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<<TableOfContents(2)>>

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Here are the duties as defined in [[[[http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/policies/const.ucc#duties_sec|section 16.3 of the constitution]].

{{{
1. to maintain an up to date register of the members of the Club and their postal or residential addresses and, upon the request of a member of the Club, make the register available for the inspection of the member;
}}}		 Constitutionally the Secretary shall perform duties as defined in [[[[https://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/policies/constitution.pdf|the constitution, including section 16.3]].

Duties as proposed under the 2014 Committee KPI Document:
  * To record all minutes of club meetings in a detailed manner and in a consistent format approved by the committee.
  * To check the UCC mailbox on a regular basis.
  * To communicate with the groups and membership of the club on behalf of the committee, including all emails to the mailing lists.
  * Advertise all UCC Events through UCC and Guild communication channels. (Mailing Lists, Facebook, Guild Weekly)

== Register of members ==
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If someone wants to view the register, it is probably best to [[https://secure.ucc.asn.au/members/auth/user/|add a user]] in MemberDB. Leave the password empty. Make sure they are not staff or superusers (or they can alter the database).

----

{{{
2. A member may make a copy of or take an extract from the register but shall have no right to remove the register for that purpose.
}}}

Do not let people take the paper membership forms, just add them as a user in MemberDB (see above).

----

{{{
3. to carry out the administrative work of the Club for which the Committee does not appoint or elect an officer;
}}}

This is pretty much all the administrative work except what the Treasurer does.

----

{{{
4. to record the proceedings of all General Meetings and meetings of the Committee and make these minutes available in an easily accessible portion of the Club online presence;
}}}

The minutes should be uploaded to http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/minutes/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD.txt and emailed to ucc@
See [[#Minutes|Minutes]].

----

{{{
5. to conduct and keep copies of all correspondence to the Club;
}}}		 If someone who is not a club administrator wants to view the register, they are only entitled to see the name and postal address of other members, in which case it is best '''not''' to create a user for somebody who wants to view the register. If a member wants to view another members postal address they may ask an administrator (wheel or committee member), or if they want the entire list they must ask wheel to extract the relevant information. Other information about a person cannot be given away without the permission of that person, which requires them to either accept the club privacy policy (which doesn't exist) or for the person in question to give specific permission on a per-case basis.

== Correspondence of the Club ==

The club has a number of communication platforms that are used by its members.
 * Email and mailing lists.
 * IRC / Discord.
 * Facebook page and group.
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You (and everyone else on committee-only@) should receive emails from mailman when a non-subscriber posts to a mailing list. Visit the URL and you can approve the message. Ask wheel or another committee member if you don't have the moderation password.
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----

{{{
6. generally to carry out the instructions and decisions of the Committee relating to the administration of the Club;
}}}

This means to do things like organise clean-ups, notify people of meetings and events, contact people outside the club relating to non-financial matters, organising the AGM and SGMs, etc.

Normally anything important that needs to be done will be discussed at a Committee meeting. In fact it is important that Committee knows what you are doing.		 == Carrying out instructions and decisions of the Committee ==

This means to do things like organise clean-ups, notify people of meetings and events, contact people outside the club relating to non-financial matters, organising the AGM and SGMs, etc as decided upon by the committee.

Normally anything important that needs to be done will be discussed at a Committee meeting, and it is important that Committee knows what you are doing.
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----

{{{
7. to ensure that an accurate copy of the Club constitution is maintained in an easily accessible portion of the Club online presence
}}}

The constitution is at [[http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/policies/const.ucc]].

We should also have a pdf copy of the constitution in {{{ /home/other/committee/somewhere }}}, but [SZM] can't find it at the moment.

----

{{{
8. unless the members resolve otherwise at a general meeting, have custody of all books, documents, records and registers of the Club, other than those required to be kept and maintained by, or in the custody of, the Treasurer.
}}}

This effectively means that you can veto the throwing out of these things. Even though people seldom read the old books and documents, they are an important part of UCC's history.		 == Maintaining the Constitution ==

The constitution is at [[https://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/policies/constitution.pdf]].

It is also the job of the Secretary to ensure that any changes to the constitution are sent to the appropriate authorities (ie. the Guild, the Commissioner for Consumer Protection, the ACNC and any other organisations that the club may be affiliated to), and that the constitution on the website is correct and up-to-date.

== Custody of Documents ==

This means that you get to take care of the contents everything in the filing cabinet, except for the stuff in the Treasurer's drawer. There are a lot of old books and documents which are an important part of UCC's history, and being the Secretary means that you can effectively veto the throwing out of these things.
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----
= Minutes =

Currently we use https://demo.hedgedoc.org to take minutes, as it uses markdown and updates in realtime.
See `agenda.readonly.txt` for the minutes template.

Once the meeting has ended and you have finished checking the minutes for formatting errors, you need to upload them to the correct places. To do this, first go to the minutes HedgeDoc that you want to save.

Click the top right menu dropdown. From the options, select "Save as Markdown." This will convert the document into a Markdown file format.

