PPI Minutes 2022-07-12

Agenda PPI BOARD MEETING

--- 12.07.2022 14:00 UTC/16:00 CEST ---

Big Blue Button Room: https://bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gre-cnw-a9v

Audio recording: PiratesOnAir Streaming

Recording: https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/s/yepNktsQWaY3rFc

Video: https://bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gre-cnw-a9v

1 - ATTENDEES

1.1 - Members of the PPI board

participating: Mike, Keith, Bailey, Dario, Alex, Mauricio, Manuel, Ggregory

excused:

unexcused:Carlos

Quorum:

1.2 - Others

Alternate Board Members:

participating: Bastian

excused:

unexcused: Adam, Veronika, Ji Yong

Guests:

participating: Numero6, Joe (USPP)

2 - PROCEEDINGS

RoP: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Board/Rules_of_Procedure

Meeting opened at 14:05 UTC by Bailey

Meeting chaired by Bailey

Secretary for this meeting is Everyone

Quorum established with (8 out of 9) board members present (incl. alternates and proxies)

Streaming started: started https://piratesonair.net/live-stream/

Recording started: 14:05 UTC

Postal votes: none

Notes on meeting process:

3 - APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES

Motion
Do we approve the minutes?
* Minutes of the last meeting: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2022-06-21 (last board meeting); https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_GA_JUL_2022_2 (the GA)
Yes : Mike, Keith, Dario, Bailey, Mauricio, Alexander, Manuel
No :
Abstain :
Result: minutes approved

4 - REPORTS

4.1 - Short reports of the board members

Board

• Bailey Lamon: Attended the statutes rewrite meeting. I'm considering attending the UNHQ meeting.

• Gregory Engels: was on vacation the last two weeks - with basically no internet and mobile data run out.

• Mike Gill: TT4 preparations, the GA, the PPI overhaul committee established and a lot done yesterday at its first meeting. Second one scheduled for the same time next week. So far we've been going through the statutes and deciding what to keep, strike, re-phrase, add and such. We made good progress and did this with about half of the status, potentially cutting out about half of the text.

• Carlos Polo: not present

• Keith Goldstein: TT4 preparations as well. Last night we had another DEPA DAO group meeting. We have elections again in Israel, so we are quite busy building a campaign.

• Alexander Isavnin: Preparing for local council elections in Konkovo district in Moscow, submitted documents on alliance with KPRF (sorry), still awaiting for final registration. Elections scheduled to be on 09-11 Sep 2022, including electronic voting, which is intransparent and we will try to reveal and fight.

• Manuel Caicedo: I attended the recent GA and Statute Reform sessions. I wasn't able to reply to the feedback email chain that came afterwards, but I support most of the ideas that emerged from it. I believe that Bastian has done the best he could, given the circumstances of being a consensus-based partisan union with international members (and interests) with no academic support, geographically scattered legal status. I went as a PPI observer to the last Regional Conference on Population and Development in Santiago by the ECLAC, subsidiary of ECOSOC in Latin America with European and Asian observers too. I still have to publish a brief about the conference.

• Dario Castane: It has been a year after my last attendance, so sorry about that. It didn't feel so far away. Probably because we met at the GA of December 21, and also I tried to read all the communications. I couldn't join the meetings because of conflicting agendas with my work. In Catalonia we keep doing work, collaborating at Parliamentary level with CUP, setting votes and developing Asembleo, the software behind them. I didn't attend the recent GA, but I attended the statutes rewrite meeting.

• Mauricio Vargas: We in Chile are starting a campaign to support the proposed new constitution. We registered with the Electoral Service to participate in the process as a pirate team.

Together with Dario, we are coordinating a meeting with Spanish and Portuguese speaking pirates to be held this Friday, July 15.

I attended the recent GA too.

Alternates:

• Ji Yong Dijkhuis: not present

• Veronika Murzynová: not present

• Adam Wolf: not present

• Sebastian Krone:
• All financial information I have is on the PPI wiki (no changes until 25.05.2022 - PayPal account balance is as of today, 12.07.2022). No new statements from the bank since May.

