Re: Efficient board meetings, revised

There's been some disagreement recently about the proper conduct of
board meetings, and the role of IRC discussion. I think the best way
to settle this would be for the board to vote to affirm and update
the `Efficient Board Meetings' resolution from last September, or, if
the board disagrees with me, to explicitly overturn it or replace it
with something else.

So, here is a draft resolution, 2004-10-15.iwj.1, which updates and
revises `Efficient Board Meetings' (2003-09-09.iwj.1).

Significant changes:

* No more last-minute agenda items.
* Explicit statement that board members are expected to participate
in email discussions etc., not just meetings.
* Some of the language toned down, and various parts rewritten.
* `Date of next meeting' (section C, para 15 [1]) deleted. There
wasn't a volunteer and the date of next meeting bit doesn't seem to
have been taking all that long recently.

[1] For reasons that are unclear the website copy of 2003-09-09.iwj.1
has different numbering than my email copy! I trust that this was
a mistake somehow. Section C para 15 is what this was in my email
copy; on the web it's the final, unnumbered, paragraph.

Ian.

2004-10-15.iwj.1 Efficient Board Meetings

A. WHEREAS

1. It is important that board meetings, which require simultaneous
presence of a quorum of the board, be short.

2. IRC discussions provide less easily read archives of discussions
than email archives, and require substantial efforts at redaction
to produce minutes.

3. IRC discussions are less accessible to people who are not available
at the time of the meeting than email.

4. IRC discussions are more prone to misunderstandings, accidental
offence, and personality clashes, than email.

5. On-line board meetings via IRC are a poor medium for
discussion for the reasons given above.

6. Board members should give due consideration to proposed decisions,
and reports, presented to the board.

B. IT IS RESOLVED THAT

7. Discussion at on-line real-time Board meetings of Software in the
Public Interest shall be limited to the minimum necessary, by the
specific measures below, and by the active cooperation of the Board
and others during the meeting.

8. The Board aims to be able, during the meeting itself, merely to
approve or decline proposals already worked out in detail in
advance.

9. Issues (other than short fixed routine items such as apologies) for
consideration by the Board at its next meeting shall be notified to
the Board, to the Secretary, and if confidentiality is not required
to the Members, at least 7 days in advance of the relevant Board
meeting. Such notification shall include the text of any report to
the Board, or a draft of any proposed resolution by the Board, as
relevant.

10. The Secretary shall include on the agenda of the meeting those
items which were notified in time, as described above. Items
arising and notified less than one week ahead of the meeting will
be postponed until the next subsequent meeting. However, if the
Secretary believes that it is necessary to consider an item
immediately, for example because it is urgent, it may still appear
on the agenda with less than 7 days' notice.

11. During the 7 days prior to the meeting, Board members shall
consider and discuss the agenda items as notified. Just as Board
members should attend Board meetings, as part of their duties as a
Board member they have a responsibility to participate actively in
the Board's email deliberations. A board member who wishes to
raise an issue regarding an agenda item should do so as soon as
possible, and in any case aim to do so within 48 hours of the
notification.

12. Where a formal report is to be made to the Board, but no specific
resolution is envisaged, the usual formal action to be taken by
the Board during the meeting will be to vote whether to accept the
report. The person making the report should avoid elaborating on
the report during the meeting; any questions or updates should
have been dealt with by email during the preceding week.

13. The meeting chair shall be responsible for enforcing the rules
above.

14. The above rules may in any case be deviated from in case of
necessity, such as external deadlines, emergencies etc.

C. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT

15. Guests will not be asked to state their name during the meeting.
Instead, the Secretary shall start logging the channel 15 minutes
before the meeting, and guests will be asked to state their name
during that period, or when they arrive if they arrive later.

D. SUPERCESSION

16. This resolution supercedes and replaces 2003-09-01.iwj.1
`Efficient Board Meetings'.

Ian.

Ian Jackson wrote:
> * Explicit statement that board members are expected to participate
> in email discussions etc., not just meetings.

You know that this is in direct conflict with your own participation
in email discussions, right? Just to be sure, I'm not missing a point...