== Upload to Discord ==
Next you must post the minutes to Discord. To do this you navigate to the `#minutes` channel in the UCC Discord server, upload the Markdown file and send it as an attachment.

After you have uploaded a copy of the file to Discord, rename the original file and replace the `.md` extension with `.ucc`.

== Upload to the website ==
For this next step we have been using the program [[https://winscp.net/eng/index.php|WinSCP]] to transfer files.

Open WinSCP and log in with your UCC account:
 * File protocol is SFTP.
 * Host name is `motsugo-out.ucc.asn.au`.
 * Port number is 22.
 * User name is your UCC account username.
 * Password is your UCC account password.

Locate the current year minutes folder at `/services/http/infobase/committee/`.
If necessary, create a new minutes folder for the current year.

Drag and drop the renamed minutes file (with the `.ucc` extension) into the minutes folder.

Once the `.ucc` file is in the minutes folder, make sure the styling script is copied at the top of the document. This ensures consistent formatting and styling throughout the minutes.

The minutes are then available on the website at `https://ucc.asn.au/infobase/minutes/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD.ucc`.


'''Check carefully that you have not made any formatting errors.'''
  * Common issues include nested bullet points not being sufficiently indented, lists appearing all on one line, random lines of text appearing bold and in large font and so on. Read the markdown guide to fix this or just add more newlines as appropriate.


=== During the Meeting ===
'''Committee members have the option of writing their own reports beforehand.''' Encourage them to do this, since it will save you time and speeds up the meeting.

 * Update the attendance section based on who turns up at the meeting, moving the entries to the appropriate headings (Present, Late, Apologies, etc)
 * Seperate the committee members present from ordinary members present.
 * Update the lines ''Meeting opened/closed at HH:MM'' to reflect the time the meeting is opened and finally closed by the Chair.
 * The layout for all the sections of the meeting should already be in the [[#Agenda|agenda]].
 * Record what people say during the meeting, and try to keep a concise record of discussions that occur.
   * In meeting minutes, refer to people by their [[#TLA|TLA]] like this: `[TLA]`
   * Where relevant, prefix what is said by the TLA of the person who says it.
 * Note times at which members arrive/leave the meeting.

=== After the Meeting ===
 1. Put any action items decided upon during the meeting as well as any incomplete previous action items in the section '''Current Action Items''' after '''General Business''' (and after the "Meeting closed" line).
 2. Edit the minutes.
  * You may want to remove:
   * Jokes that aren't as funny as people thought at the time.
   * Swear words (although those are often just left in).
   * Snarky comments that you wrote while everyone was shouting and not paying attention to each other.
   * Offensive comments (unfortunately people do make them).
  * You should also rephrase poorly worded lines.
  * Complete anything that you didn't have time to finish noting during the meeting.
 3. Publish the minutes. You should do this as soon as possible after the meeting finishes, ideally on the same day.

=== General advice ===

 i. The President is supposed to be the chair, but if things are not on track feel free to bring people back to the current topic.
 i. You can paraphrase people's words to make them clearer and more concise.
 i. Some people think the minutes should not be humourous. Others disagree strongly.
 i. Use indenting to show sub-topics: Markdown requires at least four spaces for each level followed by a hyphen '-' and a space.
 i. In meeting minutes, refer to people by their [[#TLA|TLA]] like this: [TLA]
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  *{{{nano}}} might be easier, just move around with the arrow keys and type. There is a list of shortcuts at the bottom that look like {{{^X}}} - the {{{^}}} means to press {{{ctrl}}} plus the key.   *{{{nano(1)}}} might be easier, just move around with the arrow keys and type. There is a list of shortcuts at the bottom that look like {{{^X}}} - the {{{^}}} means to press {{{ctrl}}} then tap the named key.
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   *{{{vim}}} has things called "modes" for different tasks. Initially {{{vim}}} isn't in any mode.    *{{{vim(1)}}} has things called "modes" for different tasks. Initially {{{vim}}} isn't in any mode.
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 * As of 2012 we are storing {{{/home}}} {{{/away}}} {{{/services}}} and {{{/vmstore}}} on [[Nortel]].
  * You don't actually need to know how Nortel works (or doesn't work).
 * These directories are available on [[motsugo]] or [[mussel]] (and a few other servers). Use [[SSH]] to login to a server.		 All of the useful committee-related directories are available on [[motsugo]] or [[mussel]] (and a few other servers). Use [[SSH]] to login to a server, or you can browse the filesystem remotely using `SFTP` and any decent file manager on Linux/OS X or a program such as [[https://winscp.net/eng/index.php|WinSCP]] on Windows.
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    * There is a git repository in this directory which ignores everything except for `bin/`. If you make any changes to committee scripts, please run `git commit -a` and add a descriptive message.
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  1. {{{/services/http}}} - The website
  1. {{{/services/http/infobase/minutes/}}} - Where meeting minutes go		   2. {{{/home/other/committee/minutes/<year>}}} - Symlink to the minutes directory on the website
  1. {{{/services/http/infobase/minutes/<year>}}} - Where meeting minutes go
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 * A useful place to upload files for other people to view is your web director in {{{/home/ucc/username/public-html}}}  * A useful place to upload files for other people to view is your web directory in {{{/home/ucc/username/public-html}}}
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 * Upload and download files to and from servers with {{{scp}}}.

