- Agenda PPI BOARD MEETING
- --- 6.12.2022 21:00 UTC/22:00 CET ---
- Big Blue Button Room: https://bbb.piratensommer.de/b/gre-cnw-a9v
- Audio recording: PiratesOnAir Streaming, recording
- https://owncloud.ag-technik.de/s/sLbtkEcGrkBj8Gc
Record of the meeting
1 - ATTENDEES
1.1 - Members of the PPI board
- participating: Bailey, Mike, Dario, Alexander, Gregory, Mauricio, Manuel, Keith (arrived at 21:40 UTC)
- excused:
- unexcused: Carlos
- Quorum:
1.2 - Others
- Alternate Board Members
- participating: Bastian
- excused:
- unexcused: Ji Yong, Adam, Veronika
- Guests:
- participating: PiratesOnAir, Numero6
2 - PROCEEDINGS
- RoP: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=PPI_Board/Rules_of_Procedure
- Meeting opened at 21:05 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: 21:05 UTC
- Postal votes: none
- Notes on meeting process: none
3 - APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES
4 - REPORTS
4.1 - Short reports of the board members
Board
- Bailey Lamon: Attended both internal meetings. We had a good turnout, did a lot of the admin stuff, financial stuff etc.
- Gregory Engels: busy with finishing the master thesis. nothing else atm. Bank card application is out.
- Mike Gill: Nothing much to report; attended the first internal meeting and then last few minutes of the other one. The Pirate Centre should be ready for Saturday; I'll prepare the pad for it based on what we decide here today. Also met yesterday with a Russian opposition leader whom I shall just call "Steve".
- Keith L. Goldstein: (arrived late. been working with Manuel on finance issues).
- Alexander Isavnin: attended first internal meeting, somehow regular Russian pirate streams, IGF2023 in Ethiopia, on sanctions, internet fragmentation, encryption and data freedom
- Manuel Caicedo: I attended both internal executive meetings since last board meeting. I now have access to financial information, in order to complete pending financial report, budget and invoices. I'm in the middle of university exams right now, so they will come out before the Saturday GA. Alongside the Population and Development conference I haven't yet submitted to the Wiki.
- Dario Castane: Still working on PP-ES foundation, reactivating PP-CAT (local elections in May 2023, mainly busy with lists in small cities and Barcelona), developing Asembleo for PP-LU, and nothing else from my side.
- Mauricio Vargas: Attended both internal meetings. I contacted pirates of slovenia to ask them for an interview (via mailed questionnaire), to prepare a publication in relation to the election of the president that the party supported together with the greens. They responded favorably and I am now waiting for the answers to the questionnaire sent.
Alternates:
- Ji Yong Dijkhuis: not present
- Veronika Murzynová: not present
- I monitored the PPI tech, as I do every day.
- We had big problem with our wiki because a plugin ran amok and had to manually remove 1000 spam users and about 1000 posts - 16 man-hours. But finally we won the race.
- We moved all servers to a new hoster due to technical and legal needs.
- All patches are up-to-date.
- All systems are running smoothly.
- I attended both internal board meeting and I think that we solved some mayor problems.
- The P.O. Box CH-9000 St. Gallen is ready, we just testing whether the snail mail works.
5.1 - Proposals
Issue: Individual ID for Kraken on-ramp to transfer crypto donations to our bank account
Submitted by: Keith
Justification: We need to conduct KYC for one individual to verify our account.
Motion: Nominate someone to provide id for the account.
- Mike: It should be someone who isn't up for re-election or it should be decided after the GA.
- Manuel: We still have the issue with the outstanding payment to Mike for the PPI banners. I can't do it yet, as I don't have full rights yet. As for Kraken, the objective was to first move the money away from that vallet. Its purpose will be for establishing the DAO for example, but they need ntl. ID card info from someone, from Switzerland if possible. This way we can validate the acount and drain it. We can use an intermediary, such as my crypto vallet. But the consensus between me and Keith was to have the vallet in a Swiss person's hands.
- Bastian: We also have outstanding payments for servers and domains. The crypto is quite problematic. I think it's a good idea to transfer the money anywhere and then establish a new crypto account in the name of the PPI. Let's transfare the money to a standard bank account and then establish a vallet in the name of PPI with people in the charge of PPI being responsible for it.
