03/05: guix-europe: Add minutes of General Assembly 2020.

[Andreas Enge]

andreas pushed a commit to branch master
in repository maintenance.

commit 0ed8ddbbab1685acce245d36088c928032965a77
Author: Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr>
AuthorDate: Sat Oct 10 17:12:00 2020 +0200

    guix-europe: Add minutes of General Assembly 2020.
    
    * guix-europe/minutes/ga-20200621.txt: New file.
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+Minutes of the ordinary General Assembly of 2020-06-21
+
+Present during the online meeting on bigbluebutton:
+Andreas Enge, Christopher Baines, Efraim Flashner, Julien Lepiller,
+Jonathan Brielmaier, Ludovic Courtès, Manolis Ragkousis,
+Oliver Propst (only in the beginning), Pjotr Prins, Ricardo Wurmus,
+Simon Tournier;
+11 out of 19 registered members, the quorum of 2/3 is not reached
+
+
+1) Activity report by the Presidency
+
+   Manolis presents the following activities of Guix since the last
+   General Assembly in December 2017.
+
+   2018
+   * In November-December of 2017 we started organising the Guix days,
+     in response to not getting a Guile devroom at FOSDEM.
+   * In February 2018 we successfully held a one day GNU Guix/Guile day
+     event, where we had presentations, discussions and lots of hacking.
+     We had 32+ participants.
+   * In September we decided to do a Minimalistic Languages Devroom at
+     FOSDEM 2019, including any language that fits the term "minimalistic".
+     Our application was successful, and we got a whole day devroom.
+   * From September to November we reached out to people from different
+     projects and invited them to give a talk in the devroom.
+   * In December we started organising Guix Days for 2019-01-31 to 02-01.
+     This time we booked the whole ICAB as there was a lot of interest last
+     year.
+   * In December we finalised the FOSDEM talk programme.
+
+   2019
+   * We held Guix Days in ICAB, Brussels. Participants 35+, great success.
+   * We held the Minimalistic Languages Devroom at FOSDEM with great success.
+   * In September we were again accepted as a full day room, but were
+     merged with Experimental and Emerging languages. The Minimalistic,
+     Experimental and Emerging Languages devroom was born. This is how we
+     intend to continue next year as well.
+   * Again, from September to November we reached out to people from
+     different projects and invited them to give a talk in the devroom.
+   * In December we started organizing Guix Days from 2020-01-30 to 31.
+   * In December we finalised the FOSDEM talk program
+
+   2020
+   * We held Guix Days in ICAB, Brussels. Participants 36+, even greater
+     success than the previous year.
+   * We held the Minimalistic, Experimental and Emerging Languages devroom
+     with even greater success.
+
+
+2) Financial report by the Treasury
+   
+   Andreas has sent out the following report by e-mail before the assembly;
+   there are no further questions.
+
+   As a general remark, our finances cannot be considered separately from
+   those held for the Guix project at the FSF, following our fundraiser
+   quite some time ago. In many cases, we just advance money that in the
+   end will be reimbursed by the FSF. Our own funds come from a big initial
+   donation of 5000€ by Igalia, specific donations for holding the Guix Days
+   (see below) and membership fees. Our accounts are publicly available in
+   the "maintenance" git repo at
+      
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/maintenance.git/tree/guix-europe/accounting
 ;
+   in particular the ledger file is
+      
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/maintenance.git/tree/guix-europe/accounting/accounting.ledger
+
+   Let us jump in, with the output of
+   $ guix environment --ad-hoc ledger -- ledger -f accounting.ledger balance
+
+             €708.84  Assets
+             €702.84    Bank
+               €6.00    Stock
+               €1.00      Bayfront
+               €2.00      Overdrive 1000
+               €3.00      Redhill
+              €-6.00  Equity
+           €12771.85  Expenses
+              €15.00    Banking
+             €190.88    Domains
+            €4987.70    Guix Day
+            €3275.00    Hosting
+              €44.00    Legal
+              €80.00    Membership
+              €60.00    Promotional material
+            €4119.27    Purchases
+          €-13474.69  Income
+           €-5690.00    Donations
+           €-2726.00    Guix Day
+           €-2675.00    Hosting
+              €-0.87    Interests
+            €-590.00    Membership
+             €-80.00      2016
+            €-110.00      2017
+            €-120.00      2018
+            €-170.00      2019
+            €-110.00      2020
+           €-1792.82    Purchases
+          ----------
+                   0
+
+   In the last few lines, you see a breakdown of our membership fees, that
+   have been growing with a slow, but steady increase of members. On the
+   other hand, membership at Aquilenet, where the bayfront machine is
+   hosted, costs us 20€ per year.
+
+   Hosting bayfront is 75€ a month, corresponding to the cost incurred by
+   the non-profit Aquilenet association; it is entirely reimbursed by the
+   FSF (currently up to and including October 2019).
+
+   Expenses for "domains" correspond to the domains guixsd.org (that will
+   run out next year) and guix.info (just renewed for five years).
+
+   "Banking" are fees due to a shared-cost wire transfer by the FSF, whereas