= Minutes =

You will probably find it easiest to take minutes on a linux machine using a simple text editor (gedit or kate). The scripts to automate tasks will only work on linux machines. You can use a clubroom machine or your own laptop.

If you don't want to use linux, you can perform the tasks [[#Manual Minutes|manually]] with PuTTY, but this will take a lot longer.

The scripts will work best if you continue the style of minuting used from 2009 to early 2013.

== Setting up scripts ==

 1. Login to any linux clubroom machine, or if you have linux on your laptop you can use that.

 1. Make a directory to put the minutes and related scripts into:
 
 . {{{
mkdir ~/minutesYYYY
}}}
  *(The {{{~}}} will automatically be interpreted as {{{/home/ucc/username}}})

 1. Copy scripts from motsugo or mussel into the directory:

 . {{{
scp username@motsugo:/home/other/committee/bin/agenda-pull ~/minutesYYYY/
scp username@motsugo:/home/other/committee/bin/minutes-push ~/minutesYYYY/
}}}

  *These two scripts automate most of the work involved with the minutes (other than writing them).
  *How to perform the tasks manually is explained [[#Manual Minutes|below]]

 1. Edit variables in the scripts

  *{{{agenda-pull}}} should not need modification.

  * Open {{{minutes-push}}} in a text editor, look for these lines near the top:

  . {{{
# Future secretaries:
# Change your name, tla and username here
}}}

  . And change the variables after them:

  . {{{
name="Your Name"
tla="[TLA]"
username="your_username"
committee_year="YYYY"
}}}


== Before the meeting starts ==

 1. Obtain a copy of the agenda; this will be the template for the minutes

  *Use the {{{agenda-pull}}} script for this:

  . {{{
cd ~/minutesYYYY
./agenda-pull
}}}
   *Enter username and password.

   *The agenda will be downloaded to {{{~/minutes2013/YYYY-MM-DD.txt}}}

   *If that file already exists you will get an error; make sure you haven't already pulled the agenda by viewing the file.

   *The file should contain a first line of what and when the meeting is, followed by all the various sections of the meeting.
   *See [[#Agenda|Agenda]] for how to change this template.

 1. Add attendance of the meeting at the top of the minutes

  *Include members present, committee members who sent apologies, and committee members who are absent without an excuse in seperate lists.
   *Optional: Seperate the committee members present from ordinary members present.
  *If people arrive late (after the meeting is actually opened, not after when it was supposed to open), add another list later for them.

   

 1. Add a line "Meeting opened at HH:MM" once the President or acting President opens the meeting

  *24 hour time format is probably the best to use.

== During the Meeting ==

 1. Reports come first, in the order: President, Vice-President, Treasurer, Secretary , Fresher Representative

  *These people have the option of writing their own reports using [[#Scripts|vigenda]]. Encourage them to do this, since it will save you a lot of time, and speeds up the meeting, because they have to think about what they will say before hand. Make sure you add anything extra that they say though.

 1. Other sections

  *The exact layout of the rest of the meeting will probably vary with the Committee and how they want to do things. This layout should be in the [[#Agenda|agenda]] already.

  . Typically (at least, since 2009) sections are:

   i. Committee Member Reports
    *May or may not include OCM reports
   i. Machine and Technical Reports
    *In this section, a wheel member will typically say things like "We have servers" or "The servers are fucked"
   i. Drink and Snack Reports
    *Normally the Treasurer will talk about how well things are selling, and what we need more of
    *Committee will then organise a coke run if necessary
   i. Mail Guild and SOC Reports
    *The Secretary will say "We have mail" or "We don't have mail" or "I didn't check it"
     *Note what the mail was
    *Attendees for upcoming Guild/SOC related meetings or busy bees will be organised
   i. Action Items
    * We have a rather militaristic system of "assigning actions" to committee members
    * In this section people report on how much of what they "volunteered" to do has actually been done
    * Usually make the first note "Not Done", "In progress", or (occasionally) "Done"
    * Then add more detail on the current status if required
   i. General Business (also known as General Shouting)
    * In this section, committee members yell at each other a lot
    * Occasionally new Action Items (that aren't covered by the previous sections) will be assigned
   i. Current Action Items
    * Don't add this until the meeting is finished. It is used to summarise all action items that still have to be done, including any new ones.

 1. Add a line "Meeting closed at HH:MM"

=== General advice ===

 i. The President is supposed to be the chair, but if things are not on track feel free to bring people back to the current topic
 i. You can paraphrase people's words to make them clearer and more concise.
 i. Some people think the minutes should not be humourous. Others disagree strongly.
 i. Note times at which members arrive/leave the meeting.
 i. Use indenting to show sub-topics: two spaces for each level followed by a hyphen '-' and a space
 i. In meeting minutes, refer to people by their [[#TLA|TLA]] like this: [TLA]
 i. See [[http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/minutes/2012/2012-11-20.txt]] for an example of meeting minutes.

