Group: Ipernity General Assembly (IGA)

The meeting starts in 15 minutes.

Please comment only when asked. If you follow the chat of the meeting organisers on Discord, then please report any technical problems on the IGA2023 public channel there.

▶ Please write 'present' in a comment in the 'Sign the register' discussion as you arrive.
⇨ Click here to switch to this register

▶ After you have posted, use the link in the left hand panel to return to this discussion.
**2023 IGA** Welcome! / Bienvenue ! / Willkommen!.

The meeting starts in 5 minutes.

Agenda item 1: Opening

Dear Club members of ipernity!

We welcome you and hereby open the Ipernity General Assembly 2023.

Our communication with each other will mainly take place here, in this discussion. To translate these posts into your native language, please use ipernity's internal translation function. To do this, click on the Translate link directly below each post.

Because the ipernity group uses static web pages, you should reload or refresh the web page at regular intervals (every 1 to 2 minutes), to make visible the updates. Depending on your device and browser, this may be with the F5 function key on your keyboard, or by clicking an icon in the toolbar. We will not rush ahead.

Also take into account that locally, due to high Internet traffic, short waiting times may occur. Let's just be grateful that we have this opportunity here to communicate with each other.

Agenda item 2: Appointment of the minute taker

All posts here will serve as minutes and proof of the lawful conduct of the meeting.
Pages will be saved as PDF files. They will subsequently be available to all members of the community at any time.

Rob Stamp, (Rob Stamp) will perform this duty.

Agenda item 3: Determination of the quorum

The following information was published as indicated:
a. Invitation to this online meeting
b. The agenda of this meeting
c. The proposed candidates for the election of the President, Webmaster and the Moderator

a) “IGA (ipernity general assembly) 2023” on 24 February 2023,
b) “2023 IGA - Agenda” on 11 March 2023,
c) “2023 Candidatures for the Board” on 11 March 2023.

The opportunity for public discussion was given.
This meeting was thus correctly prepared in accordance with the Statutes.

By the closing date on Monday, 20 March 2023, 25 members had registered to attend.

These members were duly informed about the technical procedure. Furthermore, they were given the opportunity to view the following documents at least 24 hours in advance:

● Report of the President on 2022
● Report of the Treasurer on 2022
● ima Financial Report on 2022

This IGA 2023 group has restricted visibility. Only registered club members with voting rights have access. Separate PollUnits will be used for the prescribed votes.

From the ima team the following are logged in now:

Corinne Pommerell
Laura Fletcher
Stefan Roßkopf

As advisors, assistants or auditors the following are logged in at this moment:

Guido Werner
Helena-Paule Fitoussi
Rob Stamp
Stefan Beck
Thomas Reck

William Sutherland, Bernhard Westrup, Pam Johnson
and Markus Fritsch offer their apologies for not being able to attend.

and me [also advisor]

Yes, thank you.

The total number of attendees at the start of this meeting is 18.
This may still change prior to the start of voting.

We hereby declare that the meeting will take place in accordance with the Statutes of Association and will be legally binding and quorate.

Agenda item 4: Report of the President on the past business year (2022)

We will publish this report in English here. Authorised translations in French and German are published simultaneously and can be consulted via the following links:

● English: Report of the President on 2022
● Français: Rapport du Président sur l'année 2022
● Deutsch: Bericht des Präsidenten über das Jahr 2022

If any of these languages is not your native language, you can have the report translated into your language using ipernity's internal translation function and read it in this way.

As all attendees have had the opportunity to read this report in advance, we are now publishing it here rather quickly.

Dear members and friends of ipernity,

For the second year in a row, our general meeting is taking place during a period of economic and political uncertainty. Central banks around the world continue to raise interest rates to fight inflation, the employment picture, which remains strong could change at any time, and the war in Ukraine has become protracted with no end in sight and the possibility of growing into a wider conflict. It is with these uncertainties that ipernity moves into 2023 and as we had a successful 2022, I am optimistic this year will be no different.

Over the past year, our website has more or less run trouble free with only a few minor issues along the way thanks in great part to our IT personnel – of Stefan Roßkopf and Rob Stamp. At the same time, the website has seen notable improvements – groups can now be sorted alphabetically, each person’s main page consists of storage and usage information and a useful help link denoted by a question mark. In addition the translation function has been restored for albums and expanded to cover other areas besides comments, text, and Ipermails. The latter is another example of how we are a global community where each and every person regardless of nationality and citizenship is valued and respected.

