General Assembly of January 2020

Hello everyone :)

This January 25, 2020, 42l celebrates its anniversary and officially survives its first year.

This Tuesday, January 21st, we held a combined General Meeting (ordinary and extraordinary) at 42. It was the first GM of the association. 15 people attended this meeting, accompanied by some aperitifs.

After this eventful first year, we had a lot of subjects to deal with and decisions to take concerning 42l. Here is a summary as well as explanations of the decisions taken.

🔗Key elements

• Transcript of the General Meeting (and its slides)
• Transcript of the Administration Council
• 2019 financial report
• 2019 moral report

Find all those elements in our page The association.

🔗General presentation

We have reviewed on the 42l actions over the past year: 45 members in 8 months, 7 services, many events helded, member of the CHATONS collective. The growth of the association, which is still in its infancy, has been lightning. We can therefore be quite satisfied.

A financial report has been written. 42l records a surplus of 284 euros, which is a success considering the difficulties encountered in the early days of the association.

The overall picture is therefore quite positive: financial success, operational services, good public at school 42 and outside…

However, there are a few points of vigilance: the time-consuming aspect of the association, the lack of support (2 people do 90% of the work), some difficulties with the school and finally the need to solidify the server structure: backup, redundancy, monitoring.

Some failures followed: the web platform is still not free, the work is not delegated enough and two conferences at the school had to be cancelled.

For the year 2020, we therefore plan to delegate tasks, improve the structure of our server, rework the UX of our website and keep a constant rhythm for the organized events.

The provisional budget for the year 2020 has been presented and approved (~2000€).

More information can be found in the transcript and the slides above.

The General Meeting then debated on the topics on its agenda. Below is a summary of the noteworthy decisions that were taken:

🔗Membership and renewal of services

During 2019, the contribution is at the price you want, starting from 10€. The General Meeting decides to maintain this amount for 2020. The moral memberships have been added, their membership fee is determined according to the size of the structure wishing to join.

We had initially considered restricting the services of members whose membership expires, as we did not know how the association would evolve.

It turns out that the association is doing well financially and that we still have room for improvement with regard to our technical constraints. The General Meeting has therefore decided to let access to the member-only services after the expiry of their membership, with no time limit, as long as the association is doing well.

This subject will be discussed again at the next General Meetings: the opinion of each member present will be heard and no decision will be taken at this level without a vote. In the worst case, if we can afford it, a delay of several months will be left to each member to give them time to find another CHATONS member who will be able to provide for their needs.

🔗“Unhash” the pseudonyms in the database

For security reasons, the pseudonyms of the members were hashed in our server database. We thought we could significantly improve the confidentiality of data in case of hacking by hashing emails, passwords and pseudonyms.

We now realize that this causes a lot of complications and unnecessary difficulties for not much. Because an account, beyond being an entry in a database, represents a human being behind it, whom we have probably already met and with whom we have exchanged a few words. Especially in the associative environment where we are always immersed in human relationships, it is more difficult to maintain a database containing anonymous entries than pseudonyms representing people we know. Not being able to find out who joined the association is a problem.

For these reasons of maintenance and practice, the General Meeting decided to “unhash” these pseudonyms using our accounting database, stored off-site, which records each membership. This challenge is feasible because it remains on a human scale, with less than 50 entries in our database.

🔗Inclusive writing

As an association of the free, our ethical principles constitute the foundations of our structure.

Being also aware of other subjects such as the fight against harassment or discrimination, gender or the place of women in our society, we proposed to the Meeting the decision to write our articles, pages and other official announcements in inclusive writing, epicene or any other non-discriminatory writing style, as much as possible.

This decision was approved by a majority, despite the 30% abstention rate.

We invite you to read this excellent article from Framasoft which is a quite accurate description of our state of mind.

🔗Memberships in Ğ1

Note: It’s pronounced “june”.

Last November, contributors to the Ğ1 (Attilax, Paulart, Hugo Trenteseaux and Vit) came to hold a conference on free/libre money at school 42. We then wondered if it would be a good idea to accept memberships in Ğ1. The goal would be to give some visibility to the Ğ1, and to contribute to the economy by making membership possible.

We believe that this will not give us too many constraints (few people are likely to subscribe in Ğ1), from an administrative or financial point of view, so we should be able to afford it at our level. The Ğ1 collected could perhaps allow us to buy material for the association, for example.

The decision was accepted by the General Meeting.

We therefore now accept memberships in Ğ1 at the price you want, starting at 15 DU (currently about 150 Ğ1), for an annual fee. A membership in Ğ1 gives access to the same services and privileges as a membership in euros. It is possible to renew a membership with the currency of your choice.

To subscribe in Ğ1, please fill in the membership form.

You can also make a donation in Ğ1.

🔗Twitter account

The Meeting was asked about the idea of creating a Twitter account in order to continue the awareness work of the association outside of Mastodon and PeerTube, which reaches an already aware public.

The Meeting endorsed the idea on condition that this Twitter account be used solely for awareness-raising purposes.

The association therefore now has a Twitter account, which will serve only as a mirror account of our Mastodon account.

🔗Services

The usefulness of setting up a webmail for the mail service was discussed. This could be useful for nomadic, uninitiated people or associations.

The Meeting approved this proposal, so it was implemented on the Nextcloud service.

🔗Event suggestions

It was proposed by the members to organize more meals (the “Repas du Libre” organized in December was a success). This allows us to create links within the association, and to bring a little financial help while having a good time.

It was also proposed to organise conferences or workshops related to the services offered, to learn how to use them and promote them to students.

🔗Modification of the Statutes

This General Meeting is called a “combined” General Meeting. That is to say that it is both “ordinary”: various discussions on the guidelines to be followed, but also “extraordinary”: it is necessary to edit the statutes of association. Several changes have therefore been made, including:

• the quorum rules, which did not correspond to the model of the association: many members join to support the association or to use the services, not necessarily with a view to participating actively in the life of the association;
• the memberships of legal entities as well as the memberships in Ğ1 were added;
• a new group of members, “Embassy Delegate” has been added: these would be representatives of the 42l association in other campuses of the 42 Network. We may have the opportunity to discuss this subject in other articles.
• it is now possible, under certain conditions, to add members to the Administration Council without going through a GM.

The modifications were approved by the members present.

🔗Election of the Administration Council and the Bureau

The Administration Council is responsible for acting as a link between the Bureau and the members. It advises the Bureau on the decisions to be taken. It is not necessarily engaged in regular activities within the association, but is required to respond within a reasonable time when requested to do so, and each member may leave the Council upon simple notification.

Five persons have applied for membership of the Administration Council : Allan, Alex, Doc, Mina and Steven.

They were elected unanimously. In addition to the two current Bureau members, this makes seven people in the Council. Two persons have also expressed their willingness to join the Council in the near future.

The election of the Bureau, voted by the members of the Council, was then held. The Bureau of the previous year is renewed for the coming year. It is composed of :

• Neil, president;
• Brume, treasurer.

🔗In conclusion

This General Meeting was a real success! We have a lot of hope for the future of the association. Thank you all for taking part in the decisions, thank you also to the readers who are still following us.

Special thanks to Doc, secretary of the meeting, for writing the transcript of the GM.

~ N&B

English translation by axpio and Neil.