PPI Minutes 2023-02-14

Agenda PPI BOARD MEETING

--- 14.2.2023 20:00 UTC/21:00 CET ---

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

Audio recording: PiratesOnAir Streaming

https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/s/E9ME344PzdXASPc

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

1 - ATTENDEES

1.1 - Members of the PPI board

participating: Mike, Florie, Bailey, Maycow, Mauricio, Keith

excused: Gregory

unexcused: Alexander Isavnin, Julian Häffner

Quorum:

1.2 - Others

Alternate Board Members:

participating: Bastian,

excused:

unexcused: Adam Wolf, Mia Utz, Raman Ojha, Carlos Polo

Guests:

participating: Numero6, PiratesOnAir, Cedric, Manuel

2 - PROCEEDINGS

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

Meeting opened at 20:16 UTC by Bailey

Meeting chaired by Bailey

Secretary for this meeting is Everyone

Quorum established with 6 (out of 9) board members present.

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

Recording started: 20:16 UTC

Postal votes: none

Notes on meeting process: none

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_2023-01-24
Yes : Mike, Bastian, Keith, Mauricio, Bailey
No :
Abstain : Florie, Toledo
Result: minutes approved

4 - REPORTS

4.1 - Short reports of the board members 1)

Board

• Florie Marie: I'm learning how to be chair of the PPI, I've some discussions with some of the board members (Bailey and Keith, I hope others soon), and I discover each files you're working on. I give my signature to Mike for some UN demands (if I understand well). I received an email from Svein of PPNO, I think we should talk about that during the next meeting (I'm waiting for an answer, I ask him some precisions about his demand because it appears to be really strange).

• Gregory Engels:

not present

• Bailey Lamon: Helped Florie with the transition; no longer the chair; chairing today only since Florie can't.

• Michal Gill: Didn't manage much. I shall steal Gregory's excuse from the last few board meetings for the next few months: I'm finishing up with my master thesis and should gradueate in late May. Therefore I'll be cutting back on many of my activities, preferably including the general secretary of the PPI. Anyway, got the grounds passes for Vienna approved and got approved for the Ad Hoc Committe, which happens there in three weeks, so fingers crossed my pass is actually ready this time. Also, I send a message on each PP's Discord I'm in, I invite everybody in Strasbourg on april, from the 14 to the 17 for the PPFR week-end, also the PPEU GA, in order to start talking about the future of the PPI.

• Keith L. Goldstein: It is 5 am and this time slot is really difficult for me. I've worked on trying to update everyone about the board, getting tech issues fixed, setting up the UN groundspasses... My groundspass was also approved. I'll by in NYC around June and want to be a regular presence around there and would like to set up a side event on UN grounds during this year.

• Alexander Isavnin

not present

• Julian Häffner

not present

• Mauricio Vargas: I have no international activities to report. In Chile we began a process to modify the bylaws a month ago; we have been working on it. We would like to start cooperating with Brazil more.

• Maycow Toledo: No international activities to report

Alternates:

• Adam Wolf:

not present

• Sebastian Krone:

I have monitored the PPI tech as I do every day.

All patches are up-to-date. All systems are running smoothly.

We still have some problems with Google-Mail and Deutsche Telekom because of the blacklisting. We have sent several complaints to these organizations to solve the problem.

Internationally, I am working on the campaign "Rescue without borders" - We want to buy a ship to support sea rescue for the Mediterranean Sea. The sponsor is the association "Pirates without borders". At the moment we are collecting money to invest in the purchase and donations for the ongoing campaign. We have already collected 7,500.00 EUR.

• Mia Utz:

not present

• Raman Ojha:

not present

• Carlos Polo:

not present

Mike: It should be said here on record that Veronika resigned as an alternate board member on Wire.

5.1 - Proposals

Issue: General Secretary and Treasurer Submitted by: Bailey Justification: Motion:

Bailey: Mike is our current GS but if I'm correct, he doesn't want to hold that position anymore.

Keith: I would apply if needed.

Mike: The position mainly consists of note taking and preparation for the meetings.

Keith: Also updating the website and the Wiki.

Bailey: No questions or other candidates? I guess that means Keith is our candidate.

Keith: I was a GS for about three years and then finished the position about two years ago to concern on career and family.