+   our bank account at Banque Populaire Centre Atlantique is free of charge.
+
+   "Promotional material" are Guix stickers.
+
+   "Purchases" correspond to expenses for bayfront and redhill from 2016 to
+   2018 (taken from our funds), as well as three Overdrive buld servers
+   (reimbursed by the FSF, which is why they also appear as "income").
+
+   Maybe the most interesting entries correspond to the Guix Days, that we
+   have held since 2018 prior to FOSDEM in Brussels. Expenses are the rent
+   at ICAB, including the provided lunch and coffee breaks. Income are lunch
+   collection (we ask for a voluntary cost-covering participation) and
+   donations: In 2018, the meetings were jump-started by 200€ by Pjotr's
+   company GeneNetwork; in 2019, GeneNetwork and Janneke's company Joy of
+   Source both helped us with 200€ for expanding the meeting to two days.
+   Many thanks again! Here is a more detailed breakdown:
+
+   Expenses 2018
+   Rent        749.70
+   Lunch      -210
+   Donations  -200
+   The remaining 339.70 were borne by Guix Europe.
+
+   Expenses 2019
+   Rent       1796    (for two days instead of one, and two rooms)
+   Lunch      -693.50
+   Donations  -400.00
+   Of the remaining 702.50, 502.50 were taken out of our funds at the FSF
+   and 200 were paid by Guix Europe.
+
+   Expenses 2020
+   Rent       2442    (we were more people, so catering was more expensive,
+                       and we also took more generous coffee breaks)
+   Lunch      -720
+   For the remaining 1722€, again 200€ will be paid by Guix Europe, and
+   1522€ will be taken out of the funds at the FSF.
+
+   In 2019, we had an exceptional donation of 680€ by Fund the Code,
+   following a presentation of Guix by Mathieu and Clément.
+
+
+   Our current (at the end of June) balance is of 702.84€ in our bank
+   account. As explained above, we will ask for a reimbursement of 1522€
+   for the Guix Days 2020, and of 600€ (8*75€) for bayfront hosting from
+   November 2019 to June 2020.
+
+   So altogether, the association owns 2824.84€, which can be used as a
+   buffer or liquidity reserve for expenses that will be reimbursed by the
+   Guix funds at the FSF, or for additional projects.
+
+
+3) Election of the new Presidency and Treasury
+
+   Manolis represents himself for Presidency. Andreas represents himself
+   for Treasury, but points out that he would like to pass on this
+   responsability in the long run. During the discussion it is suggested
+   to create the role of Treasury aide, who could become Treasury in the
+   future; Chris volunteers for this role.
+
+   All three are elected unanimously.
+
+
+4) Election of the Solidary Administrative Council (SAC)
+
+   All current members of the SAC are present, and all present are
+   interested in joining the SAC. They are elected unanimously. So
+   the current SAC is formed by:
+   Andreas Enge, Christopher Baines, Efraim Flashner, Julien Lepiller,
+   Jonathan Brielmaier, Ludovic Courtès, Manolis Ragkousis,
+   Oliver Propst, Pjotr Prins, Ricardo Wurmus, Simon Tournier.
+
+
+5) Vote on the changes to the Statutes and Interior Reglementary as
+   suggested by Simon Tournier
+
+   The changes concern only typos, but we must still follow our statutes,
+   which require the presence of 2/3 of the members, which is not reached.
+   So this topic cannot be voted on; we decide instead to call an
+   Extraordinary General Assembly and to allow a vote by email at this
+   occasion.
+
+
+6) Future activities
+
+   We discuss whether to add a third day to the Guix Days, given their
+   huge success. But counting FOSDEM, altogether it is alrady a four-day
+   event. Some participants already come for only one of the two days.
+   So the consensus is to keep the Guix Days duration in 2021.
+
+   The question is whether ICAB will be big enough given our gradual
+   increase in the number of participants. For 2021, there is consensus
+   that we should book ICAB again, and reevaluate the situation if and
+   when the need arises.
+
+   In addition to the Guix Days, we consider holding a purely virtual event
+   towards the end of the year; during the discussion, September or the time
+   around Christmas are mentioned, without clear consensus. Manolis, Pjotr
+   and Jonathan volunteer to work on the organisation.
+
+   In case FOSDEM is cancelled due to ongoing Covid problems, we would also
+   like to hold the Guix Days as an online event. When booking ICAB, we
+   need to watch out for a suitable cancellation policy.
+
+
+7) Travel grants
+
+   It is suggested to provide travelling support for one or two students
+   who work on Guix to attend the Guix Days; it would not need to cover
+   all of the costs. While it appears that GSoC and Outreachy Students have
+   a travel grant as part of their internship, this might be interesting
+   to support otherwise non-funded persons and in particular members of
+   underrepresented groups. There appears to be consensus about the
+   usefulness of such an effort, but given the Guix Europe funds, this
+   would have to be paid out of the funds held at the FSF, and thus
+   requires discussion with the Guix spending committee.
+
+
+8) Fundraising
+
+   The previous topic leads to the question whether we should start another
+   fundraiser. Given our funds at the FSF, this will probably not be needed
+   before another year. Then we should determine a concrete goal that should
+   be reached to motivate donations, and start a joint fundraiser with the
+   FSF and Guix Europe.
+