Re: Next board meeting

Today's board meeting adjourned until 20:00 UTC 2002/12/10 failed to meet
quorum (Branden Robinson and Ean Schuessler were the only board members
who attended; Jimmy Kaplowitz, Ted Ts'o, David Graham, Scott Dier and
some others were also present (I wasn't)). It was again adjourned by
Branden Robinson to 20:00 UTC on 2002/12/17, who invited "[a]ll SPI
contributing members, and candidates for Board membership" to attend.

This message is to ensure the membership are aware of what's going on, and
Cc'ed to the board to ensure they're aware of what they're doing too [0].

In light of the apparent lack of organisation on the board's behalf,
I humbly submit the following agenda:

(1) Report by officers on status of SPI
(President: overall view on the direction the corporation
should take; Secretary: pending resolutions, membership
numbers; Treasurer: disposition of funds)

(2) Removal (for cause) of non-participating board members
and officers; resignations by officers and board members
(Joey as Vice-President; others as appropriate)

(3) Appointment of officers to vacated positions (Vice-President,
and any others necessary)

(4) Acceptance of nominations to the board, and preparation for a vote
by the membership on whether to accept the nominations

(5) Formation of a committee to consider changes to the by laws to
further the corporation's goals (eg, more membership
involvement, more effective interaction amongst the board)

(6) Other issues still before the board
(eCos membership? Tax writeoffs/OFTC? United Way? Sincere
Choice?)

(7) Other business

If the board members who still have an interest in these areas would
care to prepare a text covering the issues in each area in advance,
that would probably serve to ensure the meeting is as brief an effective
as possible: eg, the officers' reports are probably most efficiently
presented as a brief (three or four sentence) summary and a URL.

I would also suggest that the meeting be adjourned if it has not finished
by 21:00 UTC, to ensure board members can adequately plan for the time
involved.

Is there anything else the board requires before it can do its job in the
manner we all expect?

Cheers,
aj

[0] <Hydroxide> hi joey. the meeting was adjourned for another week due
to a lack of quorum
<Joey> There was no meeting nor an agenda announced to the board.
<Joey> I anticipate to be away next Tuesday
<Hydroxide> Joey: that's because we don't have a functioning Secretary
<Joey> Nah
<Hydroxide> Joey: and nobody else picked up the slack
<Joey> the secretary hasn't called for meetings for ages.
<Hydroxide> Joey: anyway, it was mentioned on spi-general by anthony
towns
<Joey> no announce -> no meeting -> no quorum
<Joey> board != spi-general
<Hydroxide> Joey: true, but one would assume that board members read
spi-general ... it is quite low-traffic, so it's not a
burden
<Joey> Hyd: No, you can't expect that.
<Hydroxide> Joey: why not?
<Joey> because it's not the board and it's not official and not
mandatory
<Joey> same as debian-private
<Joey> or even debian-devel

--
Anthony Towns <aj(at)humbug(dot)org(dot)au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

``If you don't do it now, you'll be one year older when you do.''

On Wed, Dec 11, 2002 at 03:23:19PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> (3) Appointment of officers to vacated positions (Vice-President,
> and any others necessary)
>
> (4) Acceptance of nominations to the board, and preparation for a vote
> by the membership on whether to accept the nominations

I'd suggest switching the order of these two.

> (5) Formation of a committee to consider changes to the by laws to
> further the corporation's goals (eg, more membership
> involvement, more effective interaction amongst the board)

I mentioned the possibility of doing this in a reply to John Goerzen. It
should also deal with fixing unclear or inaccurate parts of the bylaws,
as I explained in that reply. Also, we should state who is in the
Membership, Administrative, and Open Source Committees (the only ones
that exist right now AFAIK.

> I would also suggest that the meeting be adjourned if it has not finished
> by 21:00 UTC, to ensure board members can adequately plan for the time
> involved.

Can I suggest, instead, that it adjourn no later than an hour after it
begins, but in any case no later than 21:30 UTC? This is in case some
board members are late. I am suggesting this to give us the maximum
possible chance of meeting quorum.

- Jimmy Kaplowitz
jimmy(at)debian(dot)org

This is just my feedback on these items, not a statement by the board.

On Tue, 2002-12-10 at 23:23, Anthony Towns wrote:
> (1) Report by officers on status of SPI
> (President: overall view on the direction the corporation
> should take; Secretary: pending resolutions, membership
> numbers; Treasurer: disposition of funds)

Very briefly, SPI has (yet again) ceased to be active because of
non-participation by board members. While none of us are entirely
innocent, Ian Jackson and Nils Lohner have been quite inactive. Wichert
Akkerman has been intermittantly active, but more as a board member than
as a Secretary.

> (2) Removal (for cause) of non-participating board members
> and officers; resignations by officers and board members
> (Joey as Vice-President; others as appropriate)

Ian and Nils would be the first objects of discussion. I would prefer,
however, that they volentarily step down or commit to attending meetings
and processing work.

> (3) Appointment of officers to vacated positions (Vice-President,
> and any others necessary)

I haven't seen any specific nominations to positions. We should probably
discuss that.

I may be able to accept one of the President/Vice-President positions
sanely. I've been looking at getting an intern and helping with this
would be good for any young CIS student's soul. It would also make
managing the legwork more tractable.

> (4) Acceptance of nominations to the board, and preparation for a vote
> by the membership on whether to accept the nominations

I need to look into our current membership voting arrangements.
Presumably we would use the same voting infrastructure as Debian but I
don't know if any work has been done in that department.

> (5) Formation of a committee to consider changes to the by laws to
> further the corporation's goals (eg, more membership
> involvement, more effective interaction amongst the board)

This is definately needed.

> (6) Other issues still before the board
> (eCos membership? Tax writeoffs/OFTC? United Way? Sincere
> Choice?)

Each of these issues constitutes a fairly significant conversation in
and of itself. Getting the current board functional would be my first
priority.

--
_____________________________________________________________________
Ean Schuessler ean(at)brainfood(dot)com
Chief Technology Officer 214-720-0700 x 315
Brainfood, Inc. http://www.brainfood.com

On Thu, Dec 12, 2002 at 04:29:54PM -0600, Ean Schuessler wrote:
> > (6) Other issues still before the board
> > (eCos membership? Tax writeoffs/OFTC? United Way? Sincere
> > Choice?)
> Each of these issues constitutes a fairly significant conversation in
> and of itself.

If it were me (and it's not, and won't be), I'd have assigned each of
these to whoever has an interest in them, and had a report presented to
the board discussing any issues and giving a recommendation, and then
just having the report and recommendation accepted or not at the board
meeting. Board meetings aren't really places where you want to have
significant conversations; delegating, setting a deadline, and just
accepting or declining a report's recommendations is much more feasible.

Cheers,
aj

--
Anthony Towns <aj(at)humbug(dot)org(dot)au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.

``Australian Linux Lovefest Heads West''
-- linux.conf.au, Perth W.A., 22nd-25th January 2003