Fall/Winter 2023 Board Report (first draft)
The Board of PPI would like to thank all of our members for their participation and support. There were 5 Fall/Winter PPI board meeting sessions scheduled (4 completed at the time of writing). We began a once-a-month meeting schedule. All board meetings were announced on our website, by email to pp-leaders, and in various social media channels such as Discord. The board addressed the rescheduling of the GA frequently, as we were unable to reach quorum for the Summer GA. Reports from board members covered activities such as membership fee invoicing, interviews with journalists, and participation in international events. Many of our routine activities included blog writing and monitoring PPI tech. Bastian shared an article on Pirate Times and we discussed the importance of having regular publications there, but this is a project that we need to make more progress on. There are a number of projects that PPI needs assistance with, and we hope that our community will be able to support us with these issues following this meeting.
Two of the notable events PPI attended included the UNODC Cybercrime Convention in New York (attended by Keith Goldstein and Ohad Shem Tov) and the Internet Governance Forum in Kyoto (attended by Alexander Isavnin and Keith Goldstein). Carlos Polo updated us on various UN meetings that he attended and other updates from UNOG. Raman Ojha discussed the COP28 (environmental conference of the UN). We missed registration for this year’s conference, but we are working on getting PPI registered with the UNFCCC for future participation. There is another UNODC Cybercrime meeting in January 2024, as well as numerous other UN events. We will have to issue new groundspasses in January, and we encourage members to let us know if they want to attend a UN Conference.
Additional revisions to the Rules of Procedure clarified the practice of automatic delegation of votes to alternate board members in the absence of primary members. If not all 9 board members are present, then alternates replace them in order of seniority followed by voted rank. We discussed membership applications from the UK Pirate Party and the Pirate Party of Australia that will be discussed at this General Assembly. The relocation of PPI HQ is a recurring topic, as we deal with the separation of the organization between Switzerland and Belgium.
We discussed the formation of working groups for development and design, a proposal for a social media group, and one focused on artificial intelligence. We also discussed organizing a joint SCENE meeting with USPP, but so far it has not been scheduled.
Recognition was given to Bailey and Miles for their noteworthy article in Democracy Technologies. Maycow Toledo informed us about the Aaron Schwarz Day event that he was organizing with the Brazilian Pirates.
The board learned about statements from other Pirate parties on the Israel-Gaza conflict. The board released a statement of its own and communicated frequently with members about publishing statements.
Events like Pirate beer and working groups were less frequently organized. Issues with organizing events and other projects relate with conflicts between board members and difficulties of board members to arrange time. We hope that members of the board will find ways to work together collaboratively and commit more time to improving the functioning of PPI. We also hope that our members will be able to assist further with organizing events and providing human resources.
Sincerely,
The Board of PPI