I'm all for it, but it seems to me that social problems are tried
to be solved with technical stuff, which is bound to fail. I'd be
glad to be proven wrong, though.

> 15. Guests will not be asked to state their name during the meeting.
> Instead, the Secretary shall start logging the channel 15 minutes
> before the meeting, and guests will be asked to state their name
> during that period, or when they arrive if they arrive later.

Not sure if this is new, but using /msg to the acting Secretary should
probably be permitted as well.

Regards,

Joey

--
Reading is a lost art nowadays. -- Michael Weber

If we are not going to use IRC for interactive discussions, what is the
point of IRC? Why not then simply vote via email or a web form?

Thanks

Bruce

Ian Jackson wrote:

>There's been some disagreement recently about the proper conduct of
>board meetings, and the role of IRC discussion. I think the best way
>to settle this would be for the board to vote to affirm and update
>the `Efficient Board Meetings' resolution from last September, or, if
>the board disagrees with me, to explicitly overturn it or replace it
>with something else.
>
>So, here is a draft resolution, 2004-10-15.iwj.1, which updates and
>revises `Efficient Board Meetings' (2003-09-09.iwj.1).
>
>Significant changes:
>
> * No more last-minute agenda items.
> * Explicit statement that board members are expected to participate
> in email discussions etc., not just meetings.
> * Some of the language toned down, and various parts rewritten.
> * `Date of next meeting' (section C, para 15 [1]) deleted. There
> wasn't a volunteer and the date of next meeting bit doesn't seem to
> have been taking all that long recently.
>
>[1] For reasons that are unclear the website copy of 2003-09-09.iwj.1
> has different numbering than my email copy! I trust that this was
> a mistake somehow. Section C para 15 is what this was in my email
> copy; on the web it's the final, unnumbered, paragraph.
>
>Ian.
>
>
>2004-10-15.iwj.1 Efficient Board Meetings
>
>A. WHEREAS
>
>1. It is important that board meetings, which require simultaneous
> presence of a quorum of the board, be short.
>
>2. IRC discussions provide less easily read archives of discussions
> than email archives, and require substantial efforts at redaction
> to produce minutes.
>
>3. IRC discussions are less accessible to people who are not available
> at the time of the meeting than email.
>
>4. IRC discussions are more prone to misunderstandings, accidental
> offence, and personality clashes, than email.
>
>5. On-line board meetings via IRC are a poor medium for
> discussion for the reasons given above.
>
>6. Board members should give due consideration to proposed decisions,
> and reports, presented to the board.
>
>B. IT IS RESOLVED THAT
>
>7. Discussion at on-line real-time Board meetings of Software in the
> Public Interest shall be limited to the minimum necessary, by the
> specific measures below, and by the active cooperation of the Board
> and others during the meeting.
>
>8. The Board aims to be able, during the meeting itself, merely to
> approve or decline proposals already worked out in detail in
> advance.
>
>9. Issues (other than short fixed routine items such as apologies) for
> consideration by the Board at its next meeting shall be notified to
> the Board, to the Secretary, and if confidentiality is not required
> to the Members, at least 7 days in advance of the relevant Board
> meeting. Such notification shall include the text of any report to
> the Board, or a draft of any proposed resolution by the Board, as
> relevant.
>
>10. The Secretary shall include on the agenda of the meeting those
> items which were notified in time, as described above. Items
> arising and notified less than one week ahead of the meeting will
> be postponed until the next subsequent meeting. However, if the
> Secretary believes that it is necessary to consider an item
> immediately, for example because it is urgent, it may still appear
> on the agenda with less than 7 days' notice.
>
>11. During the 7 days prior to the meeting, Board members shall
> consider and discuss the agenda items as notified. Just as Board
> members should attend Board meetings, as part of their duties as a
> Board member they have a responsibility to participate actively in
> the Board's email deliberations. A board member who wishes to
> raise an issue regarding an agenda item should do so as soon as
> possible, and in any case aim to do so within 48 hours of the
> notification.
>
>12. Where a formal report is to be made to the Board, but no specific
> resolution is envisaged, the usual formal action to be taken by
> the Board during the meeting will be to vote whether to accept the
> report. The person making the report should avoid elaborating on
> the report during the meeting; any questions or updates should
> have been dealt with by email during the preceding week.
>
>13. The meeting chair shall be responsible for enforcing the rules
> above.
>
>14. The above rules may in any case be deviated from in case of
> necessity, such as external deadlines, emergencies etc.
>
>C. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT
>
>15. Guests will not be asked to state their name during the meeting.
> Instead, the Secretary shall start logging the channel 15 minutes
> before the meeting, and guests will be asked to state their name
> during that period, or when they arrive if they arrive later.
>
>D. SUPERCESSION
>
>16. This resolution supercedes and replaces 2003-09-01.iwj.1
> `Efficient Board Meetings'.
>
>Ian.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Spi-general mailing list
>Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
>http://lists.spi-inc.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/spi-general
>
>
>

