PPI Minutes 2021-10-27

Agenda PPI BOARD MEETING

--- 27.10.2021 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/GnbxDMnzRM58a2r

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

1 - ATTENDEES

1.1 - Members of the PPI board

participating: Mike, Bastian, Keith, Bailey, Gregory

excused:

unexcused: Dan, Dario, Manuel, Carlos

Quorum:

1.2 - Others

Alternate Board Members

participating:

excused:

unexcused: Svein, Ji Yong, Thomas

Guests: Meeting with those revamping the Pirate Party of Serbia scheduled for after the meeting

participating:

2 - PROCEEDINGS

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

Meeting opened at 14:00 UTC by Bailey

Meeting chaired by Bailey (14:00 UTC)

Secretary for this meeting is Everyone

Quorum established with ( votes out of 9) board members present.

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

Recording started: 14:00 UTC, 16:00 CEST

Postal votes:

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_2021-10-06
Yes : Mike, Keith, Bastian
No :
Abstain : Bailey, Gregory
Result: minutes approved

4 - REPORTS

4.1 - Short reports of the board members 1)

Board

• Bailey: Finished the GA invite - spread it around. The Google ads are also moving forward.

• Gregory: Been to the Google Grants meeting; gave access to Rick and his team for the ads grant. At the second meeting we analyzed the website and the serch, so we shall measure newsletter subscription - something we talked about earlier this year. The bank asks us to fill some papers because location or date was missing at some signatures - they'll send it to me to fix it; we should then print it out and start in Canada, so we save money and time for one trans-Atlantic mail. Got in touch with the Belgian authorities on the fine for not filing taxes in Belgium. I asked for the fine to be waived and we are submitting the missing papers. I've registered people for passes for Geneva UN. Later today I shall register people for the WTO meeting (me, Carlos, Svein). I communicated with the IGF on the booth matter.

• Dario: not present

• Bastian:

All the financial information I have is on the PPI wiki. Access to the bank account and the Kraken (Bitcoin, Ethereum) are on the way.

I took care of the PPI tech as I do every day.

I am still waiting for a good time slot for the PPI server upgrade, but all systems are running fine, necessary updates are done ;-)

The website is currently being expanded to include the newsletter, Google ad grants and SEO tools (but all this is of little use if little content continues to be produced). :: With the Google ad grants we get a very good support from @RicSti

• Manuel: not present

• Mike:

We solved the Virgilio from Ecuador; he's now a listed individual member. I got in touch with multiple Polish Pirates to help with manning the booth at the IGF in Katowice - they're more than willing to help. Some Czech Pirates might come to and also multiple Pirate MEPs should be there. Wrote to all four MEPs about the Geneva WTO meeting; none replied, so I consider that as a no. I still need your passports and information for the PPI HQ change (mainly Bailey and Bastian). News from Czech Republic: negotiations ongoing but among others it seems we might even get the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which would be nice. In total 3 ministers are in play. News on TT4 below.

• Dan: not present

• Keith: I heard from Dan who was about to have an assembly with Pirate Party of Brazil. He wanted to know the statistics on Pirate parties in the world, which I summarized. I started building the interns and mentors surveys, but I did not finish. I corresponded with an Italian professor who wrote us. I heard from Suzawa-san, who was the former leader of Pirate Party of Japan (observer member). He has currently started a Patriot Party that has also been associated as an anti-vaccination movement that would like to be a member of PPI. I have not yet been in contact with other members of the Pirate Party of Japan who removed Suzawa-san from the party.

• Carlos: not present

Alternates:

• Svein: not present

• Ji Yong: not present

• Thomas: not present

5.1 - Proposals

• Issue: Think Twice 4 in Prague - Spring 2022

Submitted by: Mike

Justification: I got an approval yesterday from PPCZ to organize the TT4 in Prague in the spring (in April if possible). The PPCZ already gave us 1000 EUR for this conference and is willing to pledge 1000 EUR more towards the organisation of it. So we need to be on it and make it happen. I can take care of everything on the Prague end but would very much appreciate help with the speakers part of it. Czech side can definitely supply a few academics for the event too, but let's make it as international as possible. Mostly we need a theme and then call for speakers. Here's the to-do list from 2020 we can use again: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bw8vEO7kmjDm3DuXVMSof7k8iBl0hvf54x4sY6tZY9Y/edit#gid=1754832629.

