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Notulen ALV 28 november 2025

Members present:

Program & Approval of the Agenda

Claudia kicks off and welcomes everyone. She explains the program/agenda for this ALV. Claudia checks if everyone is OK. Everyone agrees.

Recap

Anneke shares the recap. The plan was to organise a lot of meetups (around 10). 6 meetups were actually organised, 2 cancelled. The board received quite some positive feedback about the Dark Mode conference.

Marketing & communications

Fronteers sent out 5 newsletters. According to the statistics, more than 59% of the emails were actually opened. The board decided to stop posting on X.

Checked with some people at Smashing Magazine if it was worth expanding to other social media, but according to them it was not worth the effort.

Challenges for 2026

One of the main challenges is reaching our members. Emails are not opened by almost half of the members. Social Media is also not really working for Fronteers.

There will be some changes in the volunteers team, with Josee stopping as a volunteer and together with her maybe some more volunteers might join.

Marketing what Fronteers does and the events Fronteers organises should be improved in 2026.

Plans for the website: Post more content on the website and post stuff earlier. Interviews with devs Setting up a content calendar and sticking to that for posting content.

Anneke shares slides and graphs on RSVPs, new members and activity of the members.

Activities Committee

The Activities committee needs volunteers to host/organise meetups and represent Fronteers during these meetups.

Belgium Committee

The Belgium committee has been put on ice, since all the volunteers helping Claudia have disappeared and can not be reached.

Workshops

Workshops were rebooted in 2024, but both workshops failed and were cancelled. Only a free short online workshop had some attendees. Asked for feedback from the community. Some people said they didn't hear/read about the workshops. Again an issue with communication to the members. Suggestion was to also have a longer runway for users to sign up, because they often have to check with their schedule/employer early in the year.

In 2025 we tried with Peter Kassenaar again, shorter and online for a low price. Long run for signups as suggested. Communication started in June through Social Media and newsletters. Also added it on Meetup, because the audience there is bigger. Workshop again failed, only had 1 registrant (Anneke). The workshop was cancelled 2 weeks before, Peter was frustrated that it got cancelled. After cancelling 2 or 3 people reached out asking why they couldn't register, but they were too late.

At the same time Jules Ernst also reached out for organising a meetup, because he already had some people interested. The workshop was hosted at Stichting Accessibility, so the location was free. The workshop was a big success, with even more participants than planned.

Dark Mode Conference

One reason to restart workshops was to provide something back for peoples memberships. Apparently that only works for some topics and members, so the idea was that more members were maybe waiting for another Fronteers Conference. That's how the board came up with the idea for organising a small conference (max 100), members-only. First the board wanted to do it for free, but that might mean a lot of no-shows. That's why a very small price for a ticket was set up. The budget was 10.000 euros and the organising committee looked for a venue with a certain "vibe". Two venues were interesting, but the price difference was very big. Because of that the organising committee chose De Witt in Dordrecht. Invites were sent to 137 members, with a deadline indicating when the ticket sales would open up for the rest of the public. From that only 18 people registered. Paul from Tito convinced us to still go through with it and the event was switched from members-only to open-for-public. Ticket price was changed for non-members. The organising committee informed the speakers about the situation and all but one speaker agreed to stay on board. Ended up with 55 people joining the conference. The conference was scaled down to the smaller room, which fitted perfectly. The talks were very nice, the location was good, the dinner was also good. Only the amount of visitors could have been better. There was again some feedback to improve communication and marketing, for more and better ticket sales.

Arjan says he heard a lot of nice feedback, including some absent people who would have joined, if they knew about it. Anneke adds that the conference was smaller, but what set this apart was the dinner with everyone at the venue. Christian adds that maybe a more central location would have been better, but that is just a guess. Derk-Jan asks if we want to run this again. He adds he wants to hear a lot more information about accessibility of the venue, instead of him asking for more information. Christian mentions that he thinks we added some information, but we can do way better on that part. Anneke adds that Christian and Anneke went to the venue and checked the venue's accessibility. But she agrees that the sharing of that information needs to be better. Derk-Jan wants to stress that it's a remark about the communication, not about the effort of people behind the conference. Rosita adds that this information needs to be included on the website too, because that's the first place people will look for that information.

Annual Accounts 2024

Revenue decreased, because of decreasing memberships, no job board and no conference. Purchases also decreased, because there was no conference. General expenses also decreased, because of discounts.

Findings of the Audit committee

The Audit committee looked at these finances. Everything was approved, with 1 advice to change the SBI code at the Chamber of Commerce. The board will look into it.

Similar situation for brand registration. Currently registered at Edwin's address. Changing that for the UK will cost around 1000 euros, same for the EU registration.

Michael asks if there are more benefits changing the SBI code. Jad says there are no additional benefits, but the Chamber of Commerce keeps changing these codes frequently.

Arjan says that if a change with a notary is needed, maybe it's good to also have a close look at the statutes to do that at the same time. Derk-Jan looked it up and changing the SBI code can be done for free online.

Wim checks if everyone agrees with the findings of the audit committee. The ALV agrees with the findings.

New Audit Committee

Wim checks if there are volunteers for the new audit committee. Arjan volunteers, Michael also volunteers.