Bruce Perens wrote:
> If we are not going to use IRC for interactive discussions, what is the
> point of IRC? Why not then simply vote via email or a web form?

Well, we can vote via mail. It's just not happening. We did that in
the past. We even tried it in the "now" but then certain people vote
a couple of days to late so that the vote doesn't pass. I do believe
that voting via mail should be preferred, but the past has shown that
it's just not happening.

Regards,

Joey

--
Reading is a lost art nowadays. -- Michael Weber

On Friday 15 October 2004 07:18 am, Ian Jackson wrote:
> There's been some disagreement recently about the proper conduct of
> board meetings, and the role of IRC discussion. I think the best way
> to settle this would be for the board to vote to affirm and update
> the `Efficient Board Meetings' resolution from last September, or, if
> the board disagrees with me, to explicitly overturn it or replace it
> with something else.

I would like to first say that I agree that we have problems, and I also
agree that we need to fix them. However, I don't think this resolution
will help, and moreover, will actually hurt as we struggle to figure
out how to comply with our own procedures in the inevitable case where
they can't be complied with stringently.

I see three main problems right now:

A. Too little participation during the month

B. Discussions getting off-topic during meetings or board members
leaving the computer

C. Too much work handled directly by the board.

Let's look at each of them.

A: Too little participation during the month

We have often seen situations where things are posted by e-mail and
receive zero comment during the month. Or, they receive no comment for
several weeks, followed by frantic activity in the hours leading up to
a meeting. E-mail voting usually does not work due to a lack of timely
participation. Even worse, board members arrive at a meeting
unprepared because so many resolutions were proposed in the hours or
minutes leading up to the meeting.

This is not news to us, and I somehow doubt that a resolution would fix
what the the efforts to plead, chide, and prod people into
participation during the month could not.

I think we have to show that we can be better at this before we adopt
any resolution mandating it.

Also, I am concerned about making discussions public. The discussions
on -board are not public. I think there is little reason to keep them
so private in many cases, and I think more of them should go on
-private or -general.

Given our current practice, your resolution would effectively close
public access to virtually all board discussion on matters. I believe
that is a grave disservice to SPI's members, who should be able to be
informed about what positions their elected representatives on the
board are taking and what questions are being asked on their behalf.
It is also a disservice to the Board, because it then lacks the insight
and input from more people.

B. Discussions getting off-topic during meetings or board members
leaving the computer

Part of this can be traced to the late posting of many resolutions.
However, it makes it difficult to conduct votes, when people aren't
paying attention when a vote is called, and it can be difficult to keep
the discussion from going off-topic sometimes. As chair of the
meetings, I try, and admit it's a skill I'm still learning.

Nonetheless, since the current board configuration was established, I
believe we have had all our meetings complete in one hour or less, or
very nearly so.

C. Too much work handled directly by the board.

The SPI bylaws envisioned an organization where much of the day-to-day
activity that the Board presently handles would instead be handled by
committees with real authority and duty to handle them. That is, I
believe, why the bylaws contemplate only quarterly Board meetings.

