PPI Minutes 2019 07 29

Ordre du jour

Formalities/Ordre de Jour - July 15th 2019

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Board Meeting

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Convened

Present are Gregory, Bailey, Guillaume, Keith, 

keithgoldstein: We have quorum with 4 out of 7.

Absent

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keithgoldstein: Mike indicated that he cannot make it. Etienne indicated he might be absent for a period as he is busy.

PROCEEDINGS

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Chair and secretary

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Quorum

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Approval of the Minutes

<a href="https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2019_07_14">https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2019_07_14</a>

keithgoldstein: Gregory abstains, Keith approves, Bailey approves, Guillaume approves

keithgoldstein: 3 out of 4 approve, and hence it is approved.

Next meeting July 29th:

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August Meeting time

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Approval of Today's Agenda

Temporary Leave of Absence, ROP for Alternate Replacements

Economic reports

UN ECOSOC Working Group

Any Other Business

General Assembly 2019: Discussion, GA Motions

Nomination of Additional Vice Secretaries

TT4 dates and tasks

Our Paypal Problem, Contact with Koen (also regarding the website)

Upcoming Meeting

keithgoldstein: I would like to request that we reverse the RoP to approve the agenda and just ask if anyone would like to add anything. My reasoning is that the secretary has to prepare the agenda before the meeting, and it takes a bit of time. Hence, the time to oppose the agenda is before the meeting. Any objections?

keithgoldstein: We need to push back the financials as Mike is not present.

keithgoldstein: We may not get far with only 4 people

Board member reports

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Board

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Guillaume:

10th anniversary of Swiss PP. Turned out to be a good event. Got press. Looking at the organization of GA. Will propose timeline and set of tasks. Awaiting the meeting tomorrow with the Dutch board. Bailey will also be there. It starts at 8, but they requested us at 8:30. Keith will write them back to let them know that you guys will be there.

Bailey:

German coordination meeting invitation. It was proposed that I become their attache for the US and Canada. That would mean that I would go to their meetings and talk about what is going on.

Daniel:

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Raymond:

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Mike:

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Etienne:

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Alternates

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Gregory:

The last 9 or 10 days been at the Pirate Summer Camp in Poland for the first time. It was a nice program with people from Germany, Poland, Netherlands, and the Czech republic. There were a lot of nice meetings. They discussed setting up structure for the UN work and what to do next. We will talk about this later. We set up some structures and some tools. We went over the UN delegation job application on FB. There were 9 candidates. We rejected half of them and kept 4 of them who look very promising.

Cédric:

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Temporary Replacement of Board Member

Ray has asked for a temporary leave of absence. In so doing, it became apparent that we are missing a rule of procedure for this scenario. 

Proposed by Keith and Thomas

*PROPOSED TEXT: 

Alternates are ranked from each election, but Gregory and Cedric were elected in separate elections, hence there is no rank <a href="https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2018_11_03#Election_of_Alternate_board_members" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; cursor: pointer !important;">https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2018_11_03#Election_of_Alternate_board_members</a>. However, it seems that seniority is the rule in practice and you are right that Gregory should thus be promoted in line with the temporary leave of absence.

According to the minutes of the GA, Cedric was elected in the last GA, while Dan and Gregory were elected in the prior. Dan ascended having more votes in the prior, but it seems thus on seniority that Gregory would be next in line. I do not find a rule indicating seniority rules, but lacking any order for candidates and prior precedent it seems Gregory is indeed next in line. Having said that, we also have a rule that alternates should be treated as active members and never seem to have full attendance.    

   <a href="https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Board" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; cursor: pointer !important;">https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Board</a>

Do we agree that it should be a rule that alternates are ranked by order of voting and year, such that the prior year's board members are always ranked above. This is actually a matter of practice, so we just need to clarify it in the rules. 

keithgoldstein: For now Ray is just on a two week leave of absence.

keithgoldstein: The ROP is a small point. We should add it, because it was not brought up.

Economic reports

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Budget and cashflow budget 2019

not discussed. postponed.

UN ECOSOC Working Group

*PROPOSED BY: Gregory and Keith (on request of the Pirate Summer Camp Committee)

*PROPOSED ACTION: We will form an official working group for PPI UN activities.