== After the Meeting ==

 1. Add an extra section "Current Action Items" after the "Meeting Closed" line

  *Put any action items that are still in progress as well as any new action items in this section.

 1. Edit the minutes

  *You may want to remove:
   *jokes that aren't as funny as people thought at the time
   *swear words (although those are often just left in)
   *snarky comments that you wrote while everyone was shouting and not paying attention to each other
   *offensive comments (unfortunately people do make them)

  *You should also rephrase poorly worded lines
  *Complete anything that you didn't have time to finish noting during the meeting

 1. Upload the minutes and email ucc@

  *You should do this as soon as possible after the meeting finishes, on the same day if possible.

  . {{{
cd ~/minutesYYYY/
./minutes-push
}}}

  * The script will automatically look for a file {{{YYYY-MM-DD.txt}}} based on the current date.
  * If it doesn't exist (because you are running it a day or so after the meeting), you will have to enter the date.

  *You will get an error if you try to upload a previous meetings minutes on the same day as a later meeting. You can fix it by temporarily renaming files:

  . {{{
mv YYYY-MM-DD.txt YYYY-MM-DD.txt.old
./minutes-push
mv YYYY-MM-DD.txt.old YYYY-MM-DD.txt
./minutes-push
}}}

  *Otherwise, the script should "Just work" (TM). If it doesn't you can see a wheel member (preferably [SZM], [GOZ] or [DTK]), or try and fix it.		  * Upload and download files to and from servers with {{{scp(1)}}} or {{{sftp(1)}}}.
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To learn how to add new TLAs see [[http://www.ucc.asn.au/member/tla.README]] or {{{/services/http/member/tla.README}}} on [[motsugo]] or [[mussel]]. Unfortunately it is a bit complicated, you might want to get a past Secretary to demonstrate.
 To learn how to add new TLAs see {{{/services/http/cgi-bin/ttdat/.tla}}} on [[motsugo]] or [[mussel]]. Unfortunately it is a bit complicated, you might want to get a past Secretary to demonstrate.
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The scripts are all in {{{ /home/other/committee/bin }}} The scripts are all in {{{ /home/other/committee/bin }}} and are part of the committee git repository.
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{{{
agenda - Allows anyone to view and add items to the current agenda
agenda-pull - Make a template for meeting minutes from the current agenda
minutes-push - Upload minutes to website and send email to ucc@
meeting-reminder - Sends a reminder of the next meeting. This should be run automatically as a cronjob
agenda.weeklyrotate - Resets the agenda. This should also be run as a cronjob
vigenda - Allows committee members to directly edit the agenda. Should only be used to insert reports.
}}}
 * `minutes-push` uploads minutes to website and sends email to ucc@.
  * Rewritten and greatly overengineered by [FVP]. It even has a number of command line options and a help page.
  .{{{
Usage: ./minutes-push [minutes.txt] [-d date] [-n] [-F] [-h]
 -h print this message
 -d date of minutes (YYYY-MM-DD)
 -n do not check minutes by opening in Firefox
 -t title of minutes (eg. AGM)
 -y permit obscenities to be published
 -F force upload and commit minutes (passes -f to $MINUTES_RECV)
}}}
  * The script runs locally and pipes the plaintext minutes to `minutes-receive` on [[Motsugo]] which does the formatting and sends the emails.
  * Once minutes are uploaded and the official email is sent, the script calls `mkagenda` with the path to the latest minutes which generates the next agenda, filling in sections such as '''Events''' and '''Previous Action Items''' automagically.
 * `agenda-pull` grabs the agenda and makes it into a template for the meeting minutes.
 * `vigenda` allows committee members to directly edit the agenda.
 * `agenda` allows non-committee members to view the agenda and add items to the end of it (which will appear in General Business).
 * `meeting-reminder` sends a reminder of the next meeting. This should be run automatically as a cronjob by the secretary.
  * Supply a day of the week and 24-hour time like so {{{./meeting-reminder Tuesday 10:00}}}.

== Windows Versions ==

[GOZ] kindly worked out how to make {{{agenda-pull}}} and {{{minutes-push}}} work under Windows. A zip file should be found at {{{/home/other/committee/bin/win-minutes.zip}}}.

If you ever change the original scripts, rebuild the zip file using {{{/home/other/committee/bin/win-minutes/make.sh}}}.
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{{{
tla - Enter a username, TLA, or full name to find out the others
account-whinge.sh (and variants) - Alter this and run it to complain at people who haven't paid up membership fees
locking.sh (and variants) - Alter this and run it to lock accounts when people still won't pay the membership fee
}}}

== Scripts in /usr/bin ==

Some scripts have symbolic links in {{{/usr/bin}}} so that you just have to type its name on motsugo or mussel to run it from anywhere (as opposed to the full path).

These are:

{{{
agenda
vigenda
tla
}}}		  * `tla` - Enter a username, TLA, or full name to find out the others
 * `account-whinge.sh` (and variants) - Alter this and run it to complain at people who haven't paid up membership fees
 * `locking.sh` (and variants) - Alter this and run it to lock accounts when people still won't pay the membership fee
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The script [[#Scripts|meeting-reminder]] will do this. Supply the day of the week and time; eg:

{{{
 ./meeting-reminder Weekday time
}}}

 * You should find and change the source email:

{{{
source_email="username"
}}}

= Cronjob =		 The script [[#Scripts|meeting-reminder]] will do send out a single email reminder.