We have the beginnings of this process underway with the trademark,
membership, and www committees. Probably membership is farther along
than any others, as they have the authority directly to authorize new
members.

I think we should do more of this -- empower committees to handle more
business, while still being sure to keep them accountable to the Board
and the membership. It would be a way to spread the workload among
more people -- thus improving our effectiveness and reducing the amount
of work the Board must conduct at each meeting. It would also provide
a meaningful way for more people not on the Board to get involved with
SPI.

I think it's an excellent idea to empower committees to do more work,
rather than leave that work to the SPI board to micromanage. However, I
don't believe that SPI's board meetings are disfunctional.

It's difficult to get the attention of board members in little snips
across a whole month. They have committed to give you their full
attention for an hour a month, and that seems to work OK. We have made
quorum reliably except when there has been nothing on the agenda.

To give you a read of how this works elsewhere, my committment as a
director on for-profit boards is 100 hours per year per company. Any
more than that, and I would be paid at my full consulting rate.

I feel that the banter on SPI IRC board meetings is a natural part of
getting a bunch of somewhat hot-headed people together, and allows them
to blow off some of the agression that they would otherwise direct at
each other in more harmful ways.

Are you sure it's broken?

Thanks

Bruce

Bruce writes:
> Are you sure it's broken?

The meetings strike me as not all that different from in-person meetings of
a similar nature that I have attended. I don't see that anything is really
wrong.
--
John Hasler

John Hasler wrote:

>Bruce writes:
>
>
>>Are you sure it's broken?
>>
>>
>
>The meetings strike me as not all that different from in-person meetings of
>a similar nature that I have attended. I don't see that anything is really
>wrong.
>
>
The only things I can think of, which IMO aren't evidence of the process
being broken, are:

1. I */HATE /*IRC. Most folks type so slowly, it's like pushing my head
slowly through gelatine to get anything done. Actually, the SPI board is
better than most in this regard. IRC with mere mortals rather than 80
WPM-typing hackers is pure torture.

2. The IRC mechanism requires all of the players to be there at the same
time. There are time-zone difficulties. Some of us would like to
consider issues and vote at times of our own choosing, rather than one
interval that everyone compromises upon.

Thanks

Bruce

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Bruce Perens wrote:
> 1. I */HATE /*IRC. Most folks type so slowly, it's like pushing my head
> slowly through gelatine to get anything done. Actually, the SPI board is
> better than most in this regard. IRC with mere mortals rather than 80
> WPM-typing hackers is pure torture.

We *could* have meetings using ytalk. Then you don't have to wait for
everyone to press enter. ;)

- -
David "cdlu" Graham - cdlu(at)newsforge(dot)com
Guelph, Ontario - http://www.railfan.ca/

Bruce writes:
> I HATE IRC.

So do I, and I have the additional problem of having a shared dialup that I
cannot tie up arbitrarily. Occasionally listening in on an SPI meeting is
the only thing I've ever used IRC for. However, as I am not a board
member, it really doesn't matter.

> The IRC mechanism requires all of the players to be there at the same
> time.

Well, it's still far better than in-person meetings.

There may be legal considerations, too. IRC might qualify as "meeting",
but I think it quite likely that email would not.
--
John Hasler

On Fri, Oct 15, 2004 at 04:56:24PM -0500, John Hasler wrote:
> There may be legal considerations, too. IRC might qualify as "meeting",
> but I think it quite likely that email would not.

That would depend on the bylaws.

--
Raul

I wrote:
> There may be legal considerations, too. IRC might qualify as "meeting",
> but I think it quite likely that email would not.

Raul writes:
> That would depend on the bylaws.

It may also depend on state charter law.
--
John Hasler

Bruce Perens wrote:
> I think it's an excellent idea to empower committees to do more work,
> rather than leave that work to the SPI board to micromanage. However, I
> don't believe that SPI's board meetings are disfunctional.

They're probably not disfunctional, but they are at least suboptimal
and difficult to handle (at least for me).

Committees are good if they do the work conciously and report to the
board regularly.

