- Agenda PPI BOARD MEETING
- --- 09.09.2020 18:08 UTC/20:08 CEST ---
- Big Blue Button Room: https://bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gre-cnw-a9v
- Audio recording: PiratesOnAir Streaming, recording
- https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/s/k4Ms9qQpdD9XRT9
- Video: https://bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gre-cnw-a9v
Record of the meeting
1 - ATTENDEES
1.1 - Members of the PPI board
- participating: Bailey, Keith, Mike, Gregory, Bastian
- excused: linda-sickleave, Thomas
- unexcused: Cedric, Cal, Dan
- Quorum? With 5 members
1.2 - Others
- Alternate Board Members
- participating: Bastian (currently promoted as a full board member to replace Thomas on temporary leave.
- Guests:
- participating: Meg, Numero6, Sayyida, Olivia, Pirates on Air.
- participating: Meg, Numero6, Sayyida, Olivia, Pirates on Air.
2 - PROCEEDINGS
- Meeting opened at 18:00 UTC by
- Meeting chaired by
- Secretary for this meeting is Everyone
- Quorum established with out of 9 board members present.
- Streaming started: started https://piratesonair.net/live-stream/
- Recording started:
- Postal votes:
- Notes on meeting process
3 - APPROVAL ON THE MINUTES
| Motion | |
|---|---|
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| * Minutes of the last meeting: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Minutes_2020_08_19 | |
 Yes : Mike, Bailey, Keith, Bastian, Gregory
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 No :
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 Abstain :
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4 - REPORTS
4.1 - Short report of the board members 1)
- Board
- Gregory: Discussions with Bastian about a third party company to set up a worldwide t-shirt sales through ppi website using our own woo-commerce shop. Delivery will be arranged through Germany worldwide. In parallelIalso applied at Amazon for the merch by Amazon program - to sell on demand printed t-shirts through them. They say it takes 12 weeks to get approved, but we got approved yesterday. Now we just need to upload our logo for our first product - and we are allowed to sell any t-shirt designs (that are not violate someones copyright, no nudiity, etc, etc). Prints will be made on demand in the original country, and we get the money transfered directly to our swiss bank account. (for possible royalties see https://merch.amazon.com/resource/201858580 )
- Mike: Not much concerning the PPI: just attending the SCURVY meeting this time and Pirate Beer as usually. Aside from that just a few Pirate things in general: attended an Open Source Conference and Million Marihuana March (both in Prague).
- Keith: Sat in on SCURVY. Met with Aragon, which we will discuss. Tomorrow signing a new bank account for our local party. Leaving for Japan this weekend. I sat in on a Japan Pirate board meeting. I will though have more time soon to help out with Pirate stuff. Since COVID things were a bit hectic. Prepared the invoices, will send.
- Bailey: I attended Pirate Beer a couple of days after the last board meeting, where we got porn-bombed. It happened right after Linda opened up PPNO’s Zoom room and I shared the link in a couple of places (Twitter, Global Pirates). This never happened before. I also attended the SCURVY meeting which was good, and we discussed the issue of party finances/financial strategies in general as well as PPI’s finances. I believe the membership fee invoices are ready to be sent out, thanks to Keith. Yesterday I attended the meeting with Joe Charlesworth and his colleague Luis who contacted us about a potential collaboration through his tool ‘Aragon’. It was a good meeting, we will keep the dialogue open and continue to learn and see if it’s a good fit for us. I invited Joe and Luis to Pirate Beer this Friday so that they can meet some of our members. Overseeing the Twitter account, Olivia is doing great work on that, making graphics and sharing lots of Pirate content as well as encouraging Pirates to share their Assange support content (Assange hearing started on Monday).
- Alternates:
- Svein:
- Carlos:
- Bastian:
- I took care of the PPI technique like I do every day. All systems are running fine.
- The click numbers on our website are going down. We need regular new content e.g. announcements of our meetings.
5.1 - Proposals
Issue: Do we as an organization wish to try using Aragon DAO (=Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) Submitted by: Bailey and Keith Justification: We had a meeting with Joe Charlesworth and Luis??? cofounders of Aragon. They like our values and seem to share similar values. We discussed whether PPI would set up a DAO. There is no cost. It is open source. The system seems to be a combination of blockchain decision-making and cryptocurrency transfer system: https://aragon.org/ Currently we have Kraken but it has never been used. In order to set up Aragon I have to set up a separate ETH wallet. It will not work with our Kraken account. I mentioned that I would set up a sample account, but I wait to see what we decide because the set up will take more work than I realized. Motion: Set up and advertise an Aragon DAO?
3 - Test Trial Set Up and Advertise Aragon on our Discord
| Motion | |
|---|---|
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| * Do we agree to set up an Aragon DAO at no cost and advertise it on our Discord and other media? A further vote about using the democratic tools and expanding our reliance on Aragon will be made at the GA with all our members. | |
| Yes : Keith, Bastian, Bailey, Mike, Gregory
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| No :
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| Abstain :
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Further suggestions from Joe: a) Create a Discord group for Pirate Party International (will allow members to chat with one another more easily) b) I can create a DAO for you called Pirate Party International on xDAI (a blockchain with very very low costs) c) This DAO would have a membership template (so 1 person, 1 token, 1 vote) d) I can then integrate one of the Discord group channels with the DAO e) Use Ramp.Network with the DAO so that people can buy the membership token f) The token can be priced the same as your current membership
The result: - The first experiment for a Pirate Party DAO - The ability to collect membership fees in crypto (owned collectively by the DAOs members) - The ability to collect donations in crypto (owned collectively by the DAOs members) - The ability to have discussions in a channel on Discord where ONLY verified members have access - the ability to have discussions in Discord where non-members can also discuss topics
- There is some worry about starting it before contacting the members, especially if we are going to use it for democratic decision making. Tools are an issue in our organization that can cause conflict.