Bailey: Any questions for Keith? No, then we can just have the vote.

Mauricio: How about your career and your family? As you stated them as reason for leaving the position.

Keith: Then I had a new born son who is almost two now. I made a career change and work on my own hours, so I'm always free to work on PPI stuff.

Motion
Election of general secretary
Do we elect Keith Goldstein as our new general secretary?
Yes : Mauricio, Toledo, Mike, Bailey, Keith, Florie
No :
Abstain :
Result: Keith is elected as the PPI's new general secretary.

Bailey: Okay, congrats and we now need to elect a new treasurer, report on financial matters on board meetings, oversee finances, keep transparency. Manuel is our previous treasurer, so if you wanna jump in and explain the position, feel free. Treasurer also puts together the budget and reports for the GA.

Manuel: Ok. Thank you Bailey. I was the Treasurer for the latter half of 2022. The most important tasks, as Bailey said, are the periodic reports and the annual budget

Keith: Also to collect membership dues from both parties and individuals.

Manuel: There is also the variable task of collecting the affiliation fees from member parties. We currently are pending responses from several member parties

As Keith said. When it comes to issue payments, that function is performed by the Board members that have a hold of the banking credentials, currently Gregory and Bailey, if I'm not mistaken. Currently the main priorities of the Treasury are the collection of pending fees and de payment of pending invoices for servers and domain names for the PPI infrastructure

Mauricio: There's an issue in Geneva with the bank and for us over here it's a bit complicated as we're nowhere near.

Mike: At the summer GA the members very much said that when stuck between a rock and a hard place we chose the wrong one by electing a treasurer from alternates at least, hardly anyone can criticize us now for postponing the vote until the next board perhaps.

Bailey: Can we put this off until the next meeting until we have had time to consider it and find an applicant? Does anybody feel it's a bad decision to postpone the treasurer vote until the next meeting? No takers are present and it's not a good idea to elect someone without them being present. We shall revisit the issue at the next meeting.

• Election of the Treasurer

Do we postpone the vote until the next board meeting?

• Motion is postponed until the next meeting

Issue: Setting new dates and times for board meetings Submitted by: Keith Justification: Motion:

Keith: We had the rotating times but this time slot is not doable to me. My proposal would be around 3 PM in Europe, which should be doable for me and the people in Americas.

Bailey: So for the past two years we met always on Tuesday but flipped three different times so we would accommodate people in different time zones. It's never gonna work for everyone.

Florie: Tuesdays are not possible for me and nor is 3 PM any day except for Sunday.

Mike: Everyone from outside Europe is present, so speak up now what works for you.

Bastian: 4 pm in CET is a minor problem, 10 in eastern, midnight in Japan. I suggest Wednesday for that. Tuesday is not very convenient, because we have German Pirate activities. We can do it at an earlier time, but we are all working on office hours.

Bailey: it seems that we agree that around 3 pm or 4 pm is a good time slot for everyone. It's never gonna be perfect for everybody.

Bastian: Sundays are not good.

Keith: Maybe we can decide for the next meeting for now and take it from there.

Florie: Sunday afternoon is good.

Mike: Based on my experience, nobody's going to give up a quarter of their weekend and we never reach the quorum.

Bailey: Maybe we can just go meeting by meeting at first and might to rotate. Some days will work for some people.

Keith: It seems we decided on a general time, so we can rotate days once we hear from everyone.

Florie: Only regular members should decide on the dates.

Mike: I don't agree with this because we work as alternate members as regular members. We need to make sure as many of them are present as possible.

Bastian: I don't agree with the situation and am leaving the meeting.

Keith: We do have a GA decision that the alternate members have full voting rights as long as we don't have 9 members present. Again, we should just decide on the next meeting.

Bailey: Cedric is here and he is from the CoA, which is really good because I don't remember the last time that has happened.

Keith: I can be really flexible. We do have a GA decision that alternate board members are treated as board members.

Mike: Since we don't seem to find a time perhaps we need to set up a time in Wire or a side channel, and then we can decide on a time.

Keith: I volunteer to set up a Doodle pole for the next meeting, and we can decide on the meeting time there.

Bailey: Is everyone okay with Keith setting up a Doodle (voting on dates and times) and we go on from there on Wire. Sundays, Wednesdays, very much everything suggested here. Maybe aside from Wire also send it via e-mail. Let's make sure all the options are there. Hopefully we can come up with a decision on something and it will give us an idea what works for everybody.