*BACKGROUND: PPI needs to prepare for its Quadrenial report and also to formalize our decision-making apparati for UN activities. Numerous pirates from around the world are interested in being involved and would like to take part as formal members in a decision 

Motion: Are we in favor of establishing this working group, of which we already have declared interest from a contingent of Pirates, several of whom are already UN representatives: (Pat Maechler, Gregory Engels, Alex Kohler, Bastian, and others)?

*REASONING:

    A working group will provide us with the organization to conduct fundraising, reporting, attending events, setting up side events, promoting lobbying objectives, and other tasks that will boost PPI's global presence. 

Small tasks: 1) To fix up the PPI UN page: <a href="https://pp-international.net/about-ppi/un/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; cursor: pointer !important;">https://pp-international.net/about-ppi/un/</a>  (Bastian indicated that he was willing to help if we provide him access to do so),  2) Reestablishing a crowdfunding page (prior page was delinked from our bank account as we required Swiss citizen to vouge documents), 3) outline deadlines for statements and events, 4) Vet and Recruit candidates for events, 5) Outline Smart Goals for the organization.

Guest: We were trying to make it more structured, making smart goals that are specific and actionable. Some of the goals are internal. We should not be in a position that we would lose our accreditation, which is not probably a big danger, but we should fulfill our cornerstones. We need to involve more people and to involve PPI members in the process of consultations. Invite all the people who are already involved in the UN business, who have groundspasses, who went to meetings to the group. Have some more formalized discussion. Have more representatives so the next steps will be consultations with members, and also to define people who will publish reports and consultations on the website. Also to define projects about what we are trying to accomplish . One thing came to mind to set up a project about Crypto, because we have some experts in this topic. The former chairman Alexis Russo who lives in Geneva and is very invested in some crypto projects. We thought to get him involved again. There is a lobbying opportunity around that.

BaileyL: Getting members more involved in statements is great. Using Trillo. It is a task managing tool that is flexible and easy.

keithgoldstein: Messages should be sent to the UN group in FB. We will add all of the people on the FB group and then move them to Trillo. We will try to get as many people as possible to that group. Currently there are 11 people in that group.

keithgoldstein: We will add Guillaume and the Czech MPs at Vojtech's request.

Any Other Business

How do we decide who do we work with, what is in our interest. Is some of this derailing. Do we have any evaluation about requests for collaboration that we receive?

keithgoldstein: We don't have a formal process. We tend to discuss it if we support it or not? The India request.

General Assembly 2019: Discussion

keithgoldstein: July 30 at 20:30 can someone be present at the PPNL board meeting to discuss the possibilities of them hosting the GA?

keithgoldstein: Reaching out to prior applicants for board positions to get them to apply again, and offering alternative secretary position for those who are not elected. We need more volunteers.

PPNL Invitation

It is a bit early, but we will see whether we will have the event and how. It is clear that we will need to have the online GA working. We will need to work on the online segment, especially with a dry run. We will need to see which tool that we want to use. We will need to prepare everything ahead of time, so we should be prepared a month or month and a half ahead of time. We will need to have a venue for proposals and so on.

GA Motions

1)  propose direct election of alternates based on the order after election of board members. It does not make sense that we have a separate set of elections.

2) increase board size

keithgoldstein: Contacting prior people who ran to be board members and those who might be interested.

BaileyL: We need to have something set up. People didn't get super active, but we had the Discourse. We need to do something like that again. The debates and everything can happen before and on GA day people can make final statements. It doesn't have to take up a whole lot of time. We need to do a lot better to include remote delegates, so they have the same opportunities as everyone who is physically present.

Guest: Involvement and board size are two different things. We need to find a way to get people involved without necessarily being board members.

TT4 dates and tasks

*PROPOSED BY: Keith

*PROPOSED ACTION: TT4 Call for Speakers Announcement. We will approve the final dates, and send the following announcement, a graphical version of which that Mike will provide, to all of our contact lists and social media to attract speakers and participants 

*BACKGROUND: TT4's dates have been updated to Nov. 1-3.

