NEC/Minutes/23rd August 2009
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NEC meeting minutes from 2009-08-23 at 15.10
Attendees
Eric, Andy, Gavin, Philip, Miah
Summary of meeting with Gavin WRT website
At last committee meeting, it was decided to make forums private. Gavin agreed this will be happening tonight/tomorrow. Social/regional parties side staying open to foster support from the public.
Gavin had concerns over excessive dissemination of twitter password.
Concern over who is in charge of twitter and who has access. No auditing. Gavin deferred the decision to Miah.
Philip emailed Gavin some questions on ppukweb mailing list about website structure to appeal to community. Also url for web stats. Gavin will email all officers.
2500 members on user list, but most haven't visited forum. Many are visiting website, signing up, then leaving. Feeling that party has grown faster than we've kept pace, and so we need to keep looking at these aspects.
Suggestion of official and unofficial websites.
Gavin leaves meeting at 23.30 minutes.
Summary of NEC meeting
Apologies from John.
Miah joins the meeting.
Familiarisation with the issues raised by John resigning. Vote of confidence suggestion by John on forums. Aim for election in January.
Agree that Miah will produce minutes for meeting including actions.
Agenda on writeboard.
Change email addresses on the contact page to post@ rather than user@.
Action: Miah will speak to web team to make this change.
Talk of setting up a pirate radio station over the net, committee against using party funds for PRS licenses etc. Strict creative commons license only policy best way forward. General feeling that spin off activities that don't directly improve chances of getting votes should be self financing, because people donate money to the party on the basis of the party doing party business.
Action: Andy will tell radio people CC only, not paying PRS.
Formation of 'executive committee' proposed.
Suggestion of 'inner circle' mailing list for folks who have responsibilities but aren't officers.
Action: Philip to speak to Gavin regarding the creation of 'management' mailing list.
Suggestion of organisation chart on wiki, including two line job spec, responsibilities and chain of command. Action: Philip will take this forward.
Proposal of Gavin Sibley as Information Officer; idea is to allow him more control over prioritisation/structuring/project management, not just a web developer. Concerns about overlap between Information Officer and Data Controller from Miah. Proposal that the Data Controller is also the Membership Officer. Andy proposes Information Manager to distinguish between officers role and non-officers roles. Gavin may want a specific job title for CV. Action: Miah to talk to Gavin and define where the boundaries lie.
Proposed nomination of Peter Liddell (membership and donations) and John Prescott (budgeting) as Deputy Treasurers. Proposed nomination of 'simbalogical' as Deputy Press Officer. It was noted that it could be useful in the future to have multiple Deputy Press Officers, and since a number of journalists have offered their services to the party, the suggestion was raised that 'simbalogical' might be a good fit for a Deputy Campaigns Officer. Run this through the week long ratification process previously proposed, including some nominations that Andy would like to make. Ratification process should be a vote, important that all members are aware of the votes.
Concern about copyright of black sail logo. Action: Andy to speak to Rick Falkvinge of the Swedish Pirate Party to try and clarify ownership of the copyright.
More generally, it was recognised that various copyrights should be signed over to the party, including the logo, website design, posters, t-shirt designs, policy documents etc. Eric has prepared a draft contract for this purpose, but is in need of a lawyer to check it over.
Point raised about membership rules - users currently don't get notification about these.
Concern over communication with members. Suggestion that mailshot should be done to all members on a regular basis. Action: Possibly Andy, not clear.
Usage of front page blogs. They are currently used for running of the party and political content, and there is concern that some of the management posts are being accidentally pushed out of the spotlight because of the political content. Suggestion to break these up into two categories/blogs and perhaps to use wordpress. Action: Philip to run with this and liase with Gavin.
Content of the front page blog should be restricted to reasonably non-controversial content and avoid discussing policy goals which are being agreed in the policy working groups. Suggestion that we look to moderate front page blog posts within the committee as a general safety net.
Young pirate party - what does it mean, what is its purpose? Proposed nomination of 'bliss' as Youth Development Manager. Forum should be set up to foster discussion of this area. Action: Miah will contact 'bliss'.
Journalist and media expert group - appoint Daniel Brett to co-ordinate the volunteers. Action: Eric will contact Daniel to confirm.
Concerns about lack of response with regard to all of the other expert groups, ie. no lawyers, accountants or economists. Membership drive suggested with a call for anyone who knows someone who would be interested. Action: Eric to post blog entry to kickstart this process. Will be reviewed on an ongoing basis and should be added in mailshot to members.
Donations in kind/expenses (eg. cost of ICO registration) should be notified to Eric, with receipts where available.
ICO registration (data protection) has now come through. Action: Miah to email Eric with details of transaction.
Bank account setup process in final stages - bank now has all the information they require so should be set up soon.
Proposed nomination of 'WilliamFS' as Manifesto Co-ordinator.
Hope that ratification votes will encourage remaining non-party members to join so that they can vote on the proposed appointments.
All nominees should be confirmed as party members prior to vote. Action: Eric will check the membership information for each of the nominees.
Customer/membership relationship management noted as something we will need to look at in the future.
Suggestion that nominating officers post be reduced to filling in the forms.
Freshers week approaching, an opportunity not to be missed. Need to set up zip file with everything anyone might need, including posters, leaflets, etc. Action: Philip taking ownership of this.
Keep an eye out for 'rising stars' on the forums.
Data protection policies. Action: Miah to define initial policies and get them published.
Regarding new members whose membership is paid by someone else, it was proposed to ensure members names match up with paypal names and flag up where these differ. Text should be added to the paypal payment page that requests that if you're paying for someone else, drop an email to the treasurer to let the party know the real name of the person you're paying for. Action: Miah to follow up with Gavin to ensure this is on his list.
Membership is currently at around 450 members.
Action: Miah - speak to John regarding the idea of a demo in Westminster organised by Mark Thomas to find out what the current state of play is.
IT systems - who has access to what? Gavin is going to organise/ensure two points of contact, and no more points of contacts than required.