Also to reflect the rapid cultural changes that have been taking place, the website’s language is now gender-neutral to reflect our inclusive and welcoming atmosphere. A special thanks goes to our Moderator Laura Fletcher for undertaking this effort.

World Photography Day (19 August 2022) proved to be a tremendous success for our members. More than 50 quality photographs were taken representing a dozen countries and four continents. We expect even greater success in 2023 with advance notice and greater publicity.

In addition, on 1 September 2022 we celebrated our fifth anniversary as a member-run site. My deepest gratitude goes out to all the officers, executive assistants, advisors, club members and guests for making this possible especially since we are a commercial-free, ad-free site.

As the pandemic wanes after China, in the example of Europe, much of Asia, North and South America and Australia, emerges from their dark days, donations from the COVID-19 fund have been transferred to the website’s general help fund. The generosity of everyone who had donated and continues to donate to the site is another example of how our community differentiates itself from every other photo sharing/blog site. We truly care for each other and are ready to assist when our members experience hardship so that they can continue to participate in and belong to our community.

Furthermore, since our members are the “heart and soul” of our site, an In Memoria section has been added to honor our deceased members. Nine of our valued members who have passed on are honored with a photograph they had taken and a personal photo so that their faces and work will live on, as we will never forget them. While on this topic, it is with deep sadness that I have to announce that three of our members passed away in 2022 – Jacques Clément, Marie-claire Gallet and Marta Wojtkowska.

Last, over the past year, our operating costs have increased – most notably with AWS for rental of server space. The primary reason our AWS costs increased was because our prepayment expired and we had to renew at a higher rate. With the increased costs, steps at improving efficiency and a stable membership base, we were able to minimize our annual loss to approximately 425 Euros. Despite our increased costs, the team has decided not to raise membership fees. We made this decision based on the economic realities facing each and every member – higher costs, employment disruptions and in some circumstances, reduced hours of work. At the same time we acknowledge that these realities pale in comparison to the hardships some of our members are facing, who live in areas ravaged by war, civil strife, violence, and natural disasters.

Having said this, it remains important that the site attract new members to ensure the sustainability. While we can provide the best possible conditions to attract new members and promote the site, each member shares a responsibility to also promote the site, renew their club status and assist with bringing in new members to ensure club fees do not have to be increased in the future. Nevertheless, I remain confident our site will remain viable and sustainable for years to come thanks to the loyalty of our members and the great voluntary commitment of many.

March 25, 2023
William Sutherland
President

Since we assume that you have read the report in its entirety before the meeting, we continue directly with

Agenda item 5: Report of the Treasurer on the past fiscal year (2022)

The corresponding ima Financial Report of the association were examined by the advisers and found to be correct:

ima Financial Report 2022 - EN

These financial statements are also available in audited French and German translations.

Downloadable pdf files are available here:
Accounts - ima Financial report on 2022

We will publish the report of the Treasurer in English here. Authorised translations in French and German are published simultaneously and can be consulted via the following links:

● English: Treasurer's report on 2022
● Français: Rapport du trésorier sur l'année 2022
● Deutsch: Bericht des Schatzmeisters über das Jahr 2022

If any of these languages is not your native language, you can have the report translated into your language using ipernity's internal translation function and read it in this way.

As all attendees have had the opportunity to read this report in advance, we are now publishing it here rather quickly.

Dear members and friends of ipernity!

Our club's income in 2022 was quite stable and only slightly below the level of the previous year (36,198 EUR) at 33,500 EUR. This amount stays below the expected revenue which was estimated at 37,500 EUR.

The number of club members who still have multi-year advance payments running went down to 115 members at the end of the year, and the members whose multi-year payment run out, started again with the regular yearly or half-yearly payments. Overall, the number of paying club members fell to 850 by the end of the year (previous year 953). With those two effects combined, and the effect of currency fluctuations on the payments that were not made in EUR, the regular membership contribution income was therefore slightly higher 33,384 EUR (previous year 31,434 EUR).

The donations of 115 EUR went dramatically down compared to the previous year (4,299 EUR), and this explains why our overall revenues are lower than 2021, as well as below the expectations.

A credit balance of 19.11 GBP (= approx. 21.50 EUR) was determined on the Paypal account, which cannot be allocated at present. The amount appears in reports, but a conversion into EUR or to the transfer to the bank account of the association is not possible. Paypal was asked for clarification.