> I feel that the banter on SPI IRC board meetings is a natural part of
> getting a bunch of somewhat hot-headed people together, and allows them
> to blow off some of the agression that they would otherwise direct at
> each other in more harmful ways.
>
> Are you sure it's broken?

The problems John outline still exist, for example:

- people unprepared due to late resolutions and stuff
- people chatting offtopic due to.. -------"--------
- people don't discuss issues/resolutions via mail before

Regards,

Joey

--
Unix is user friendly ... It's just picky about its friends.

John Hasler wrote:
> Bruce writes:
> > Are you sure it's broken?
>
> The meetings strike me as not all that different from in-person meetings of
> a similar nature that I have attended. I don't see that anything is really
> wrong.

I do see a difference. In RL you usually manage that no more than two people
are speaking at the same time, except for a riot. On IRC, usually five people
are talking at the same time...

Regards,

Joey

--
Unix is user friendly ... It's just picky about its friends.

martinMartin Schulze writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> Ian Jackson wrote:
> > * Explicit statement that board members are expected to participate
> > in email discussions etc., not just meetings.
>
> You know that this is in direct conflict with your own participation
> in email discussions, right? Just to be sure, I'm not missing a point...

I know that some people have criticised me for not participating
enough in between meetings. Me starting this discussion about board
decision processes is an attempt to improve my participation; the item
in my resolution is a promise by me to do better and I hope a
clarification of others' understanding of what is required.

> I'm all for it, but it seems to me that social problems are tried
> to be solved with technical stuff, which is bound to fail. I'd be
> glad to be proven wrong, though.

I'm trying to solve social problems with social stuff, I think:
mainly, reminding people of what's expected and/or getting us to have
a discussion about what expected.

> > 15. Guests will not be asked to state their name during the meeting.
> > Instead, the Secretary shall start logging the channel 15 minutes
> > before the meeting, and guests will be asked to state their name
> > during that period, or when they arrive if they arrive later.
>
> Not sure if this is new, but using /msg to the acting Secretary should
> probably be permitted as well.

That would be very sensible. Depending on the outcome of our
discussions about IRC meetings, etc., I'll include the suggestion in a
revision of my `Efficient Board Meetings' resolution.

Ian.

Bruce Perens writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> 1. I */HATE /*IRC. Most folks type so slowly, it's like pushing my head
> slowly through gelatine to get anything done. Actually, the SPI board is
> better than most in this regard. IRC with mere mortals rather than 80
> WPM-typing hackers is pure torture.

This is my problem with IRC board meetings for anything but the formal
confirmation of decisions etc. For serious discussion, where it
actually matters, I think IRC is very poor. The problems stem from
the real-time, text-mediated nature of the medium.

I'd guess that most of us can read (with an ordinary level of
attention to detail) at perhaps 500 WPM and type at maybe 50 WPM, very
roughly. That means that we can read perhaps somewhere around 5..20
times faster than we can type, even if we don't have to think about
what we're saying or do any research.

This means that if we're having a conversation in an IRC meeting, and
we're mainly waiting for one person to speak, all of us are reading
about 10% of the time; 90% of the time is spent just waiting.

This leads to a number of `workarounds':

Sometimes people try to do something else in the resulting small gaps.
This makes the problem better for them, but of course worse for
everyone else as their small lapses of attention can be noticed and
cause delays etc.

Often, people abbreviate what they say, or hurry to try to get it out
faster. This makes their utterances harder to follow, sometimes
ambiguous, and less well thought out.

Sometimes we have several conversations at once, on different topics.
This makes the discussion confusing; it also means that people who are
reading more closely, following references, and/or perhaps having
difficulty with the somewhat clipped English (see above) will lag
behind and either lose track of the conversation or have to explicitly
call for a pause (which is socially awkward).

A problem related to those is that, in an IRC conversation, everyone
has to be participating at the same rate because it's fully
synchronous. There is no easy facility for someone who wants to think
about a question more deeply, or do some background reading, to do
so.