Mike: The to-do list is the most important.

Gregory: Are some of the tasks, such as flags, we already have. Should we copy the items to a new spreadsheet? If you want, you can duplicate it.

Mike: The location should hopefully be the same as last time. The goal is April 23-24, so people should have time to help. Easter is the 17th, so one week after that. Corona is a concern, but people are hopeful with vaccinations.

Bailey: Do we need to vote.

Gregory: No need to vote, because we are dependent on our host.

Bastian: It makes sense to publish a date.

Mike: We need to decide on the topic.

Gregory: We can reuse the old one. Let's have a separate meeting on this, because it is a big topic.

Mike: I will invite others.

Bailey: We shall have a separate meeting on the details.

• Issue: Membership Fees Invoices

Submitted by: Mike

Justification: We must get on the invoices for the member parties, so they actually have a chance to pay for 2020 within 2021. The Dutch already asked for this and now the Czechs would also like to pay right away for 2020, 2021 and 2022, so they can pay them all from this years still quite big budget, before it gets cut in half for the next year. Getting 3000 EUR at once will nicely improve our cashflow. I know it's my job to do this but honestly, I've never done it, so whoever generated the "invoices" last time - your help will be much appreciated.

Bastian: I have always been bothered by not knowing how much. We have a solution on the wiki. All of those prior invoices from back to 2017 had a price. If I would say to the wrong country...

Mike: We have an estimate in this table.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ouOGpsP-uO21UwSe1XfWrlEtXfS4olJYBR-_CZP5Fzg/edit#gid=0

Bastian: Can I use this table. Does everyone agree?

Bailey: I think the spreadsheet is accuracte, because we asked people since the last GA to give feedback on this, and I remember countries placing themselves in different catgories.

Mike: Can you write it for both years (2020 and 2021 + 2022 for PPCZ)?

• Issue: Belgian Tax Problem

Submitted by: Mike

Justification: We recieved an e-mail saying we owe a fine in Belgium for not submitting tax returns. We worked on it today with Gregory who was also in touch with the Belgian authorities. The requested missing forms for 2017 to 2020 should be submitted in a matter of hours by Gregory, who also asked for the fine to be either waived or at least split into multiple installations. We should know soon whether we saved it.

Gregory: Mike already prepared the papers for 2017 (the rest is just a change of one number). I will print all of the items and send them out in the post. We should write an accompanying letter in French.

Bailey: At first it freaked me out but now it feels good.

Gregory : It always needs to be submitted untile 30th of June of the next year, so we need to do that every year. We stopped doing it in 2016 because the old board went out and then even the address changes, so we weren't getting mail on the topic. Koehn was the last person taking care of this. I asked our Geneva lawyer to meet with us on the possibility to be the registered foundation in Switzerland and how to obtain the non-profit status in Switzerland. So I asked him about this and to meet with us.

5.2 - Working Groups Update

Bailey: We had the SCENE meeting for the Google ad grant. There was another one later that Gregory talked about in his report.

Gregory: We discussed the campaign goals aimed at donations and individual memberships. We need to set-up tracking. We will start a form for people to fill; we now have our directions aimed at PayPal. We're not using it to its full potential though. We need to set this up differently in the next step.

Bailey: If you'd like some groups to meet, feel free and set it up.

5.3 Economic Update

Bailey: We already talked about the membership fees. Is there anything else? Since there is nothing else...

5.4 ECOSOC/UN

From Gregory's report: I've registered people for passes for Geneva UN. (Gregory, Carlos, Svein)

5.5 PPI HQ update

Still in need of passports and personal information from everybody. For those who require extra protection sending it, I sent you my PGP key via Wire.

6 AOB - Any other business

The next meeting should be CET and not CEST.

There is a Pirate beer this weekend. It will be a Halloween event. FB event for sharing: https://www.facebook.com/events/4557995917612384

In half an hour we have a meeting with folks from Serbia who are trying to get the party started again. If you would like to stick around, great.

Have a fun safe Halloween.

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• Next Meeting: 17.11.2021, 15:00 UTC/16:00 CET

• Meeting Closed: 15:04 UTC / 17:04 CEST