NEC/Minutes/31st July 2011
From Pirate Party UK Wiki
Contents |
Attending
Loz Kaye (LK)
Gavin Meredith (GM)
Andy Halsall (AH)
Apologies
John Barron (JB)
Gavin Meredith (GM)
Ed Geraghty (EG)
Phil Cooke (PC)
Minutes
Minutes of the meeting 24th July approved (GM, AH, LK)
Actions from this Meeting
AH+LK+GM to work on the new website content to finish.
GM to contact PC with regard to his new role.
AH to ensure PC's privileges are correct within the collaboration suite.
LK to generate private keys for his email.
LK was to call AR to move forward on other release related matters to have them done for Monday.
AH to email GM the proof of postage for the Scotland 2011 return once sent.
Matters Arising
LK did check through the new web content Tuesday evening, work on the new site is ongoing.
LK has begun to recruit people for the blog, this is also ongoing.
GM has not started the process of drawing up specifications for the Party Secretary role.
GM spoke with AH about accounts. - Done
EG was to outline technical requirements for new voting system, this is still ongoing
Web Update
LK stated that he had been looking at the progress and it was now very close. LK felt that the Most important thing was to push on to finish it. AH and LK agreed to go over the content 10:30 on the 31 July 2011..
E-petitions
LK brought up the new government initiative on e-petitions and raised the question as to whether this was something we want to be on. (http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/index.html)
LK asked whether it would be appropriate to go ahead and contact ORG about a petition to repeal the DE Act. Other members of the NEC had some issues with this idea. The consensus was that if there was not already a petition in place, AH would look at the situation, put the petition up and then contact ORG on the matter. The NEC agreed that to get the most out of the new e-petitions initiative the need to do as much as possible with it when it is appropriate.
GM asked whether the aptly petition launched with the Axe the Act initiative had been successful. LK stated that it had been useful from a social media perspective but that it had petered out. AH informed the NEC that the petition had received 137 re-tweets, but it was hard to gauge the impact more broadly, the petition had done well in comparison to other aptly petitions. AH stated that he also wanted tp look at the parties own petitions platform at some point in the future, this would allow us to merge 'IRL' contact with online responses.
Nominations officer
The NEC would like to congratulate Phil Cooke on his election to the nominations officer post.
GM was tasked in contacting PC to discuss his post and responsibilities and AH was asked to ensure that the privilages on the collaboration suite were corrected to reflect PC's new position
Press
LK stated that the press team need more input. LK felt that there had been some loss of enthusiasm from the wider press participants after an initial rush at the beginning of the week, this meant that there had been a lot of work, but no release on issues that LK felt were important.
LK did state that on his part it had been a decent week for the party, to the point that we were called by newsignt, and that LK had appeared on the BBC evening news. LK further noted that the party name had been all over the place due to the Newsbin case. LK stated that it had been positive that the BBC contacted the party quickly and that this was the first time a press release had been directly quoted.
LK stated that the upcomming issue is the FOI issue.
AH asked whether we needed to formalise something with the press officer with regard to processes on releases to deal with the petering out of enthusiasm from the wider press team. LK stated that the press team worked very to provide background for LK's TV appearances. The NEC noted that Andy Robinson (AR), Will Tovey (WP) and Harry Percival specifically were to be congratulated for their efforts and that the whole team had done very well.
LK was to call AR to move forward on other release related matters to have them done for Monday.
AH asked about the meltwater decision and whether the party intended to take a position or contact the company. LK noted that WT had issued a blog on the decision.
Public Keys
In EG's absence, AH stated that public and private keys related to @pirateparty.org.uk accounts were to be be passed in to IT Team for continuity and access purposes. GM pointed out that until there is a Party secretary and data controller this shouldn't happen. This would be done once people were in role.
LK assured the NEC that he would generate private keys for his email account so that he could be contacted securely.
AOB
GM raised some issues with the party's Piratenpad account, LK stated that EG should have access to it, but beyond that no-one on the NEC was aware of the current situation.
AH Reported to the NEC that at this time the receipts for the 2011 Scotland parliamentary election had not been passed back to him or his predecessor despite repeated attempts to obtain them, both by sending emails and through phone contact. AH stated that he had taken precautionary steps and contacted the EC for guidance. AH also stated that he had prepared a return based on that guidance and that it would be sent registered post on Monday the 01st August. AH stated that after discussions with GM it had been decided to also refer the matter to the board. AH also stated that new procedures were now in place with regard to campaign spending to prevent such issues in the future. AH also stated that proof of postage would be passed to GM once the documents had been sent and assured the NEC that he and GM had been in close contact on this matter.