To illustrate the difference, imagine if we were trying to resolve
this very disagreement in an IRC meeting. How could we find the time
to type out long, thought-out arguments such as those we're seeing in
this thread, let alone find the time to sleep on them, consider the
best way to put them and all the relevant facts, etc. ?

Some of these problems exist in in-person meetings too, but they are
less severe. Most serious in-person meetings of organisation boards
/are/ backed up by comprehensive documentation and writing up of
proposals in advance - including explicit rules about how much time
committee members are expected to have to consider the issues. And,
when the meeting is actually taking place, the full range of in-person
cues (body language, mid-sentence pauses, ums, interruptions, catching
of eyes, etc.) is available to provide much higher-bandwidth output
from each individual than most of us can achieve via a keyboard.

I would like to see SPI's meetings operate more like the meat-life
meetings of serious organisations: we should do our preparing of
position papers, discussings of our arguments, and attempts to
persuade, drafting of resolutions, etc., offline. Only the most
urgent or contentious issues should remain for undigested discussion
during the meeting - and even for contentious issues, ideally, the
meeting provides the venue for the formal settlement of the dispute
one way or the other, via a vote.

I also find IRC is fine for more informal settings. If what you
want is to quickly get a high-interaction-rate discussion amongst a
few people, and exact questions of what was agreed and making sure
everyone is carried along by the discussion are less important, then
IRC can be a very good alternative to phone calls. So I would be very
happy (for example) to schedule a more interactive flame-fest^W
discussion with David Graham and others, so that we can try to
understand each other better and maybe shortcut some of these
arguments. But, I think that for formal decisionmaking IRC should be
used not because it is a good medium for discussion, but because it
(a) meets the requirements that we have a _meeting_ as opposed to an
exchange of memos and (b) has some value in being able to chivvy
people to turn up and/or chastise them if they come unprepared or
without sufficient participation in advance.

Ian.

Bruce Perens writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> If we are not going to use IRC for interactive discussions, what is the
> point of IRC? Why not then simply vote via email or a web form?

This is a good question. I have two answers:

* IRC meetings provide a hook for promoting active participation by
the board members. I agree that this participation hasn't been ideal
(including by me) but I think that strengthening the meeting process -
in particular, the preparations for the meeting - can meet this goal.

* Various legalities mean that we have to have a meeting. It's
unclear under what circumstances a signed exchange of emails would
consititute a legitimate resolution of the board, since the bylaws
provide for acts of the board only by board meetings. The current
email voting process resolutions are designed with this ambiguity in
mind: they ensure that a resolution that any member of the board
disagrees with isn't considered approved, so that the corporation
isn't put in the position of acting on a resolution that a board
member disagrees with and which a court might later decide was void.

Ian.

Bruce Perens writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> Are you sure it's broken?

Well, currently the official position as approved by the board is
2003-09-09.iwj.1, which has much of the same content as my proposed
new resolution. There are four things wrong with the status quo that
I'm trying to help fix with my new resolution:

* Things are being put on the agenda of meetings at very short notice,
so that there isn't time to consider/discuss them properly. The
current `Efficient Board Meetings' merely says `there ought to have
been at least a week or so for discussion by email' which I think
needs strengthening so that we _actually_ get that week of discussion.

* Some people, myself included, aren't participating enough on the
email lists in between meetings. I'm trying to set new expectations
with my new resolution. (And of course I'll try to meet those
expectations myself.)

* The currently standing board decision in 2003-09-09.iwj.1 is not
being followed. Several times recently items have made it onto the
agenda of board meetings that have _not_ been accompanied by a
suitable resolution. Reports are being made in an ad-hoc
while-we-wait way. I want the current board to reaffirm that this
isn't what's supposed to be happening.

* Some board members disagree with 2003-09-09.iwj.1 and are raising
this at meetings when I try to get people to do as it says. I think
the right way to clear the air is to vote to reaffirm, or abolish, the
Efficient Board Meetings resolution. That way we can get on with the
meetings rather than argue acrimoniously about procedure.

Of course we'll all agree that there are other things wrong with the
status quo, but to misquote RMS, this resolution doesn't try to solve
/all/ of the world's problems :-).

