End Q4/25 Mautic Council meeting

Attendees

Chair: Dominique

Note taker: Prateek Jain

• Ruth Cheesley

• Dominique De Cooman

• Adrian Schimpf

• Jan Linhart

• Ekke Guembel

Items for agenda this month

1.  Review and accept previous meetings notes

   1. Ekke and Jan +1.

2. Status per team

   1. Community: 

   • MautiCon - 2025 is done and vids coming, in person only next year, monthly workshop instead of online event. Most sponsors have committed again; likely same venue; working to confirm it and re-approach past declines

   • Reviving the team (Ruth leading) - to make roles very clear and make a call for volunteers, 

   • Ambassador program getting rolling (Ruth leading)

3. Product:

   • Symfony 7.4 LTS update broke production due to unlocked dependencies; issue resolved; released RC2; targeting stable release on Jan 20.

   • Many new QA contributors are testing but lack the Mautic context

   • Rahul to lead in Dec/Jan

3. Marketing:

   • Marketing is driving little traffic; but content engagement is good

   • Working on improving email workflows

   • More effort planned for promoting and recognizing community contributors.

4. Financial Update

   1. Acquia is not continuing the sponsorship, and Dropsolid is also lowering the sponsorship tier.

   2. Overall impact so far: at least −$40k to the 2025 budget, possibly more.

   3. Revenue from Mautic trials has flatlined

   4. Proposed cost cuts: Ruth to drop from 5 to 4 days/week, keep Barsha as a contractor but offer Medical Insurance (~$100-$200), cancel planned developer hire (~9k)

   5. Immediate action: agree to enact the level zero restructuring effective Jan 1 (effectively now).

   6. Financial Recovery Document - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O5Cg3xVN23OiNe76epl0goH6TJJeR2AeVo5wFmn6k8E/edit?usp=sharing

   7. Income:  budget is based on renewals and already-committed sponsors

      • Trials revenue: set to almost zero due to low confidence in future sales.

      • ELTS (extended support) for Mautic 5: forecasted very conservatively at $3k.

      • Certification income: modeled as an average of $250/month

      • Mautic Cash Flow Sheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-TdZI3HtxbSCIpqQwDGOSqnZgewSUZZuhZwO4Z3Ah3Q/edit?usp=sharing

      • Plan to present this lean budget at the General Assembly

      •  If the revenue gap increases, further cuts for deeper contingencies are proposed in the expenses in the document above.

   8. Dominique asked whether Mautic should explore joining another open source association vs. staying independent and just scaling back staff.

      • Not sure of the real benefits it would bring, especially on the financial side

      • Agreement to treat this as an option later, not a current action, ensuring any path preserves brand and independence

5. AI tokens

   •  GitHub Actions were blocked during security releases due to hitting the private repo minutes

   • The forum issue was from enabling automatic translations

   • Gemini can be used within Mautic.org

6. Formal roles for the council

   1. Ruth proposed introducing formal council roles: chair (1-year term, elected), treasurer (oversees finances and approves expenses), and secretary (handles meeting/admin logistics)

   2. Selection could be by member nominations with opt-outs and most votes, or volunteers stepping up.

   3. Action - Suggestion to first define the roles, then ask who’s open to each;

   4.  Adrian said he likes the idea of having defined roles because it gives everyone a clearer sense of their job on the council.

   5. Adrian asked why team leads are not also part of the council (or vice versa)

      1. Ekke responded that the earlier idea was to have lightweight liaisons: one council member per team who, once per quarter or per council meeting, checks in with the team lead to see what’s new.

      2. Ruth said team leads are usually people who want to get things done and are strong contributors, but they often don’t have broader strategic or organizational leadership experience.

   6. Proposal to have council-owned strategic initiatives with named leads to drive focus.

   7. Action - Ruth will draft a formal proposal to introduce three council roles: chair, treasurer, and secretary.

   8. The council will review and likely decide on this in the January meeting

   9. Ekke suggested that council members should reach out and find others to lead initiatives (like AI) and bring in more corporate members.

7. Report for General Assembly

   1. Action - Ekke will take this on. Prateek will share how he did it last year. https://community.mautic.org/assemblies/general-assembly/f/25/proposals/182 last year's report here.

   2.  Last year Google Doc report shared by Prateek - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t35OaXMHJQaw1L0kttanmkENo4mAGKPgBvYvjE6DjrY/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.2urwo2ik6n45

8. Ruth's absence 

   1.  Ruth has been documenting all her ongoing tasks in a community management repository so others can cover while she is away.

   2. https://github.com/mautic/community-management/blob/main/Project%20Lead/Project%20Lead%20tasks.md

   3.  Ruth has pre‑planned membership renewals and suggests joint 1:1s around March, so handovers are smooth

   4. Ruth will also set up a “Ruth AI” as a first point of help

   5. Action - Each council member to review the repo and choose which of the seven task areas they will take on during their absence.

9. Meetings for Next Year:

   1. Don’t have dates yet for next council meetings.

   2. Action - Plan is to have Ioana send Doodle polls to the council; -   One meeting at the beginning of each quarter; One meeting at the end of each quarter

10. Pricing Tiers based on Big Mac:

    1. Concern raised by Adrian - services that are marketed/instance location vs company HQ, to prevent undercutting across countries. ELTS priced by HQ lets low-cost regions resell to high-cost markets at a margin; the suggestion is to base ELTS on instance/customer location, keep memberships by HQ.

    2. ELTS discounts depend on membership tier (community, growth, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond), not country tiers.

    3. Agreed stance: keep current HQ-based approach, add guidance discouraging cross-country arbitrage, and only enforce stricter rules if abuse appears. Agreed to keep it simple unless sales and abuse grow. Action: Update website page to reflect.

    4. Jan leans toward fairness and supports Adrian’s idea