I have no information if Aid Ukraine donations were also transferred to SocEntLab.

• I attended the GA 2022.2

• The website for the upcoming Think Twice conference 2022 is still without concrete content. What is going on there?

All ThinkTwice pages can be found at:

https://pp-international.net/events/think-twice-conferences/

• Most of the Pirate Security Conference 2022 talks are online (two will be updated soon).

The old website is being relaunched as a campaign site.

https://events.pirate-secon.net

• I have been looking at the PPI technology, as I do every day.

Yesterday (11.07.2022) the website was blocked due to DDOS and shut down by the firewall. Over 25,000 hacker attacks within 2 hours! The downtime was about 2 hours.

All patches are up to date.

All systems are running smoothly.

• Note: All invoices for the servers we set up are still open. The invoice for 2017 has already expired. However, my request to at least pay the invoice for 2018 has not yet been granted.

• For our live conferences, we have a new Big Blue Button video server with capacity for up to 250 viewers. For larger events, we can book more capacity. We tested it at PSC2022.

5.1 - Proposals

• Issue: Think Twice 4

Confirming speakers and sending reminders for the community. Updating the website.

Keith: I just wanted to have this on the minutes. We have a list but Bastian let us know that we need to update the website and get the word out there. We have very few sign ups via the registration form. All people signed up very much were approached directly.

Bastian: We didn't sell any tickets so far (though they're free). There is a ticket system online. It is free, but it just is intended to give us a measure of how many will attend. It is on the website.

• Treasurer position

Bailey: We know Bastian has been acting as our temporary treasurer. The situation was discussed at the GA last week. The option to get a treasurer from the proper board members got floated. The statutes ammendment sadly didn't pass.

Bastian: We have discussed it already when I was elected. But whoever takes over has to do the daily work. Any new treasurer has to do that. We have troubles with the bank transparency and we can't repeat it.

Bailey: I don't think it's about us kicking you out but more about finding a solution to go forward. We don't necessarily have to make a decision today. Bastian has a lot of knowledge of our finances and processes. I hope that even if someone takes over will use Bastian's help to get everything in order. The issue now is whether to elect a new treasurer today or what do we do. Any thoughts?

Bastian: The new treasurer needs to have accurate bank statements and in time. People with access to the account need to work as well and pass the information.

Gregory: I was on holiday in Spain now for two weeks, run out of data and was basically out of touch. Bailey has all the bank access same as me.

Bailey: I've literally never been to that bank account. I need to be shown how to operate it.

Gregory: Fair enough. It's in English, not that hard but if there seems to be need it could've been done. I just arrived back from the vacation and I couldn't get to the bank account while on the road.

Bailey: No stress. We're just discussing the treasurer position because Mike's statutes proposal didn't pass at the GA and the controversy around it prompted the discussion about our options now. Does anybody wants to step up and run for the position?

Keith: I would like to have someone who hasn't done it before do it but if no one will I can do it.

Bailey: You're not alone in this guys. You'll always have Bastian or Keith to help you with it.

Manuel: I want to ask Bastian that if we end up electing a new treasurer whether he wants to remain involved. It needs to solve the situation at least until the new statutes are adopted.

Darion: It would be irresponsible to take the position by myself due to lack of time. What I can do is to help to document everything by meeting Bastian and the new tresaurer.

Bastian: Sure, I can support the new treasurer and it is my duty to transfer the job. If done daily it's not that much. We have to carefully watch our accounts on a daily basis and put the numbers into the Wiki. The treasurers in the past weren't so dutiful. It needs to be done daily if possibly and four quarterly reports and reports for the GA and the budget have to be prepared.

Bailey: There's work to be put into it but it shouldn't be overwhelming once one gets the hang of it. Bastian and Keith are here to help. We're not just gonna throw you in and drown.

