Summary of discussions and decisions at the GA

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Summary of discussions and decisions at the GA

Post by avij »

Note: These are not the official minutes of the GA. The official minutes will be posted later on. The secretary of the GA is still on a dothunting trip and can't publish the minutes yet (I think this is a valid reason for the delay, don't we all agree?).

But as all of you are probably dying to know what happened during the GA, I'm now posting a very brief summary of the discussions and decisions.

Working groups
  • The database group has been very successful in cleaning up suspicious users. The group would welcome additional Finnish investigators.
  • The development group is looking for additional programmers fluent in PHP. Any candidates for this should be in contact with avij, until Nerzhul returns from his trip and can continue leading the WG.
  • The communication group described their activities (newsletters sent to the members, news items posted on the webpage, handling of press articles mentioning EBT etc). Most of the activities in the comm WG are handled by a small group of people, and it was requested that more people would get involved in the activities of this WG.
  • The tech group reported that the contract for web hosting has been made. There was some downtime during the last year, caused by one database incident and various shorter network-related problems at the ISP. The tech group is working on implementing a ticket system for support mail.
Financial report, demission+decharge of the old Board of Directors

Phaseolus presented the financial report of the association. The GA accepted the report and the activities of the BoD during the fiscal year mid-2008 to mid-2009.

Statutes

It was determined that according to the official French statutes, the propositions for changing the statutes must be published at least one month in advance. As the propositions were published on the forum just a few days before the GA, no decision about the statutes could be made. The meeting then proceeded to discuss the proposed changes.

Composition of the new board of directors

Elected members:
:flag-at: klapotec (Vice president)
:flag-be: Mr Euro
:flag-fi: Eliezer
:flag-fr: Phaseolus
:flag-de: wisi (Treasurer)
:flag-it: ravestorm
:flag-mt: ewri (Secretary)
:flag-nl: Elmo
:flag-pt: Leofer40 (Vice president)
:flag-es: N0W1K
:flag-sk: gulocka
:flag-si: gergapsek

As founding members:
:flag-fi: avij (President)
:flag-fr: Giro
:flag-de: Nerzhul

New logo

The top three candidates were presented to the GA. It was decided to let the BoD continue handling the logo issue, including being in contact with Jack Wolfskin.
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Re: Summary of discussions and decisions at the GA

Post by Schlauchen »

Hi,
the secretary has returned from her dothunting-trip... one month and one week ago :-D
Sorry for the delay in posting the minutes. So far, noone has re-read it, if you find any error please let me know. Thanks.

Minutes of the General Assembly of the EBT-Association
Vienna, August 2009

After avij welcomed the participants of the assembly, he made clear that the planned change of the statues can't be realized this year – according to the statues, planned changes have to be announced at least one month in advance and this wasn't the case. The topic itself was discussed later.

It followed an overview about the activities in the various working groups in the past year. Avij reported that the technical WG upgraded the server software. There are still some network connecting problems, but apart from that everything works fine. Currently the WG is working to improve the support system of EBT, maybe by using a ticket system. As the WG consists only of two members (avij and wisi), Mr€uro asked if wisi is able to solve possible upcoming problems if avij is on vacation or doesn't have time in some way – this is the case.

Nerzhul, the leader of the Development WG, is currently on a holiday, avij replaced him giving a short overview about the activities and reminding that, to implement more features, we absolutely need more programmers able to write in PHP. Phaseolus reminded also that the work on EBT is completely done by volunteers and that we shouldn't force the development WG to do more features, like some people do on the forum.

Phaseolus spoke for the “Cleaning girls” they still the need to define better the rules of cleaning but have already proven that fakers aren't longer secure on EBT. Bhoeyb asked how many Cleaning girls exist: Officially there are 12 members in the group, but only 6 are active. There's the need to have also a finnish cleaning girl.

