PPNZ held it's inaugural meeting on 20 Feb, 2010. That means that today is PPNZ's first birthday! Congratulations everyone.

A few words of what PPNZ was like back then:

• The current website, forums and wiki had been around for nearly 3 months, modeled very closely on the Australian Pirate Party.
• PPNZ had 6 members, although membership was still largely meaningless as it did not yet include most of the active people.
• the Party had no resources, with the website, forums, wiki and irc channel were controlled and administered by the four mutineers.
• Some "PPNZ" resources created before the mutiny were still under other peoples control. This means that technically, we were one of several competing pirate parties in New Zealand, although we were the only one with any activity.
• Until recently before the "Orange Forums" had been recognized by PPI. They were set up by Matt in late 2008 before the general election.
• The four muntineers had met on the Orange Forums and, disappointed with the low levels of activity the Orange Forums had seen in the previous few months, took matters into their own hands by setting up a competing site.
• To my knowledge, the Orange Forums have been deleted and nothing remains from them.
• Teen Pirates was being set up, and had two members. The age limit was 18.

A few things about the inaugural meeting: (minutes here)

• Bruce aka Edison Carter aka zcat, who was the leading mutineer, was elected as "Benign Dictator", beginning the period i call the dictatorship.
• It happened on irc, on the same Saturday that i had my 21st, and yes, i took a small break from my 21st to make an appearance at the meeting. (The party didn't really get going until later, so i didn't miss anything and yes that does mean that today is also my 22nd)
• In attendance were 8 people, including the four mutineers, our present interim president and both of the Teen Pirates, however, only 2 of these people were members of PPNZ at the time.
• We could not get a bank account, so all financial transactions were in cash, of which we only had a grand total of $20, after spending $40 for the transfer of the pirateparty.org.nz domain.
• Some basic rules were set concerning the conduct of meetings and who could become a member and when.

2 years ago last night, these forums first went online, on pirateparty.net.nz.

Before that time, there were the orange forums on pirateparty.co.nz, and just a logo on pirateparty.org.nz. While the orange forums had been active in 2008 and around the 2008 elections, it had been inactive for about 6 months up to October 2009. There was no formal party associated with these.

In October 2009, with The Pirate Bay being hunted down and frequently relocating, a small amount of activity returned to the orange forums (about 6 people), largely new people just finding out about the site. The founders and admin had moved on and could not be contacted.

The decision was made: A new and improved site would be set up on a new domain. A 3rd, competing Pirate Party in New Zealand, but one that would evolve while the other 2 didn't, and one that would hopefully result in an official party.

On October 23, 2009, the "Mutiny" was declared by Edison Carter and the other mutineers. pirateparty.net.nz was registered, a server was found, this website, forum and wiki were set up, and the pirate movement in NZ started moving again.

On that day, 2 years later, the All Blacks beat Les Bleus 8-7 to become the world champions for the fist time in 20 years, so our 2nd birthday was celebrated a day or two late.

Happy Birthday PPNZ site/forum 2.0/wiki