Finances 2025

Fronteers Dark Mode was organised, so there will be some financial changes. No jobs posted on the job board. The negative result was mostly because of Dark Mode. Fronteers also started using a new bookkeeper, who is a bit more expensive.

Budget 2026

Memberships are projected to go down again, like the last couple of years. No expected income from the job board, if we decide to remove it. The budget for the Belgium committee was downgraded, because it was put on ice for now. The hosting budget is reduced, because of the free Netlify plan. No physical storage unit anymore, which saves us 1500 euros a year. There is some stuff remaining, like board games. The board is looking into giving that stuff away to the members. The remaining stuff is currently stored at some board members.

Plans

Fronteers plans to do another Dark Mode Conference next year too. Also 2 more accessibility workshops will be planned and are added to the budget.

Unbooked costs in the budget are upcoming costs that were not yet booked and will happen in the next couple of weeks.

Thijs circles back to the budget for 2026 and asks if we have a phone number. Christian thinks this was used for the conferences. Wim thinks this is used for the Chamber of Commerce.

Plans for next year are to organise 6 meetups, 6 social events, 6 online lunch events, 2 workshops and a new Dark Mode Conference. Another plan is to bring back the Book Club and improve the event calendar on the website, to clearly show all upcoming events.

For Dark Mode we'll start communication earlier. If ticket sales are good, we'll immediately start planning the 2027 version too, early on.

Proposals

Proposal to start "Ask the expert" sessions: open call with experts on certain subjects to answer specific questions. Michael wonders if the concept would work, if there is no "reason" to join the call if you have no question. Maybe an interview-style would work better. Derk-Jan adds that it falls or stands with preparation and the time of day. Anneke proposes to work it out a bit more and discuss this with Derk-Jan and Michael.

Filling board positions

Claudia says she will be stepping down from the board. Her personal situation has changed drastically and there is not enough time to spend on a board position at Fronteers. Wim will also step down, because his term is ending after 3 years. Claudia asks if there are members who want to apply for a general board position. Candidates for the treasurer position will have a handover from Wim who will be there for a long time to assist the new candidate. Rosita asks what a board member is. Claudia explains we do monthly meetings to discuss what is on the agenda and mostly delegate the things that need to be done. The main focus is to make Fronteers better. Wim adds that as the treasurer every month you have to check the finances and in the beginning of the year send out the invoices for the membership. Monthly it's mostly about checking and paying declarations, checking for new members or people discontinuing memberships.

Tineke asks how many board members there are. Claudia and Christian explain there are currently 5 members, with 3 remaining. Anneke explains between 3 board members there is no option to combine functions.

The ALV and Fronteers thank Claudia and Wim for all their efforts and energy they have put into Fronteers.

Annemieke adds that it would be nice for next time to have a vacancy description for these types of positions. So members can think about it before the meeting.

Wim asks if a vote is needed to have him stay on the board for the next year. No one disagrees with that, so no vote is needed for that.

Q & A

Derk-Jan shares the idea that a different meetup group has the same issues we have. They did research and it seems to be more of an issue in NL. Almost everyone is complaining about not having the social energy. He shares that maybe we can be better at adding a call-to-action to become a member at meetups. The second idea is to start inviting Front-end companies. A lot of companies have never heard of Fronteers. Approaching them proactively might work.

Rosita is wondering if Fronteers will organise the Christmas Advent Calendar. Anneke says this was done by Josee and it costs a lot of time and energy. Timewise it's probably not possible anymore, since it should start in 2 days. Maybe a shorter version would work, as Derk-Jan suggests. But then we need volunteers to organise that. Even a shorter version might be too short of time to organise that, but maybe some people might still want to make it happen. Thijs says that maybe doing this next year would also be a possibility, with less competition in January.

Christian wants to reply to Derk-Jan's ideas. Currently there are not enough good reasons to join Fronteers. We need more/better things to offer to join Fronteers as a member. Multiple people share that they became a member because of the connections, the free stuff Fronteers offer and the meetups Fronteers (co-)organises.

Tineke shares that there are 2 things she hears: it's very hard to get people to volunteer and everyone lacks time to organise things. Plus we have problems communicating. Tineke tried multiple times to volunteer, but there were no replies to her efforts. Fronteers needs good marketing and a decent list of what Fronteers needs from board members and volunteers. Tineke wants to set goals for 2026, like a proper plan for marketing and how to keep volunteers active and involved. Anneke wants to set up a meeting to kick off setting up a marketing plan. Christian proposes to do that in the next board meeting. Tineke mentions that goal 2 can be to make a description for the board member position and find a new board member.

Rosita asks if the next board meeting will be online or in-person. Anneke mentions that it will be online.

Arjan has 2 small things: there used to be a marketing committee. They can probably pick up some of the actions from the new marketing plan. Arjan liked the comment from Tineke about having lists describing volunteer tasks or board member positions.

Anneke shares that reaching the volunteers is also a challenge. Sometimes it works better to just assign a task to someone specific. Maybe brainstorming about how to assign tasks to volunteers would also be something to discuss.

Annemieke shares that she used to make a lot of marketing plans and volunteer plans, so she would like to be involved.

Derk-Jan wants to add that the number of read newsletters might be higher, because there are ways to block these trackers, especially since the recipients are mostly engineers. The only option for better statistics is to look at server statistics.

After this last remark the board members thank all the attendees for joining and close the meeting.