-csocd57
Making a speech during the general discussion Subject to time availability, oral statements may be delivered during the general discussion by a limited number of NGOs in consultative status with ECOSOC. Preference will be given to NGOs speaking about the priority theme or review theme, on behalf of groups of organizations, caucuses, or coalitions. Oral statements should not exceed three minutes (approx. two pages double-spaced using font size 12). Instructions will be communicated via e-mail to each NGO representative that requested to make a statement. Sign up for NGOs in consultative status with ECOSOC to express interest in delivering an oral statement during the general discussion will be open online from 7 January to 24 January 2019. The link to the sign-up form will be posted here on 7 January 2019.
This is a statement about us making an oral statement. Our statement should be specific to the goals of the proposal.
Ladislav would be interested in joining with this team, owing to his experience of having worked with UN field teams. Keith will get him in contact with our NY ECOSOC team.

Responsible: Keith Goldstein, assisted by Ladislav

Proposal for a break (15 mins.)

Funding for UN and other NGO Projects

Topics for funding

1) The Cyber Geneva convention 2) The Cyberweapon non-proliferation convention 3) Immaterial goods trade framework, including intellectual property and copyrights 4) Participatory and direct democracy tools sharing and maturity framework development

Proposals of specific projects

Examples of proposals needed, so we can draft a serious document.

Geneva Based Opportunities

Recommendations from Semrau- Swiss and Geneva-based opportunities for funding. Fundraising databases, fundraiso.ch or stiftungschweiz.ch.

NY based opportunities:

Recommendations from Siman Tov- Check who funded those startups. They might be interested to help us too. https://www.crunchbase.com/lists/funded-politics-related-startups/660a9797-6c99-4b13-8406-fb687af42305/identifiers

foundation directory. foundationcenter.org

Advertising strategy for funding the PPI. For example short flyers, which explain who the PPI is, what it does and what its goals are.

Networks in the fundraising domain and manage and maintain the contacts.

Mike and Keith will discuss this further and propose working groups during the next meeting.

We should specify that we are being specific to fundraising tasks and not funding other projects.

Board Decision, Tasks, Voting Organization Tool

PROPOSED BY: Keith Goldstein

PROPOSED ACTION: The board will decide on whether to use Redmine, Loomio, Discourse or Congressus - after a discussion on the subject

https://redmine.pp-international.net/issues/398

Background and reasoning: not added yet
There is a decision 399 on Redmine proposed by Cedric to ask for permission from the board to install Congressus and other necessary tools.

https://redmine.pp-international.net/issues/399

The board is not ready to decide on this issue. For the time being we will continue to use Redmine, but we can go ahead and vote on giving access to Cedric for installing Congressus and other tools.
Point of order that they will have to ask Bastian about this, as we cannot vote without first making sure that Bastian can enable this.
PROPOSED ACTION: The board will decide on whether or not to give an access to the Information System of the PPI for the installation and maintenance of Congressus
Background and reasoning: If we want to decide if Congressus is viable tool for the PPI we need to test it into the way it will be used in the future, or propose an alternative to do so
Cedric will need to install it himself on the PPI server. He can do that with Bastian, but Bastian cannot do it by himself. It is better if he has authorization from the board to request from the tech team the authorization to access the server.
We are asking the board for root access to the servers.

PROPOSED TEXT: "The board has decided to ask the tech team of PPI server to give Cedric L a VM environment for the purposes of installing Congressus, Discourse and Discord."
There is a discussion about the necessity of providing root access.
There is a comment from the tech team with strong opposition to this proposal.

Bastian: Remark: Do you read the chat? I don't think we do

I wrote: Strictly no way! You can have your own VM, and we monitor it, otherwise we will step down asap.

We discussed it already in the last meeting.

Question from the tech team about whether the technology be compartemised via docker or similar? Please send an email directly to Cedric for further discussions. The VM will give Cedric complete access, including root access, but he would not have access to the actual machine himself. It should be admissible.

Tech team is ok with the VM.

PROPOSED TEXT: *Do we approve for Cedric to receive VM environment access for the purpose to install Congressus?

:YES: Kitty, Etienne, Bailey, Keith, Ray, Mike
:NO: 
:ABSTENTIONS: Ladislav

: Motion passed with Yes 6, and 1 Abstention.

*VM is sufficient according to Cedric (for now).

6 AOB - Any other business

Business cards

Keith will send an email to the board with the format for the business cards. You will have to print them on your own.

Can we confirm that we have updated the board email, lay auditor and coa? And that everyone is receiving these emails?

Board emails appear to be working properly.

Does everyone have PPI email, please list them here.

raymond.johansen At pp-i

etienne.evellin At pp-i

bailey.lamon At pp-i

keith.goldstein At pp-i

cedric.levieux At pp-i

michal.gill also needs a pp-i email address. he can survive without a ppi email address.

guillaume.saouli AT PPI

ladislav also doesn't have a pp-i email address. but they are all getting the board emails.

Kitty: I haven't received the set up for my PPI email yet. I have an old existing PPI email but that is not working. She is also fine having them forwarded.

Kitty is getting all her emails forwarded to her proton account. We ask the tech team to inform about setting up board emails.

Comment by TechTeam: Everybody has a PPI email already!

CC goes to personal email (if known). If you wonna have a password please provide an secure way like PGP for transferring it. Thx.

Please do not write email addresses in minutes - those will be harvested by spam bots and you will get a spam explosion in the mailbox. not to mention data privacy issues.

We need to update the PP-Leaders with the emails we received from the GA. We also need to add emails from various sources. We could use a working group that will work on this issue of getting email addresses that should be included on the list.

Comment that they are not aware of the emails there or how to add people.

Mike, Kitty, and Ray (leader) will be on this working group.

Keith has access to the mailing lists. He will work with the working group on showing how we can add new members to the list.

Setting up DOI for Pirate academic journal, contact Gregory

Gregory: I am in the process of obtaining a DOI prefix for foundation 42, as we are starting an open access journal. The cost should be significantly lower then what Keith had stated (i.e. less then 250€ per year). This would be achieved by joining OASPA.

A DOI allows an academic publication to be included in a database, which makes it easier to identify and cross-reference.

Podcasts
Videos
Pirate research (idea : governance in the Pirate movment)

We started these projects. We could use a working group that would restart them. Let's keep thinking about them.

We should consider our resources for these projects. We will push this issue to a more suitable time.

If someone would like to record something, they can start right away.

Youtube: The Youtube channel access is available through our main email address. Any Gmail address can log in to the YT channel.

It is linked to the Google Plus site. Gregory can add management access to the YT channel.

Please contact Gregory for access.

If you access the channel you are acting as PPI, and not as yourself.

Mike would like access, and anyone else who wants access, please send your gmail account to Gregory.

Minutes Review

Everyone can do this, especially our new members. Please go over the more recent board minutes and catch up with what the board was working on.

UN ECOSOC and other NGO activities page on website

At the moment we do not have a lot of information to put there. In the future it would be a good idea.

About Alternates voting.

Do the alternate board members have voting rights or not?

We believe the GA indicated (in 2017) that the alternates can vote if the board member is missing, even if they have not declared a proxy.

Let's investigate the 2017 minutes: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2017_11_20

Ray will investigate this.

Change the timing of the meetings.

Perhaps we do not need meetings at 9:00 on Mondays.

We can add this to the next meeting, as the next meeting is at 21:00 on a Sunday.

===================================================

Next Meeting: Sunday 02-12-2018 21:00 CET Meeting Closed: 16:36 CET