- Bailey: So you suggest we transfer it to someone's bank account and then transfer it to the PPI acount.
- Manuel: As I understand it, the money can't be transferred directly to the PPI bank account. The new vallet must be in PPI's name and must be able to do vallet to vallet transfers. We agreed to try the course of action as I mentioned above.
- Bastian: The vallet we have can't transfer money to a real bank account, so we need to transfer it through a trusted intermediary with a crypto vallet. My proposal is to postpone this motion from Keith until we figure this out.
- Mauricio: This crypto vallet is meant for transfers, not to store money there to increase their value?
- Mike: I do hope we have the vallet just so people can pay us in crypto, not to try increase its value.
- Manuel: We have it for technical purposes, not as a "saving account". The question is whether we should prioritize cashing out or set up a new vallet first. I would suggest we transfer the funds to the bank account, in any way. So if we cash out, Keith's proposal is mute.
- Bastian: I didn't say that we have to postpone both motions. The second has nothing to do with crypto and is quite fine. I believe speculating with money is immoral for the PPI and we shouldn't have crypto accounts as money storage and speculation.
Issue: Transfer of crypto funds to our bank account
Submitted by: Keith
Justification: At the first internal finances meeting Bastian proposed exchanging all of our crypto funds (currently only appr. 300 euros worth) to CHF or Euro. Keith mentioned that we should preserve a small minimum amount of funds (appr. 5 euros) in a crypto wallet to enable a DAO and other on-chain transactions. This motion is conditional on the prior motion.
Motion: Exchange X1% of the crypto funds to Y1 currency and the remaining X2% of the funds to Y2,3 tokens. Y2,3 is currently Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Issue: Transfer of crypto funds to our bank account through an intermediary
Submitted by: Manuel Caicedo
Justification: At the first internal finances meeting Bastian proposed exchanging all of our crypto funds (currently only appr. 300 euros worth) to CHF or Euro. Keith mentioned that we should preserve a small minimum amount of funds (appr. 5 euros) in a crypto wallet to enable a DAO and other on-chain transactions. There appears to be a consensus within the board not to prioritize doing this through a new PPI wallet, but throught whatever legal means necessary.
Motion: Exchange the total amount of the crypto funds to Swiss currency, witholding 6 Euros in its Swiss equivalent for DAO purposes, and transfer it to the PPI bank account. The Treasury will be informing on the means available and used for this to be achieved.
- Manuel: We should discuss first whether we should keep a bit of money there for experimental reasons as Keith wrote.
- Bailey: By consensus we're good on that point (leaving a small amount for the experimental purposes).
- Bastian: My proposal was to postpone the first motion and vote whether to keep some money for the DAO purposes.
| Motion
|
| Withdrawing funds from the PPI crypto vallet
|
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| Exchange the total amount of the crypto funds to Swiss currency, witholding 6 Euros in its Swiss equivalent for DAO purposes, and transfer it to the PPI bank account. The Treasury will be informing on the means available and used for this to be achieved.
|
 Yes : Mike, Bailey, Dario, Bastian, Gregory, Mauricio
|
 No :
|
 Abstain : Manuel
|
|
|
- Bastian: I would suggest that we take the 5.3 item first and then discuss the GA.
- Manuel: I would go for postponement of the vote for establishing the new crypto vallet simply because there is no Swiss person to allow us to do it available.
Issue: The Saturday GA
- Bailey: It looks like it might only take one day. We still can get some motions but it seems like we might make it in one day. I believe someone mentioned on Wire postponing the GA. I thing we should go with it. If we don't have quorum, that's a different story.
- Mike: I don't know how many people will show up but it was announced, some people plan to attend, so we shouldn't move it, certainly not this late.
- Bailey: I think the same. If we're forced to postpone due to not reaching quorum, so be it. I'll work on the board report in the coming days and everyone can pitch in. We also need the agenda, which is pretty straightforward, as we have no motions nor statutes ammendments. We still have time and we know how this goes down.
- Keith: We should have pad for the meeting. Another thing is the invoices. And we can send the invite to the extended contact list.
- Manuel: We might not get a quorum but we could come up with a plan B for that case, such as a call for an extraordinary GA.
- Bailey: Yeah, plan B is a good idea.