- The website is quite independent. We can manage with their software. There is no ideological conflict. It makes our decisions more modern, and maybe some members will feel positively about us using such a tool.
- I very much agree that we should have wider support before we implement it.
- In order for the system to work it needs large participation. So if the participation is small, then it won't work. We are a test company for that. It is a good possibility to try the idea of the block chain.
- We can test it out and play around with it without actually implementing it.
- If we received a donation from an organization that we do not approve, then we are not sure if we can return the donation, but otherwise we could move the donation to a philanthropical goal. Our main worry being that we would receive donations from an ireputable group that had poor intentions with a donation to deceive us.
- Based on the discussion, we are pretty open to trying it, experimenting with it, and seeing how it works.
- If we decide that we want to refute an organization, can we know their name. Yes, but they can also donate anonymously.
- There may be an issue at the GA where members want all anonymous donations transferred to a philanthropic cause not connected to PPI.
- Keith will be in connection with Joe. He will connect him also with our PPFR friends who are maintaining our PPI Discord account.
Issue: Keeping in touch with the CoA and its task of looking into our inactive members Submitted by: Mike Justification: We submitted the matter of looking into member inactivity on July 30th and the main GA of the year is near, even though the date isn't set yet. Motion: Mike (or someone else) will contact the CoA and find out how the process of looking into member inactivity is going (no vote needed).
- We had some small communication, but we should be in touch with them to see if they have more questions and that they are on the right track. We should try to set a deadline to resolve this issue within a month before the next GA. We will be in touch with them, and hopefully it will be resolved before the next GA.
Issue: Setting a date for this year's main GA
Submitted by: Mike
Justification: Even though the main (the one with elections) GA of this year will most probably have to be online once again, we should decide its details, such as platforms and dates, so we can let everyone know well in advance.
Motion: The Board of the PPI sets the dates of the next PPI General Assembly for xx.xx.2020. The session will be purely online and will take place on _platform(s)_.
- Proposal to have it on Dec. 5 and 6
- Slight issue with Pirate beer, but we had Pirate beer before the GA last time and it worked. We had two Pirate beers, so it might be a good tool to get more people involved.
4 - GA DATE
| Motion | |
|---|---|
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| * Do we approve a 2-day GA on Dec. 5 and 6? (online only) | |
| Yes : Mike, Keith, Bailey, Bastian, Gregory
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| No :
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| Abstain :
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- The next GA will take place on Dec. 5 and 6. We will have a lot to cover.
- Another decision is where we will host the GA. We had too many people opposed to Zoom last time. We have worries that BBB cannot handle a GA. JITSI was also problematic with large numbers. We might have to use audio. Google is an option. 'Hangouts requires no log in. If streamed it's already on Youtube which is owned by Google.' Webex. Gotomeeting. Apparently Gotomeeting can work with a hundred people. We did not get to test it with a large group.
5.2 - Working Groups Update
- SCURVY
- Financial committee meeting. We spoke about fundraising and the invoices, and other information.
- https://etherpad.pp-international.net/p/scurvy-aug-27-2020-js7v0zm
5.3 Economic Update
- Membership invoices to be sent.
- After sending them out, we will all follow up.
5.4 ECOSOC/UN
- IGF
- Carlos sent us an update about this. Gregory had an application for us.
- We have our session on Tuesday, 17 November, 2020 - 12:50 to 14:20 UTC - the last day of the IGF
- http://intgovforum.org/multilingual/content/igf-2020-ws-352-digital-human-rights-digital-integrity-of-the-human-person
- we can submit changes until September 15th
- It will be on Zoom, as the whoile IGF, that is happening entirely online.
6 AOB - Any other business
- Can it be made a rule if attending the GA to use a laptop or desktop because phones can't handle it well for that long?
- We don't think it can be a rule, but a suggestion definitely.
- Can someone donate a giant server?? No. It makes no sense because the problem is the client's net bandwith.
- Would be great.
- We could rent a anonymous cloud server for a day -- Hehe we have the TOR servers in HK, very cheap with Whonix-Gateway.
- Meg (Sayyida) introduced herself and indicated that she would like to be more involved with PPI.
- We have a number of different tasks that she could be involved with.
- Suggestion of having low dollar anonymous donations. There are certain moral concerns with anonymous donations.
- We discussed ways to involve Meg in our operations. Discussions included spokesperson for North America or restarting Pirate Times, but we do think a small project like writing a blog would be a good start. This could be a simple blog on any topic that interests her, as long as we approve the topic.
- Content on our website.
- Updates, announcements on our meetings.
- We need to update our global press contacts "database" (more like a google sheet atm)
- ===================================================
- Next Meeting: 30.09.2020, Time to be determined. We will discuss on Wire and perhaps revert to rotating meeting times.
- Meeting Closed: 19:32 UTC/21:32 CEST.
