How to Organise the AGM

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) is our combination of a business meeting, yearly work planning session, and opportunity to meet others in our international team in person.

This document is a guide that assumes that the meeting will be held in person. If a situation occurs that prevents that, it is acceptable to execute it virtually, as was done in 2021 and 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Roles
• Logistics timeline
  • Two months prior
  • Four weeks prior
  • Three weeks prior
  • Two weeks prior
  • 10 days prior
  • One week prior
  • Day before
  • Day-of
• Pre-planning
  • Finding a meeting venue
  • Who qualifies for AGM travel assistance
  • Dietary requirements

Roles

Expected participants:

Who	Role
Project Leader (PL)	Should be physically present if possible and dialled in otherwise, providing meeting content.
Lead Maintainers (LM)	Should be physically present if possible and dialled in otherwise, providing meeting content.
Maintainers	Should dial in or participate in person if possible.

Delegated maintainer roles of responsibility for planning and execution:

Who	Role
Logistics Coordinator (LC)	Coordinates with the meeting venue, restaurants, vendors and maintainers.
Agenda Coordinator (AC)	Coordinates the agenda and content to be presented.
Technology Coordinator (TC)	Coordinates the video-conference audiovisual setup.

A person may have more than one role but one person should not have all roles.

Logistics timeline

Past practice is for the AGM to coincide with FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium. The AGM is normally held on the Friday before FOSDEM or the following Monday.

Confirm the published FOSDEM dates before opening travel approval or making reservations. Use the relative timeline below and record year-specific dates in the private planning issue or project rather than embedding them in this reusable guide.

Two months prior

When: Approximately two months before the AGM.

• LC: Seek informal count of maintainers intending to attend in person.
• PL: Review maintainer activity per Homebrew Governance.
• PL: Open travel assistance pre-approval process.
  • This is primarily to enable maintainers to begin planning travel by asking for time off, requesting employer reimbursement, arranging childcare or pet sitters, applying for a visa, which may take two to seven weeks, etc.
• PL: Check the official EU travel requirements for each traveller’s nationality and travel dates. Do not direct travellers to apply unless the official page says the service is operating. Once it is operating, allow for the published maximum processing time before non-refundable travel is purchased.

Four weeks prior

When: Approximately four weeks before the AGM.

• PL: Solicit changes to Homebrew Governance in the form of PRs to the private repository.

Three weeks prior

When: Approximately three weeks before the AGM.

• PL: Close travel assistance pre-approval process.

Two weeks prior

When: Approximately two weeks before the AGM.

• AC: Create agenda, solicit agenda items from PL and LM.
• LC: Seek committed maintainer attendance and dietary requirements for each.
• PL: Close proposals for new Governance changes.

10 days prior

When: 10 days before the AGM.

• PL: Resolve all open Governance PRs, roll-up changes, and open PR with changes to docs/Homebrew-Governance.md on homebrew/brew.

One week prior

When: One week before the AGM.

• PL: Open voting for PL and Governance changes.
• AC: Solicit agenda items from maintainers.
• LC: Secure a venue and reservation for dinner.

Day before

• LC: Confirm reservation count for dinner with attendees
• LC: Hand-off venue AV contact to TC

Day-of

• LC: Confirm reservation count for dinner with venue
• TC: Connect to the video conference and ensure that audiovisual equipment is ready, appropriately placed and periodically levelled.
• AC: Keep the meeting to the agenda and time-boxed discussion limits while ensuring remote attendees can participate.

Pre-planning

Finding a meeting venue

In the past, Homebrew hosted the AGM at the THON Hotel Brussels City Centre and arranged for a room block checking in the day before FOSDEM and AGM weekend, generally on Friday, and checking out the day after, generally Tuesday when the AGM is Monday.

Who qualifies for AGM travel assistance

Travel assistance is available for AGM participants who are expected to attend the AGM in-person. Those who have employers able to cover all or a part of the costs of attending FOSDEM should exhaust that source of funding before seeking Homebrew funding.

PL, LM and maintainers can expect to have all reasonable, in-policy expenses covered.

See also the Expense and Reimbursement Travel Policy for process and details on what is covered. It is important that all attendees expecting reimbursement stay in-policy.

Dietary requirements

Track dietary requirements centrally for in-person participants.