[pp.int.general] PPI conference on 16th-18th April 2010

[Patrick Mächler]

Dear Pirates,

The PPI conference will take place on 16-18th April 2010 in Brussels

- We expect 2 delegates per nation to exercise voting power. For
EU-based pirate party delegates we can provide free entrance; however
due to the nature of the funding, delegates from non-EU-based parties
will likely have to cover their expenses on their own budget. More
details on the financing will be announced when we have more
information (hopefully before the end of January).
- As it is difficult to get a the space to host hundreds of pirates
and we have limited financial resources there may have to be a limit
on the number of guest pirates from each party.

- One of the two days will be used for meeting NGO's
- The other day will be used for electing a PPI board and deciding on
formal statutes.
- We need your help to make this possible.
- We need public speakers for seminaries and a call for papers.

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Pirates needed
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There will be 2 task forces concerned with the preparations.

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Statutes TF
-----------------
This group will be dealing with drafting a set of statutes for PPI. It
is likely that there will be different ideas what the best solution
should be and so several different drafts will be made.
In the end this should not be up to the taskforce to decide, but
rather up to the delegates that will have ballots on this at the
conference.

There will be two almost distinct sections of the statutes;
a) details of how PPI should work
b) legal aspects required for an international association

If you are interested in helping out, please drop a mail to
statutes-tf at pp-international.net

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Conference TF
-----------------
This group will be responsible for setting up and running the
conference. It will be in charge of all administrative and
infrastructural tasks concerning the conference. It would be helpful
if those involved had some familiarity with Brussels.

If you are interested in helping out, please drop a mail to
conf-tf at pp-international.net

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Board members
-----------------
Apart from the taskforces mentioned above, during the conference there
will be an election on all board positions (which will be formally
defined in the statutes). Some of the current coreteam members will
apply for re-election, some might not and so it would be great if we
had some viable candidates for these elections. Candidates should
bring along quite some experience in working voluntarily and a lot of
motivation.

If you are interested, for now please visit
http://int.piratenpartei.de/PPI_board_candidates_2010

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Ideas needed
==========

We are particularly interested in hearing what ideas pirates and PPs
have about PPI. In particular, we would like to know what people want
or expect from PPI, how it should operate and what functions it should
have. (We are aware that some parties have proposed starting an
internal work group on these sort of issues, but think it would be
best if we all worked together on this.)

Just a note to make it clear: In our sense the name PPI stands for
"Pirate Parties International", not "Pirate Party International". Both
have been used in different circumstances and we would like to remove
any confusion about this, e.g. for the sake of corporate identity. The
original idea behind PPI was not that it would be a "party", but a NGO
- an umbrella organization for all pirate parties around the world and
synergizes their efforts. We feel that "Pirate Parties International"
makes this more obvious.
Thus we'd like to ask whether there are any objections if from now on
we stick with "Pirate Parties International" and discourage the usage
of "Pirate Party International" (?)

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Bank account
==========

The bank account at Triodos in Brussels in the name of PPI has now
finally been opened.
The IBAN is: BE08 5230 8035 8313
The BIC is: TRIOBEBB
Currently Nicolas Sahlqvuist is the only person with full access to it.
Patrick Mächler and Samir Allioui are mentioned as co-presidents of
PPI in the paperwork; they bear responsibility, but do not have direct
access to the account.

---
sincerely in the name of the PPI coreteam
pat