How To Organize AGM
AGM is our combination of 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
Expected participants:
| Who | Role |
|---|---|
| Project Leadership Committee (PLC) | Should be physically present if possible, dialed-in if not. Several members must be present in person to run the event. Several members, regardless, needed to provide content for meeting. |
| Project Leader (PL) | Should be physically present if possible, dialed-in if not. Regardless, needed to provide content for meeting. |
| Technology Steering Committee (TSC) | Should be physically present if possible, dialed-in if not. Regardless, needed to provide content for meeting. |
| Members | Should dial-in or participate in person if possible. |
PLC members’ roles of responsibility for planning and execution:
| Who | Role |
|---|---|
| Logistics Coordinator (LC) | Coordinates with meeting venue, restaurants, members, committees, vendors |
| Agenda Coordinator (AC) | Coordinates agenda and content to be presented |
| Technology Coordinator (TC) | Coordinates video conference audiovisual setup |
:information_source: (A person may have more than one role but one person should not have all roles.)
Logistics Timeline
Past practice and future intent is for AGM to coincide with FOSDEM, which is held in Brussels, Belgium annually typically on the Saturday and Sunday of the fifth ISO-8601 week of the calendar year, calculable with:
ruby -rdate -e "s=ARGV[0].to_i;s.upto(s+4).map{|y|Date.commercial(y,5,6)}.each{|y|puts [y,y+1].join(' - ')}" 2024
AGM should be held on the Friday before or the Monday following FOSDEM.
:information_source: Regenerate the dates for the WHEN lines in the next several headers using this quick command:
ruby -rdate -e "YEAR=ARGV[0].to_i;puts ([[44,YEAR-1],[49,YEAR-1]]+(1.upto(4).map{|wk|[wk, YEAR]})).map{|wk,yr|Date.commercial(yr,wk).to_s}" 2024
Three months prior
When: Week 44 of YEAR-1 :date: 2023-10-30
- LC: Seek venue through previous contacts or RFP.
- PLC: Notify members of eligibility to attend AGM, with date to be determined.
- This is primarily to enable members to begin planning travel by asking for time off, requesting employer reimbursement, arranging childcare or pet sitters, applying for a visa which may take 2–7 weeks, etc.
Two months prior
When: Week 49 of YEAR-1 :date: 2023-12-04
- LC: Seek informal count of members intending to attend in-person.
- PL: Review maintainer activity per Governance/Maintainers.
- PLC: Determine travel assistance budget.
- PLC: Open travel assistance pre-approval process.
Four weeks prior
When: Week 1 of YEAR :date: 2024-01-01
- PLC: Solicit changes to Homebrew Governance in the form of PRs on the
homebrew-governance-privaterepository.
Three weeks prior
When: Week 2 of YEAR :date: 2024-01-08
- PLC: Close travel assistance pre-approval process.
Two weeks prior
When: Week 3 of YEAR :date: 2024-01-15
- AC: Create agenda, solicit agenda items from PLC and TSC.
- LC: Seek committed member attendance and dietary requirements for each.
- PLC: Close proposals for new Governance changes.
10 days prior
When: Week 4 of YEAR :date: 2024-01-22
- PLC: Resolve all open Governance PRs, roll-up changes, and open PR with changes to
docs/Homebrew-Governance.mdonhomebrew/brew.
One week prior
When: Week 4 of YEAR :date: 2024-01-22
- PLC: Open voting for PLC, PL, and Governance changes.
- AC: Solicit agenda items from membership.
- 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 video conference, ensure audiovisual equipment is ready and appropriately placed and leveled periodically
- AC: Keep the meeting paced to the agenda, keep time for timeboxed discussions, cut people off if they’re talking too long, ensure remote attendees can get a word in
Pre-planning
Finding a meeting venue
In the past, PLC 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.
PLC, TSC, PL and maintainers can expect to have all reasonable, in-policy expenses covered while members will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Read the Expense and Reimbursement policy document in Homebrew/homebrew-governance-private.
It contains the process and details on what is covered.
It is important that all attendees expecting reimbursement stay in-policy.
Ideas for future AGMs
Meeting enhancements
- Captioning or transcription, or both - White Coat Captioning could handle the live captioning and provide us that for a transcript.
- Separate meeting runner
- Keep PL ideally focused on content and not agenda or tracking who’s asked to speak
- Should be a PLC member who is not the AC, LC, or TC
- Should be someone happy and willing to cut people off mid-sentence and, assertively but in a friendly manner, stop conversations that are not running to time
Day-of enhancements
- Track dietary requirements centrally for in-person participants