Manuel: Thanks for the answer. I believe that we should elect a treasurer to temporarily fix the issue. I'm throwing my candidacy out there.

Alexander: What kind of solution do we need right now? First problem is who will act as a formal treasurer and the second who will be the treasurer elected from within the board. I would not volunteer for this position a long as i am in the country at war.

Bailey: So we have Manuel volunteering. Any questions for him? I think that we can probably go and vote.

Manuel: This will solve the situation and complaints by the Austrians and Norwegians and will allow us to focus on the reforms we need to execute. I'll do my best.

Bailey: Let's go and vote.

Motion
Do we elect Manuel as the new treasurer?
*Election of Manuel as Treasurer
Yes : Alexander, Mauricio, Keith, Mike, Dario, Bailey, Gregory
No :
Abstain : Manuel
Result: Manuel is elected as the new treasurer

Bailey: Thank you for stepping up and doing this. You'll have Bastian with all the knowledge and if you're ever feeling stuck or confused, let us know so we can help. Congratulations and thank you. That's it for proposals and we can move to the working groups.

5.2 - Working Groups Update

• Statute revisions working group

Bailey: Mike has been organizing this. The first meeting was yesterday. We went through and highlighting things that should be changed or eliminated entirely. Myself, Mike, Dario, and Manuel attended. There are only 3 sections left to do. We will finish it on Monday. The next step after that will be to go through each section and go through the details. Hopefully we will have a larger turnout next time.

Mike: This is the current status of the work:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-kxKJ5tAlxXZ5P8ke2qIK7hK3eTtfMskgCbz0eqkjDY/edit#

Mike: After this first stage I'll type it up and we expand on it from there. Then we can get to the Rules of Procedure afterwards.

• DAO Working Group

Keith: This was a chance (yesterday) to get over everything. Israel showed up, considering to use DAO as a part of our campaign. I haven't announced the next meeting but it's gonna happen soon.

Bailey: Anything else concerning the working groups? No, let's move on then.

5.3 Economic Update

• Bank transfer of remaining funds: https://redmine.pp-international.net/issues/410

• Payment of outstanding invoices. Clarification of amounts and payment schedule

Bastian: We need to send the donated money and solve the outstanding invoices. We also have to act on the Belgian situation.

Bailey: What do you guys think about setting up a separate meeting for the financial stuff, go through it step by step. What do you think?

Alexander: Sure. But I would suggest Bailey and Gregory get the access to the bank account solved first.

Manuel: Yeah, let's have that specific financial meeting. I need you Gregory, Bastian and Bailey to be there. Maybe we should set up a Doodle.

Bailey: Yeah, let's set up a Doodle. Any comments on this topic?

5.4 ECOSOC/UN

• UNHQ request to head of organization for speaking

participate in the Multi-stakeholders of the "Ad Hoc Committee to Elaborate a Comprehensive International Convention on Countering the Use of Information and Communications Technologies for Criminal Purposes"

Bailey: I'd like to attend the meeting. I'd probably attend remotely, depending on my schedule.

Mike: Also me and Alex wrote in the Wire we would like to participate remotely. So when the letter is drawn up, let's have the three of us on it.

Manuel: I'd love if you'd get back to us with some info about the proceedings.

5.5 PPI HQ update

Mike: Still no passports. :-)

6 AOB - Any other business

Bailey: One more thing from the GA as I see Joe from the USPP here - the USPP joined the PPI at that meeting. Does anyone have anything else you guys wanna talk about? Then we can close the meeting. Thanks for being here and for your participation at the GA.

Bastian: Can you get the bank statements until today ASAP, so we can update the wiki.

Bailey: Yes, we need to do it ASAP. And let's try to set up the meeting to deal with finances. All of this should be solved as soon as possible.

Bailey: Have a great day, evening, night. See you.

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

• Next Board Meeting: 02.08.2022 20:00 UTC/22:00 CEST
• Meeting Closed: 15:12