2017 GENERAL ASSEMBLY MINUTES

Association PostgreSQL Europe
13 rue du Square Carpeaux
75018 PARIS

People attending the meeting

  • Andreas Scherbaum (ads)
  • Andreas Kretschmer (akretschmer)
  • Boriss Mejias (bmejias)
  • Claes Jakobsson (claes)
  • Christoph Moench-Tegeder (cmt_)
  • Damien Clochard (daamien)
  • Danilo Endesfelder (DaniloE)
  • Daniel Gustafsson (dege)
  • Devrim Gunduz (devrimgunduz)
  • Gianni Ciolli (gciolli)
  • Harald Armin Massa (ghum)
  • Johannes Graën (gio)
  • Guillaume Lelarge (gleu)
  • Ilya Kosmodemiansky (hydrobiont)
  • Jeltz (jeltz)
  • Jean-Paul Argudo (jpa)
  • Jürgen (juergen_1)
  • Magnus Hagander (magnush)
  • Markus Wanner (markus_wanner)
  • Stefan Kaltenbrunner (mastermind)
  • Marc Balmer (mbalmer)
  • Gunnar "Nick" Bluth (nickbluth)
  • (oolaniyi)
  • Pasha Golub (pasha_golub)
  • Patryk Kordylewski (patryk)
  • Dave Page (pgsnake)
  • Robert Ivens (Possible)
  • Julien Rouhaud (rjuju)
  • Stéphane Schildknecht (SAS)
  • Stephanie Janine Schoning (stefanie_janine)
  • Eric Veldhuyzen ([Terra])
  • (tigerfoot)
  • Tobias Bussmann (TobiasBussmann)
  • Jimmy Angelakos (vyruss)
  • Vik Fearing (xocolatl)

The first GA, which happened on January, 16th, 2017, didn't meet the quorum. These minutes is for the second GA meeting. As such, no quorum is needed. Thus, the meeting is valid.

Magnus Hagander is the president and Guillaume Lelarge is the secretary of the GA meeting.

Meeting starts at 21:01 (2017-01-23), on the IRC network freenode.net, channel #pgeu-ga2016-2. Language is english, the report is available in english and french.

The agenda is:

  • activities report for 2016,
  • financial report for 2016,
  • 2017 potential activities.

Activities report

Magnus Hagander gave a brief summarization of the Activities report.

Several questions were asked:

  • About the room at FOSDEM which is "sorry we're full", can't we ask a bigger one to the FOSDEM organization team?
    • We ask for a bigger room every year. This year (2016, as the report is about), we actually got a bigger room, though it still wasn't big enough.
  • Can we get our room to be on saturday instead of sunday?
    • Having a room on Saturday means fewer talks than Sunday because of the large opening keynotes. Anyway, too late for this year.

Votes: 29 voted Yes out of 36 present in the channel. 7 didn't vote.

Thus, the activities report is approved.

Financial report

Guillaume Lelarge gave a brief summarization of the Financial report.

Several questions were asked:

  • Would it be difficult to become VAT registered?
    • We already are (since last December)
  • Did we hire an accountant because we make too much profit?
    • Unfortunately, no. It's not about profits, it's about turnover.
  • Do we have retroactive VAT on 2016 or was it introduced during the exercise?
    • It is retroactive, though just for 2016. We got our VAT registration in December, so it's still 11 months.
  • Did the board considered hire a (partial|full)time job to promote PG around EU?
    • We certainly don't have the money to hire a full-time person, and we are absolutely not employing someone. But we could hire a consultant. To completely answer the question, no, we have not considered it. We are definitely interested in hearing suggestions though. If someone can come up with a complete proposal, it is absolutely something to discuss and possibly spend some money on.
  • Why is there no yearly breakdown for PGday Paris like there is for the other events?
    • This event had no transactions outside the year. The other events that have a yearly breakdown had some expenses or income on a different year. pgday.paris 2016 had all expenses and income in 2016.
  • Are we stocked up in merchandising stuff? Or are we expected to lose money on that?
    • Our current stockpile of merchandise isn't particularly high and will probably be sold out during FOSDEM. The Nordic and Paris events will probably want merchandise. So we'll restock but we first need to know what merchandise these events will need and how much.

One more quick note even though it's actually from 2017. Some of you may have noticed that, as of January 3rd (that's why it's very close to 2016), we have another payment provider for all our conferences and such.

No votes since the financial report is partial. The board will call for an extraordinary GA once we have all the numbers. An email will be announced the same way as for the general GA. We hope and think this will happen before summer, but worst case it could be even later than that.

Next year's activities

Magnus Hagander gave a brief summarization of next year's activities (see the Activities report).

Some questions were asked:

  • How about p2d2 in Prague? Or is it local community?
    • This isn't handled by PostgreSQL Europe.
  • Are the CfPs closed already?
    • Yes for all except pgconf.eu
  • Will the UK continue to count as Europe for a few more years?
    • It will still be Europe, just not EU. There's a difference.
  • What about local small Meetups?
    • Yes, it's worth pointing out that pgday.paris and Nordic PGDay are supported by PGEU but arranged by local communities, so if you have a local meetup you want to support, contact us.
  • Could you (all of you) actively promote video recordings of those events?
    • It's not cheap, both in money and manpower. Manpower is probably the biggest issue - even once recorded, someone still needs to do the editing and uploading etc. The other side of that is that we don't want people to not attend because they can view online instead.

No votes.

Meeting ends at 21:50.

  • Magnus Hagander, President
  • Guillaume Lelarge, Treasurer