We reduced our costs by 2,192 EUR to 33,924 EUR (previous year 36,166 EUR). The main reason for this saving is that we did not need to pay for any external IT costs in 2022 (5,666 EUR in 2021). Unfortunately, the costs for the Amazon Web Services increased by 3,407 EUR to a total amount of 25,944 EUR (compared to 22,537 EUR in 2022). One of the reasons for the increase is that most of our reserved prepaid server capacities ran out in 2022, and they had to be renewed.

We ended the year with a negative result of 424 EUR, and reserves at the end of the year amount to 25,589 EUR (compared to 26,013 EUR in 2021).

Overall, as in 2021, however, we can note a budget improvement. Our obligations in the form of prepaid membership months decreased to 30,346 EUR (previous year 42,562 EUR), to this we must add the obligations occurred through the previous Covid 19 fund (now general help fund) which amounts to 1,817 EUR. After deducting reserves, we therefore only have uncovered liabilities to our members of 6,574 EUR (previous year 16,534 EUR). Our reserves now amount to 79% of our obligations (previous year 61%). In the event of a loss of any income, we could continue to operate our website for almost 11 months (end of previous year: 9 months).

The operating costs for the leased AWS servers in 2023 will probably continue to augment slowly. On the other side, we will no longer have any depreciations of prepaid resources at the end of 2023. Therefore, we can estimate the total costs remaining stable at around 34,000 EUR in 2023. As more and more multi-year advance deposits are expiring, revenues from memberships should slightly increase and are expected to turn around 36,000 EUR. This would allow up to 2,000 EUR to be added to the reserves.

In this case we could expect the break-even point (reserves = debt) to be reached in 2023.

The most important point for this forecast to become real is the amount of paying members. We all, as a community, must succeed in keeping or even better increasing our membership count, to be able to maintain a sound financial situation and to keep our site alive and in good health.

March 25th, 2023
Corinne Pommerell
Treasurer

Since we assume that you also have read the report in its entirety before the meeting, we continue directly with

Agenda item 6: Report of the auditors

Ladies and Gentlemen,
respected club members of ipernity,

We have audited the financial statements of the ipernity Members Association for the financial year from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022. Based on the findings of our audit, the financial statements comply in all material respects with the legal requirements and give a true and fair view of the financial position of the Association.

March 25, 2023
Thomas Reck
Rainer Luitjens
Cash Auditors

We continue now with

Agenda item 7:
Formal approval of the actions of the Executive Board (ima team) in the past.

You can now submit questions by posting comments below.
You can write the question in your mother language.

To avoid duplicate answers, we will answer the questions collectively after some time.

▶ You may begin now, please.

Not a question, merely me expressing my thanks to the Executive Board for their collective efforts in the past years.

Just a comment: a really good job was done again this year. Thank you and congratulations to all.

I am curious if there would be an alternative to using Amazon Web Services if their costs became too much for us to shoulder. I don't know much about how these services work or what "normal" rates would be. Thanks.

Thanks xenophora

The thought of migrating everything, with our limited knowledge, is terrifying. So I think we stick with AWS, who are (mostly) reliable.

Und ... drei Mal auf Holz klopfen! Ich kann mich nicht erinnern, daß es im vergangenen Jahr einen größeren Crash gegeben hätte! :-))

I also congratulate the Executive Board for the excellent job keeping the community "warm and afloat". Thanks so much...

1+

Ja, so kann es weiter gehen! Danke an alle im Vorstand!

1+

+1

+1

▶ Are there any more questions?

(We will wait 1 minute.)

A suggestion: is it necessary to keep unused IP accounts, of which there must be hundreds?

Ich glaube das ist schwierig. Woher weißt Du denn, daß das betreffende Konto ungenutzt ist oder ober derjenige nur pausiert, aus welchem Grund auch immer. - Aber geben tut es diese ungenutzten Accounts sicher.

Our Terms of Use states we delete after 3 years of non-use. Deletion of unsued IP accounts is an ongoing process. We do that manually and regularly.

Wonach bewertet Ihr die "Nichtnutzung" ... Keine Anmeldung im Zeitraum, oder keine Dokumente, oder Bilder im Account?

Non-use is 3 years of not logging in.

Okay! Thank you!

▶ Are there any more questions?

(We will wait 1 minute.)

▶ There are no more questions.

We have closed the ‘Sign the register’ making a count of 18 (excluding the 3 ima team members who are not allowed to vote).

So let’s come to the vote on the formal approval of the actions of the Executive Board (ima team) in the past.

If you have not already done so, please read the guide on:

⇨ How to vote / Comment voter / Wie man abstimmt

Refer to your emails and use the PollUnit link for ‘Vote 1 - Ratify board actions’

Hope it worked...