== Cronjob ==
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 * Run this on [[motsugo]]:  * Run this on [[motsugo]] or [[mussel]] to edit your user crontab.
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  * Edit the crontab as follows lines:
   * For example, a meeting at 5PM on a Thursday afternoon could look like:
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M H * * D-4 /home/other/committee/bin/meeting-reminder Weekday H:M 0 17 * * 0 /home/other/committee/bin/meeting-reminder Thursday 17:00
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M H * * D-1 /home/other/committee/bin/meeting-reminder Weekday H:M
# 6 hour warning
M H-6 * * D /home/other/committee/bin/meeting-reminder Weekday H:M
# 1 hour warning
M H-1 * * D /home/other/committee/bin/meeting-reminder Weekday H:M

# Weekly agenda rotation
MM HH+1 * * D /home/other/committee/bin/agenda.weeklyrotate
}}}

  * Replace H and M with the hour and minute of the meeting (24 hour format)
  * Replace Weekday with the full name of the day of the week the meeting is on; eg "Tuesday"
  * Replace D with a number indicating the day of week.
  * I've shown -1, -6, +1, etc to indicate you should change the value by that number
    * Remember to wrap things around, eg: 4 days before Tuesday is Friday, so {{{D-4 == 5}}}		 0 17 * * 3 /home/other/committee/bin/meeting-reminder Thursday 17:00
}}}
  * Crontabs are incredibly confusing, note that the lines starting with `#` are comments. The other lines are formatted as a space or tab separated list of fields:
  .{{{<minute> <hour> <day of month (1-31)> <month (1-12)> <day of week (1-7)> <command>}}}
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There is a timetable script at: http://www.ucc.asn.au/cgi-bin/timetable.py
And a script to look up the results at: http://www.ucc.asn.au/cgi-bin/viewtable.py

Currently the timetable only does weekdays and only from 9:00am to 6:00pm. Someone should probably fix this.

== Organising a Meeting Time ==
 1. Add a new event to the timetable by adding it to the bottom of {{{/services/http/cgi-bin/.timetable}}} on [[motsugo]] or [[mussel]].
  *Comment out any previous events that aren't needed.
 1. Send an email to committee@ telling people to fill in the timetable with their availability.
 1. Pick the best time, and send an email to committee@ saying that this will be the new meeting time
  *Normally committee meetings run for ''at least'' one hour. It is not unusual to have two hour meetings.		 Something like [[http://whenisgood.net|WhenIsGood]] is a good way to find times that everyone (or noone) on committee is available for a meeting.
 * There is in fact an account for `[email protected]` available in `uccpass`. Ask a wheel member if you aren't sure what this means.

UCC does have a [[http://www.ucc.asn.au/cgi-bin/timetable.py|timetable script]] of its own, however it is relatively annoying to use. Look in {{{/services/http/cgi-bin/.timetable}}} for details on how to use this if you are interested.
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http://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/events/ will show the current year's events page.

 *Make sure that {{{/services/http/infobase/events/index.ucc}}} is a symbolic link to the current year's events page before editing it. Otherwise you might over write the history of previous events.

 .{{{
cd /services/http/infobase/events/
ls -al index.ucc
}}}

 .Should show something like this:
 .{{{
lrwxrwxrwx 1 matches wheel 14 Mar 7 09:40 index.ucc -> events2013.ucc
}}}
 .The important part is the {{{index.ucc -> events2013.ucc}}}.
 *If the symbolic link is in the wrong place:
  *Check that there is actually an events page with {{{ls eventsYYYY.ucc}}}
  *Copy a previous year's if there isn't:
  .{{{
    cp events2013.ucc eventsYYYY.ucc
   }}}
  *Remove the symbolic link (won't delete the page it points to)
  . {{{
      rm index.ucc
    }}}
  *Add a new symbolic link:
  .{{{
    ln -s eventsYYYY.ucc index.ucc
   }}}
 * Edit {{{eventsYYYY.ucc}}} to make it up to date. 		The current year's events page should be available [[http://wiki.ucc.asn.au/Events|on the wiki]]. It should be updated to redirect to the correct year's event page.
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The scripts do a lot of unnecessary error checking... that is why they are a lot longer than this section would suggest they need to be. The scripts do a lot of error checking... that is why they are a lot longer than this section would suggest they need to be.
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 * Just send an email to committee@   * Just send an email to `committee@ucc.asn.au`
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The seal is actually kept in the safe. The Treasurer, Vice President and President will have keys. The seal is actually kept in the safe. The Treasurer, Vice President and President will have [[KeyRegister#Safe|keys]].
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= I need more help! =

Talk to a past secretary and/or wheel member.

Overview of Duties

Constitutionally the Secretary shall perform duties as defined in the constitution, including section 16.3.