In the following, Schlauchen told about the activities in the communication WG: A newsletter has been sent and the news items on the website are updated more frequently. The press section is more or less always up to date. In the future they plan to improve the e-mail communication about moderated hits and deleted hits (when the hitpartner has been deleted by the cleaning girls). Also in this working group, more active users are needed.

The next point on the agenda was the Financial report, given by the treasurer Phaseolus (see extra report in the appropriate forum thread). From the profit of 955,62 euro, there are to substract 400 euro for avij for the server costs, thus there remains a profit of about 500 euro. In the future, the server hosting will cost 69 euro a month. The financial situation at the moment doesn't allow to do any advertisement, according to avij, we have to save money for a new server which will cost approximately 5,000 euro. Burky asked what the financial year is – from 1.7. to 30.6., according to the statues. The donation of the winter meeting in Bologna (from march), though, is included in the next period – avij handed the money to Phaseolus after the 30.6. . Eliezer asked who controls the treasurer → de-jo has also access to the bank account.

As already mentioned in the beginning, it wasn't possible to change the statues immediately, but for a maybe future change, the suggestions made on the forum (mainly by wisi) have been discussed already this year.
The main point was the length of a mandate on the BoD. The current statues say “2 years”, a more detailled discussion followed later. At first wisi explained his ideas posted on the forum. Currently it takes long to decide a thing, and in his opinion more power should be given to the vice presidents, for example that everyone is responsible for a certain field and can decide about these field without needing the permission from the Board of Directors. The problem is, that all leaders of the working groups would need to be on the BoD (which is currently not the case).
Phaseolus expressed his doubts about that idea – of course the decisions would be taken faster that way, but the current mode is more democratic.
Mr€uro asked how often the BoD-Meetings take place – about all two months but there's no fix schedule.
Wisis second suggestion is about the problem “only one member on the BoD for every state” - he suggests that it should be possible to candidate also for another country. E.G.: Last year there were two willing candidates for Belgium, but the seat for cyprus remained empty – why not “filling” the cyprian seat with a belgium citizen? B100w11 asked what happens if there's no candidate for a country: the seat stays empty.
MrEuro asked if there's a specific forum part for members of the association – no, there isn't, but it will be taken into consideration.

The next point on the agenda was the voting of the new Board of Directors. Burky asked why this is necessary when the statues say that a membership of the BoD lasts 2 years? → it's necessary because some members of the BoD don't want to continue their work.
Avij suggested to split all countries in two groups: One group will be elected every even year, and the other group the following year. Phaseolus said that we shouldn't be too bureaucratic but instead we should simply vote. According to MrEuro, we should follow the statues and care about the 2-years-rule and also about the rule that at least 50% of the BoD has to remain.

The countries to be elected this year ( because there are new candidates for the seats) are: Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal, Slovenia and Slovakia – these countries will build group I.
Finland, Malta, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Austria will build group II – to be elected next year, this year the members stay as before as there are no new candidates.

For Belgium, there were two candidates (de-jo and MrEuro), MrEuro won the election 3:0 and will now be the belgium member of the BOD.
For France, Germany, Portugal and Slovenia was for each only one candidacy: The elected persons are Phaseolus, wisi, Leofer40 and Gergapsek.
Gulocka decided spontaneously to candidate – as the only candidate – for Slovakia.
Avij is the new president of the association, wisi is the treasurer and ewri the secretary.

The last discussion was about the new logo for EBT. The three winning logos of the voting were presented. Haemoglobin said that we shouldn't search for a new logo, he doesn't like the suggestions and would prefer to come to an agreement with Jack Wolfskin. In case it won't be possibile, it would be better to remain without logo. MrEuro mentioned that also one of the three winning logos has copyright problems. Avij said that, as long as the logo is used only on the website, there shouldn't be big problems, but in the future we might want to print T-Shirts and then the logo will absolutely become a problem.
Phaseolus suggested to ask Jack Wolfskin first before deciding about the Logo, because we won't print T-Shirts soon and currently it's only a problem for everyone who prints T-Shirts for himself, and no problem of the association.
It was decided to delay the subject.
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