- Bastian: If we don't get a quorum it's gonna be a bad press. Maybe we can hold an extraordinary meeting. We can propose statutes change that extraordinary meeting after a meeting with no quorum shouldn't need a quorum. We have the same problem every time.
- Bailey: When you talk about an extraordinary meeting, what exactly are you proposing?
- Bastian: I want this small statutes change as a precaution for the future. I think postponing for the end of January might be better, so we don't create bad press.
- Bailey: It can also hurt moral if people don't show up. It would open up opportunity for people to submit proposals and statutes changes. As long as we decide this and announce it immediately, it could be better than showing up to a no-quorum GA.
- Mike: I don't like postponing vote of the board after the end of term of the current one. But nobody is going to attack us for it, probably. I would be fine with postponing as well thouhg, if we vote on it.
- Bastian: We had the last GA last January, so it would only be a couple of weeks.
- Bailey: I see reason for both options.
- Mike: I don't like we would be extending the board term for a second year in a row.
- Bastian: Gregory, I think you are not for re-election so it could be a good idea if you give us your opinion.
- Gregory: My feeling is to postpone but I'm fine with abstaining and going with the majority. December is always complicated. This time I feel it's not even the normal level of buzz. If there's no buzz I think we'll have a hard time getting a quorum. We can push through and if we get the quorum, we can be done wuite quickly. If we postpone it couple of weeks, we might get more proposals and have a more interesting event. I'm okay with the majority but we would have a better event if we postpone.
- Bailey: I can see it either way and I'll be fine with the majority decision. In case we don't get quorum, we should have the backup plan as Manuel said.
- Manuel: There is a trend within PPI that not that many parties show signs activity but we still have them in our lists. Maybe this shows a trend that we only rely on those who show some degree of activity. I can understand both options. I think that the least worst alternative would be to postpone.
- Mike: If we vote to postpone, we should already have a date in mind to send out.
- Bailey: I see below proposal to postpone to 28/29th of January, which moves the statutes ammendment deadline to the end of December.
| Motion
|
| GA Postponement to the 28./29.01.2023
|
|
|
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| Yes : Bastian, Gregory, Mauricio
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| No : Mike, Manuel
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| Abstain : Dario,Bailey, Keith
|
|
|
- Mike: We should send out an e-mail and "blame" the members for this as they didn't send us their delegates. :-)
- Bastian: Mike, would you get the room for the physical part for January too?
- Mike: Sure, I'll do that; it should be available. I'll be there on Saturday just in case people show up. We should put together a comprehensive e-mail that needs to go out ASAP.
- Bailey: Agreed. I'll write it up after this meeting. We need to explain this properly, hopefully everyone will be fine with it.
5.2 - Working Groups Update
5.3 Economic Update
- Bastian: P.O. Box CH-9000 St. Gallen is ready
- The seat of PPI remains in Switzerland - Pat Mächler is our local representative.
- Mike: Thanks for making this happen.
- Bastian: The PO Box is ready, now we sent a letter to test it. Due to legal reason we left the PPI seat in Switzerland. Our local representative is Pat, who is doing good job for Pirates Without Borders already.
- Manuel: Could we publish this on the Wiki, so it's clearly stated somewhere?
- Bastian: You mentioned in the internal meeting the problem with Belgium and UN. The next step is that we have this HQ in Brussels that we need to move away from their to not be fined anymore. Then we open some kind of HQ for the UN reasons. I can do that, but step by step.
- Manuel: I just wanted to make clear on the wiki/web that we have the new PO Box.
- Bastian: The website has a section with our address. The move of the Brussels HQ is sensitive, but should be done step by step. The post we receive now goes to Guillaume Saouli. I never heard from him he receives anything for the PPI.
5.4 ECOSOC/UN
5.5 PPI HQ update
6 AOB - Any other business
- Mike: What about the next board meeting and the next Pirate Beer (which is NYE)
- Bastian: The last NYE Pirate Beer was very nice but it was a good idea.
- Bailey: We can certainly have a fun gathering but it whouldn't be stressful for anyone. :)
- ===================================================
- Next Meeting: 03.01.2023 , 10:00 UTC/11:00 CET
- Meeting Closed: 22:55 UTC
Yes : Dario, Bastian, Mike, Alexander, Bailey, Manuel, Mauricio
No :
Abstain :