J'ai voté favorablement

Hooray! I think it's working for me!

Approved.

voted !

done

Be sure to use Pollunit email link to cast your vote.

I think, I have voted! ;-D

Still missing two

done

done too

@Stephan - if you mean the 2 other Pollunits, those will be opened later in the meeting.

I think he means that poll unit shows 16 votes vs. 18 members who may vote.

Actually, I only see 16 on the total of votes cast ...

No I thought we are 18 I only see 16 votes

That tally one sees in Pollunit is an aggregate. If there are 10 vote for, and 4 against, then you would see a tally of 6.

Das finde ich irgendwie nicht gut! Aber den früheren Abstimmungen war die Übersicht besser und transparenter.

Die Funktion ist irgendwie nicht so ganz intuitiv. Ich kann zum Beispiel nicht sehen, ob meine Stimme abgesendet wurde. Es scheint aber so, dass ich auch jetzt noch statt des angeklickten Feldes "Ja" das Feld "Enthaltung" oder "Nein" anklicken kann.

You can change your vote until we close the poll.

Du kannst die abgegebene Stimme ändern, bis die Abstimmung geschlossen wurde. Die abgegebene Stimme ist das deutlich sichtbare Kästchen bzw. die entsprechende Option.

Danke für den Hinweis, dann habe ich die Funktion jetzt begriffen! :-)

Wenn Du unten rechts z.B. auf den Haken geklickt hast, müsste er danach grün sein. Ich verstehe es so, dass man daran dann sieht, dass man mit "jar" abgestimmt hat. Entsprechend bei "nein" oder "Enthaltung."

Ja genau, ist grün. Meine Frage beruhte darauf, dass danach bei Mouseover über Enthaltung oder Nein diese Felder nicht ausgegraut sind. Mir war nicht klar, dass die Stimmabgabe bis zur Schließung der Abstimmung noch geändert werden kann.

Voting was easy. It's much better than counting comments.

Please close the vote!

Ist denn die Abstimmung jetzt geschlossen? Haben alle abgestimmt? Das kann man nicht ersehen.

▶ The ima team is conferring on an internal Discord chat. Please wait. We will continue soon. We will close the vote soon. Thank you for your patience.

▶ There appear to be no more votes.

So we close the voting.

▶ The result of the vote is:

17 votes in favour
0 votes against
1 abstentions

The actions of the acting Executive Board (ima team) in the past are thus discharged.

It is noted that one member was given an alternative way to vote, thus the count shown here will vary from what can be seen in Pollunit.

So let’s come to

Agenda item 8: Proposal for candidates for the next Executive Board, Cash Auditors and Data Protection Officer

The candidates for the vacant Board mandates were publicly presented to you on March 11, 2023. They are

William Sutherland as President

Rob Stamp as Webmaster

Laura Fletcher (raingirl) as Moderator

(We will proceed to the cash auditors and the data protection officer after the election of the new board members.)

There was sufficient time to review information about the candidates.

▶ Are there any questions about them?
(We will wait 1 minute.)

Pas pour moi :-)

So let’s come to

Agenda item 9.1: Election of the next Executive Board

Refer to your emails and use the PollUnit link for ‘Vote 2 - Accept board candidates’

Done

Voté et accepté les candidats

+1

done

I did not receive an email for "Vote 2 - Accept board candidates" only for Vote 1 and Vote 3.

We will look into this as quickly as possible.

If you don't mind making a public vote, we will accept your vote if you place it here in the discussion.

I Vote with Yes

check

On this second vote, the *Guest* function didn't ask for my name. But I hope everything is still appearing for you as it should.

Apparently PoolUnit keeps the memory of the previous session (it told me that my new connection will close the previous one). This is why it does not ask for your name again.

This is correct.

And in my case I had to introduce my name again....?!

Trotz vorheriger Anmeldung bei PollUnit wurde ich bei Vote 2 plötzlich nach meinem Guest name gefragt. Stimme wurde jetzt aber akzeptiert.

War bei mir auch so. Vermutlich gilt die Namensangabe nur für die jeweilige Abstimmung.

Für Vote 2 gab es ja eine Mail mit einem neuen Pollunit-Invite. In dem war Vote 2 die erste Abstimmung, und man musste deshalb seinen Gastnamen nochmal angeben. Finde ich aber intuitiv. So ist es für alle Abstimmungen exakt derselbe Vorgang.

So hatte ich das auch gemeint. ;-)