Duties as proposed under the 2014 Committee KPI Document:

  • To record all minutes of club meetings in a detailed manner and in a consistent format approved by the committee.
  • To check the UCC mailbox on a regular basis.
  • To communicate with the groups and membership of the club on behalf of the committee, including all emails to the mailing lists.
  • Advertise all UCC Events through UCC and Guild communication channels. (Mailing Lists, Facebook, Guild Weekly)

Register of members

We maintain an online database called MemberDB. We also keep paper copies of all membership forms in the top drawer of the filing cabinet for each year. It is a requirement of being an incorporation that we keep these details, so it is important to make sure all members fill in a new form, even if they are rejoining.

If someone who is not a club administrator wants to view the register, they are only entitled to see the name and postal address of other members, in which case it is best not to create a user for somebody who wants to view the register. If a member wants to view another members postal address they may ask an administrator (wheel or committee member), or if they want the entire list they must ask wheel to extract the relevant information. Other information about a person cannot be given away without the permission of that person, which requires them to either accept the club privacy policy (which doesn't exist) or for the person in question to give specific permission on a per-case basis.

Correspondence of the Club

The club has a number of communication platforms that are used by its members.

  • Email and mailing lists.
  • IRC / Discord.
  • Facebook page and group.

Most correspondence is by email. You can access ucc email at http://webmail.ucc.asn.au, or you can SSH to motsugo and run alpine, or you can forward your mail to another email address.

We have mailing lists. Most lists have archives, so you don't have to save copies. Mail sent to secretary@ should go to you, and won't be archived; forward it to committee@ or ucc@ if it is important.

You (and everyone else on committee-only@) should receive emails from mailman when a non-subscriber posts to a mailing list. Visit the URL and you can approve the message. Ask wheel or another committee member if you don't have the moderation password.

In addition to the list committee@, which anyone can subscribe to, there is a committee-only@. This is not actually a mailing list, and only the current year's committee members will get emails sent to the address. They will not be archived. Using this address is discouraged, but sometimes useful for sensitive conversations. Mostly we use it to give committee a chance to proof read important emails before they are sent.

We also have a post box with the guild. The address is: 

University Computer Club
Box 22, M300
The University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
CRAWLEY WA 6009
Australia

This page should have that and other contact information if you need to supply it.

The mail should be checked at least once a week. To check it, go to guild reception, and tell the receptionist that you are the Secretary of UCC and need to check the mail in Box 22. The boxes are at the top of the stairs to the left of guild reception.

Carrying out instructions and decisions of the Committee

This means to do things like organise clean-ups, notify people of meetings and events, contact people outside the club relating to non-financial matters, organising the AGM and SGMs, etc as decided upon by the committee.

Normally anything important that needs to be done will be discussed at a Committee meeting, and it is important that Committee knows what you are doing.

You should also volunteer to do other tasks if you can, even if they are not administration related.

Maintaining the Constitution

The constitution is at https://www.ucc.asn.au/infobase/policies/constitution.pdf.

It is also the job of the Secretary to ensure that any changes to the constitution are sent to the appropriate authorities (ie. the Guild, the Commissioner for Consumer Protection, the ACNC and any other organisations that the club may be affiliated to), and that the constitution on the website is correct and up-to-date.

Custody of Documents

This means that you get to take care of the contents everything in the filing cabinet, except for the stuff in the Treasurer's drawer. There are a lot of old books and documents which are an important part of UCC's history, and being the Secretary means that you can effectively veto the throwing out of these things.

Any member can borrow any book in the book shelves. Get them to add the details to http://wiki.ucc.asn.au/TheftBook.

Minutes

Currently we use https://demo.hedgedoc.org to take minutes, as it uses markdown and updates in realtime. See agenda.readonly.txt for the minutes template.

Once the meeting has ended and you have finished checking the minutes for formatting errors, you need to upload them to the correct places. To do this, first go to the minutes HedgeDoc that you want to save.

Click the top right menu dropdown. From the options, select "Save as Markdown." This will convert the document into a Markdown file format.

Upload to Discord

Next you must post the minutes to Discord. To do this you navigate to the #minutes channel in the UCC Discord server, upload the Markdown file and send it as an attachment.

After you have uploaded a copy of the file to Discord, rename the original file and replace the .md extension with .ucc.

Upload to the website

For this next step we have been using the program WinSCP to transfer files.

Open WinSCP and log in with your UCC account:

  • File protocol is SFTP.

  • Host name is motsugo-out.ucc.asn.au.

  • Port number is 22.
  • User name is your UCC account username.
  • Password is your UCC account password.

Locate the current year minutes folder at /services/http/infobase/committee/. If necessary, create a new minutes folder for the current year.

Drag and drop the renamed minutes file (with the .ucc extension) into the minutes folder.

Once the .ucc file is in the minutes folder, make sure the styling script is copied at the top of the document. This ensures consistent formatting and styling throughout the minutes.

The minutes are then available on the website at https://ucc.asn.au/infobase/minutes/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD.ucc.

Check carefully that you have not made any formatting errors.