*REASONING:  We are running out of time and need to enlist speakers. This proposal does not entail funding from PPI whatsoever. If we decide to request funding from PPI for the event, a separate proposal will be made. The event will be hosted regardless of whether PPI decides to contribute financially for the event.

*PROPOSED TEXT: 

We will send the announcement for TT4 through all media outlets, including a blog on our website. A draft of the call is copied below. Minor revisions to this announcement may take place during the design, including shorter versions.    

    

    Think Twice Four: Online Challenges to Democracy

The 4th Multinational Think Twice Conference (TT4) will be held Nov. 1-3, 2019 in Prague, Czech Republic.

The event will bring together academics, professionals, nonprofit and governmental organizations, as well as social activists to discuss Online Challenges to Democracy.

Speakers are requested who will contribute to the debate about online challenges to democracy from four different perspectives: 1) government, 2) non-profit, 3) business or 4) activism.

We will assess positive and negative consequences of online environment collaboration and propose policy solutions. Prior Think Twice conferences were held in Frankfurt, Istanbul and Jerusalem.

The event is entirely non-profit and sponsored by the Pirate Parties International and the Czech Pirate Party. Participation is open to the public, and speakers will include leaders from a variety of organizations who seek to debate policies that target online challenges to democracy.

The preferred language of the speeches is English.

Guests who cannot travel to Prague for the event are invited to participate and/or present online.

Speakers are asked to either present in a panel discussion (“Online Challenges to Democracy”), organize a workshop, present a poster or graphical information, or speak at the lecture hall.

Critical discussions should be presented on one or more of the following subfields: online democracy, the political challenges of governing a free internet, regulations and deregulations of online environments, Big Brother internet, Government spying, Fake news, Fake social media, Preserving freedom of expression online, Democracy interference, Media credibility evaluations and rating systems, Grassroots movements and activism, Political populisms, Risks online globalization, Local and global volunteer networks, or Promoting internet rights through multinational or supranational organizations.

A number of well-known academics, politicians, business representatives, non-profit leaders, and activists will be invited to speak. However, the call for speakers is competitive and open to the public.

Applications to speak should be made by sending an email to thinktwicefour@gmail.com

Speakers are requested to provide a short summary of their intended discussion or presentation (up to 500 words).

*PROPOSED TEXT: "Insert text/actions proposed here"

:a) Unknown:

:b) Unknown:

:c) Unknown:

:ABSTENTIONS:

: Motion passed/failed

*RESPONSIBLE: Mike and Keith

keithgoldstein: Working group needed.

4 main tasks:

1) The call for speakers (text is copied below). We should shorten

this text for publication, considering that it will be sent by email

and social media. This is the most urgent. We need to send the call

for speakers right away. Also, you should consider adding a line

about/whether limited funds might be available for foreign speakers

with limited resources.

2) The website (https://think-twice.co/) This is the old website for

TT3. We need to revise this website now for TT4.

I don't have admin rights to create new users, and Koen the admin

from TT2 is not replying, so just use my log in.

Go to https://think-twice.co/wp-admin

user: keith.goldstein@pp-international.net

password: ppiprague420!

3) The call for participants. Likewise, we should create a couple

versions, and you all might want to think of flyers, etc.

4) Beginning a crowdfunding campaign and call for sponsors. Last

year we raised small funds from a gofundme account attached to our

Swiss account. This account is now inactive, so we should consider

opening a new account and of course distributing it to potential

donors.

Plus,

5) consolidating the materials from TT1 and TT2,

6) setting up a FB event

And other social media outreach

Nomination of Additional Vice Secretaries

In order to get more people involved we will be nominating more vice secretaries. We will announce those next meeting.

Our Paypal Problem, Contact with Koen (also regarding the website)

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Contact with PP Australia or other parties

The last couple of GAs we had an observer, Miles Whitaker. He was really cool, and it was good that Thomas was keeping that relationship going.

Blogs on our website

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Social Media, access to Twitter for Pat

Bailey will get the log in information directly or make people contributors through Tweet deck.

Dichter: It would be better to give permission through Tweet deck, as we had situations before, and there were problems to recover our own account.

Pirate Times

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Upcoming Meeting

Are we sticking with this time, day?

keithgoldstein: Next meeting is scheduled for Aug. 12, same time at 16:00 CEST.