Issue: PPLU Affiliation Fee Conflict Submitted by: Manuel Caicedo (Court of Arbitration Councilmember, previously Treasurer) Justification: Before the previous General Assembly, I sent the invoices for the affiliation fees for our Member Parties, including PPAT. Only received a response from PPLU. They stated the following: "Dear Manuel, Thank you for reaching out to us. We have found you mail in spam, so I reaching out to the mail found on pp-internationa.net in order to avoid a possible phishing attempt. I’ve been involved in the finances of PPLU for over two years now, but I don’t remember having received an invoice note in the past. So I am quite shocked that we would have to pay 4300€ of accumulated participation fees at once. This invoice comes at a really bad moment (financially speaking) because PPLU will engage in two election campaigns this year (communal and national) and our budget for both events is limited. The financial effort for two campaigns will be great, so I hope you understand that we will not be able to pay our accumulated affiliation fees. Furthermore, I doubt that our committee will approve the payment of the accumulated fees by the end of the year, because we will also have to prepare another campaign in 2024 with the European elections approaching in May. I am open for discussing about the amount of participation fee and the apport we could make, but I hope you understand that this year is really not the moment for us to pay such a sum of money. Kind regards, Gilles Mertz-PPLU"(end quote). Given our financial needs, a response solving this issue is of the essence. If it pleases the board, I can send the agreed response, as caretaking duty before the arrival of the next Treasurer. Motion: Mandate the next Treasurer to revise the PPLU 2021 Invoice, removing the pending account and just stating the 2021 (1000EUR) Affiliation Fee, and sending it to the PPLU Treasurer for payment ASAP

Bailey: Personally I agree with that and let them pay whatever they can. If they have a lot of expenses, we should just go with that and let them pay whatever they're able to pay.

Mike: I second this as we never get the money from them.

Keith: We need to be pragmatic. We can't send invoices for thousands of euros. Even for major parties that's a lot. Some parties think the fees are too much. We're not gonna collect fees from everyone and we never had. We need to up our budget for other sources of revenue. I know it's a pain but we need to do some crowdfunding.

Bailey: Manuel told us how he responded. I think we're all in agreement on that. If anyone has any objections, please say so. We need to be realistic. Considering we had problems with our e-mails and parties are suddenly owing this much, we need to work with them and go from there. We all know people from these parties, so maybe we can deliver the invoices that way. If there are no objections, I assume we're on the same page.

Issue: Payment of pending invoices Submitted by: Manuel Caicedo (Court of Arbitration Councilmember, previously Treasurer) Justification: As stated on the previous General Assembly, we accumulate a debt of 3010.89 EUR (revised it could reach 3212.15 EUR), from server and domain name expenses. Bastian has frequently reminded of the urgency of these payments. As far as Im concerned Gregory and Bailey have capabilites to make payment from the PPI main bank acocunt. Motion: Mandate the bank keyholders to make the pending payments to the Denk Selbst e.V Bank Account, for the sum of 3010.89 EUR (revised it could reach 3212.15 EUR)

Mike: I suggest we do that, but it might not be BAILEY and Gregory anymore.

Bailey: Gregory has full access. I can't get there.

Keith: I saw invoice with something like 1200 euros. Not sure if we accumulated that big of a debt.

Bailey: We are not voting on this at the moment.

5.3 Economic Update

Balances and statements updated and uploaded to the PPI Wiki by the General Assembly, on January 28, 2023, courtesy of Bastian.

5.4 ECOSOC/UN

Issue: Grounds passes for UN locations Submitted by: Mike Justification: We have representatives registered for grounds passes for New York and Vienna; Geneva needs to be administered too Motion:

6 AOB - Any other business

Keith: We need our e-mail fixed otherwise it's a death to our organisation. It's hard to solve other issues while this one persists.

Manuel: We haven't confirmed contacts with Board Member Julian Häffner and Councilmembers Cédric Levieux and Vincent Douroux, as far as I noted on the Wire group. We would need to ask their respective party colleagues for their contact information

Mike: On the spot solved Cedric and Vincent

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

• Next Meeting: TBD via Doodle

• Meeting Closed: 22:01 UTC