  • Common issues include nested bullet points not being sufficiently indented, lists appearing all on one line, random lines of text appearing bold and in large font and so on. Read the markdown guide to fix this or just add more newlines as appropriate.

During the Meeting

Committee members have the option of writing their own reports beforehand. Encourage them to do this, since it will save you time and speeds up the meeting.

  • Update the attendance section based on who turns up at the meeting, moving the entries to the appropriate headings (Present, Late, Apologies, etc)
  • Seperate the committee members present from ordinary members present.

  • Update the lines Meeting opened/closed at HH:MM to reflect the time the meeting is opened and finally closed by the Chair.

  • The layout for all the sections of the meeting should already be in the agenda.

  • Record what people say during the meeting, and try to keep a concise record of discussions that occur.

    • In meeting minutes, refer to people by their TLA like this: [TLA]

    • Where relevant, prefix what is said by the TLA of the person who says it.
  • Note times at which members arrive/leave the meeting.

After the Meeting

  1. Put any action items decided upon during the meeting as well as any incomplete previous action items in the section Current Action Items after General Business (and after the "Meeting closed" line).

  2. Edit the minutes.
    • You may want to remove:
      • Jokes that aren't as funny as people thought at the time.
      • Swear words (although those are often just left in).
      • Snarky comments that you wrote while everyone was shouting and not paying attention to each other.
      • Offensive comments (unfortunately people do make them).
    • You should also rephrase poorly worded lines.
    • Complete anything that you didn't have time to finish noting during the meeting.
  3. Publish the minutes. You should do this as soon as possible after the meeting finishes, ideally on the same day.

General advice

  1. The President is supposed to be the chair, but if things are not on track feel free to bring people back to the current topic.
  2. You can paraphrase people's words to make them clearer and more concise.
  3. Some people think the minutes should not be humourous. Others disagree strongly.
  4. Use indenting to show sub-topics: Markdown requires at least four spaces for each level followed by a hyphen '-' and a space.

  5. In meeting minutes, refer to people by their TLA like this: [TLA]

Editing Things

Taking minutes can be done on any computer. However occasionally you might need to edit a file on one of the servers, for example the webpage, or the timetable data.

  • You can use nano or vim to do this.

    • nano(1) might be easier, just move around with the arrow keys and type. There is a list of shortcuts at the bottom that look like ^X - the ^ means to press ctrl then tap the named key.

    • If you use the vigenda script, you will need to know how the basics of vim though

      • The arrow keys move the cursor

      • vim(1) has things called "modes" for different tasks. Initially vim isn't in any mode.

        • Press i to start inserting characters

        • Press esc to go back to no mode.

        • Press a to append to the end of a line

        • Press :w to save the file

          • Add a file name if you want to save it to a different file name

        • Press :q to quit the file

          • Add a ! if you have made a change but don't want to save it

Where are the files

All of the useful committee-related directories are available on motsugo or mussel (and a few other servers). Use SSH to login to a server, or you can browse the filesystem remotely using SFTP and any decent file manager on Linux/OS X or a program such as WinSCP on Windows.

  • Important directories are:

    1. /home/other/committee - All committee related stuff. Feel free to dump things in here.

      • There is a git repository in this directory which ignores everything except for bin/. If you make any changes to committee scripts, please run git commit -a and add a descriptive message.

    2. /home/other/committee/agenda - Agenda related stuff.

    3. /home/other/committee/bin - Committee scripts

    4. /home/other/committee/minutes/<year> - Symlink to the minutes directory on the website

    5. /services/http/infobase/minutes/<year> - Where meeting minutes go

  • Note that /home on motsugo or mussel is not the same as /home on a clubroom machine

    • If you store files in /home on a clubroom machine, you can get to it from a server by replacing /home with /away. From now on /home will refer to /home as seen by a server, not a clubroom machine.

  • A useful place to upload files for other people to view is your web directory in /home/ucc/username/public-html

  • Upload and download files to and from servers with scp(1) or sftp(1).

TLA

Any member who participates in a Committee or General Meeting should have a Three Letter Acronym (TLA).

If they don't have a TLA, try and get them to choose one before the meeting. If that isn't practical (say at a General Meeting where there are 20 people without a TLA), refer to them using their full name, get them to pick a TLA later, and then replace the name with the TLA.

The TLA list is here.

It might be faster to run tla on motsugo or mussel to check TLAs.

To learn how to add new TLAs see /services/http/cgi-bin/ttdat/.tla on motsugo or mussel. Unfortunately it is a bit complicated, you might want to get a past Secretary to demonstrate.

Agenda

  • The agenda serves as a template for meeting minutes. It can be downloaded to any linux machine by using the agenda-pull script.

  • Any member may add items to the agenda with the agenda script. Committee members may edit the agenda to insert their reports directly using vigenda.

  • If Committee decides to remove or add sections from all meetings, you will need to manually edit /home/other/committee/agenda/agenda.default on motsugo or mussel.

Scripts

There are a number of scripts that automate secretarial tasks. These can be found in  /home/other/committee/bin  on motsugo or mussel.

Most of the scripts are written in bash or zsh (which is pretty similar).

If there are problems with the scripts and you can't fix them yourself, ask a wheel member.

The scripts are all in  /home/other/committee/bin  and are part of the committee git repository.

  • minutes-push uploads minutes to website and sends email to ucc@.

    • Rewritten and greatly overengineered by [FVP]. It even has a number of command line options and a help page. 
    • Usage: ./minutes-push [minutes.txt] [-d date] [-n] [-F] [-h]
 -h       print this message
 -d       date of minutes (YYYY-MM-DD)
 -n       do not check minutes by opening in Firefox
 -t       title of minutes (eg. AGM)
 -y       permit obscenities to be published
 -F       force upload and commit minutes (passes -f to $MINUTES_RECV)

    • The script runs locally and pipes the plaintext minutes to minutes-receive on Motsugo which does the formatting and sends the emails.

    • Once minutes are uploaded and the official email is sent, the script calls mkagenda with the path to the latest minutes which generates the next agenda, filling in sections such as Events and Previous Action Items automagically.

  • agenda-pull grabs the agenda and makes it into a template for the meeting minutes.

  • vigenda allows committee members to directly edit the agenda.

  • agenda allows non-committee members to view the agenda and add items to the end of it (which will appear in General Business).

  • meeting-reminder sends a reminder of the next meeting. This should be run automatically as a cronjob by the secretary.

    • Supply a day of the week and 24-hour time like so ./meeting-reminder Tuesday 10:00.

Windows Versions

[GOZ] kindly worked out how to make agenda-pull and minutes-push work under Windows. A zip file should be found at /home/other/committee/bin/win-minutes.zip.

If you ever change the original scripts, rebuild the zip file using /home/other/committee/bin/win-minutes/make.sh.

Other Scripts

  • tla - Enter a username, TLA, or full name to find out the others

  • account-whinge.sh (and variants) - Alter this and run it to complain at people who haven't paid up membership fees

  • locking.sh (and variants) - Alter this and run it to lock accounts when people still won't pay the membership fee

Meeting Reminders

The script meeting-reminder will do send out a single email reminder.

Cronjob

The Secretary is required to give four (4) days advance notice of meetings. It would be tedious to have to send an email manually every week. This is what cron is for.

  • Run this on motsugo or mussel to edit your user crontab. 

  • crontab -e
    • For example, a meeting at 5PM on a Thursday afternoon could look like: 
    • # Meeting reminders:
# 4 day warning
0 17 * * 0 /home/other/committee/bin/meeting-reminder Thursday 17:00
# 24 hour warning
0 17 * * 3 /home/other/committee/bin/meeting-reminder Thursday 17:00

    • Crontabs are incredibly confusing, note that the lines starting with # are comments. The other lines are formatted as a space or tab separated list of fields:

    • <minute> <hour> <day of month (1-31)> <month (1-12)> <day of week (1-7)>  <command>

Timetable

Something like WhenIsGood is a good way to find times that everyone (or noone) on committee is available for a meeting.

  • There is in fact an account for [email protected] available in uccpass. Ask a wheel member if you aren't sure what this means.

UCC does have a timetable script of its own, however it is relatively annoying to use. Look in /services/http/cgi-bin/.timetable for details on how to use this if you are interested.

Events

UCC Events Page

The current year's events page should be available on the wiki. It should be updated to redirect to the correct year's event page.

Facebook Events

  • Other people probably know more about these than [SZM]

  • There is a UCC Facebook Group that you should be an administrator for.

    • Once you are, you can create events there. Be sure to add a link from the UCC Events page to the Facebook one.

Guild

  • You can advertise events in Pelican or G-News, but we rarely do this
  • There is a requirement that General Meetings be added to the Guild Calendar. [SAS] and [GOZ] know how to do this.

Manual Minutes

In special cases such as a General Meeting, or when the scripts are broken, you can follow this guide for how to manually do what the scripts do.

The scripts do a lot of error checking... that is why they are a lot longer than this section would suggest they need to be.

agenda-pull

  • Run the following: 
  • scp username@motsugo:/home/other/committee/agenda/agenda ~/minutesYYYY/$(date +%F).txt

minutes-push

  • Run the following (or do the equivalent with PuTTY): 
  • scp ~/minutesYYYY/$(date +%F).txt username@motsugo:/services/http/infobase/minutes/YYYY/
  • Send an email to ucc@ with subject "Minutes of Meeting YYYY-MM-DD" and copy the minutes into the body

  • Manually edit /services/http/infobase/minutes/YYYY/index.ucc to contain a link to the new minutes file.

meeting-reminder

  • Just send an email to [email protected]

  • The script will add "Current Action Items" automatically, you can do this manually by copying from the previous meeting minutes.

The Club Seal

As an incorporated entity, UCC has a club seal which is supposedly kept in the custody of the Secretary, and used on all mail sent by the club.

The seal is actually kept in the safe. The Treasurer, Vice President and President will have keys.

Things don't work because I don't have permissions

Tell a wheel member!

I need more help!

Talk to a past secretary and/or wheel member.

uccwiki: HowToCommittee/Secretary (last edited 2024-08-26 20:42:14 by NickBannon)

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