Thanks,
Ian.

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, Ian Jackson wrote:
> This is my problem with IRC board meetings for anything but the formal
> confirmation of decisions etc. For serious discussion, where it
> actually matters, I think IRC is very poor. The problems stem from
> the real-time, text-mediated nature of the medium.

At meetings where discussion has not been trampled by people who would
rather be doing something else, the discussions have proven productive.
A lot of work has come out of SPI board meeting-time discussions, and it's
disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

> I'd guess that most of us can read (with an ordinary level of
> attention to detail) at perhaps 500 WPM and type at maybe 50 WPM, very
> roughly. That means that we can read perhaps somewhere around 5..20
> times faster than we can type, even if we don't have to think about
> what we're saying or do any research.

I'm fairly confident that I can neither read at 500 wpm nor be limited to
writing at 50. There's also a problem in this formula that it assumes that
you are only reading what you yourself type and noone else is there. 9
people typing at 50 words per minute is 450 words per minute which is
close to your 500 word per minute reading estimate.

> This means that if we're having a conversation in an IRC meeting, and
> we're mainly waiting for one person to speak, all of us are reading
> about 10% of the time; 90% of the time is spent just waiting.

I also disagree with the assertion that 90% of the time is spent waiting,
as whatever time *is* remaining where you're neither reading nor writing
should be spent thinking about the issues being discussed. I don't believe
it's beneficial for anyone to be twiddling their thumbs.

> This leads to a number of `workarounds':
>
> Sometimes people try to do something else in the resulting small gaps.
> This makes the problem better for them, but of course worse for
> everyone else as their small lapses of attention can be noticed and
> cause delays etc.

It's a self-perpetuating problem. If one person turns away for a moment
and the others wait for them, the first comes back and finds everyone
waiting and leaves again, others leave because they're waiting... If noone
stopped paying attention, noone would stop paying attention. It's one of
those amazing twists of logic.

> Often, people abbreviate what they say, or hurry to try to get it out
> faster. This makes their utterances harder to follow, sometimes
> ambiguous, and less well thought out.

E-mail is just the opposite, mind you, where everyone takes hours or days
to reply in often verbose lengthly emails that certainly not everyone
reads.

> Sometimes we have several conversations at once, on different topics.
> This makes the discussion confusing; it also means that people who are
> reading more closely, following references, and/or perhaps having
> difficulty with the somewhat clipped English (see above) will lag
> behind and either lose track of the conversation or have to explicitly
> call for a pause (which is socially awkward).

This is contradictory again. You state both that the meetings are too slow
and you lose people and too fast.. and you lose people. In short, we just
lose people a lot, which flies in the face of the full-attendance
productive meetings we've had lately.

> A problem related to those is that, in an IRC conversation, everyone
> has to be participating at the same rate because it's fully
> synchronous. There is no easy facility for someone who wants to think
> about a question more deeply, or do some background reading, to do
> so.

Except to, as is often done, request deferral.

> To illustrate the difference, imagine if we were trying to resolve
> this very disagreement in an IRC meeting. How could we find the time
> to type out long, thought-out arguments such as those we're seeing in
> this thread, let alone find the time to sleep on them, consider the
> best way to put them and all the relevant facts, etc. ?

If this discussion were taking place during a meeting it would prove that
the resolution was counter-productive. If it wasn't, it would prove that
it isn't necessary.

> Some of these problems exist in in-person meetings too, but they are
> less severe. Most serious in-person meetings of organisation boards
> /are/ backed up by comprehensive documentation and writing up of
> proposals in advance - including explicit rules about how much time
> committee members are expected to have to consider the issues. And,
> when the meeting is actually taking place, the full range of in-person
> cues (body language, mid-sentence pauses, ums, interruptions, catching
> of eyes, etc.) is available to provide much higher-bandwidth output
> from each individual than most of us can achieve via a keyboard.

I, for one, am far more eloquent and succinct through my fingers than I
ever have been or will be in person, as anyone who has met me can attest.

In-person meetings *are* backed up as you say, yes. As are ours.

And they both have something else in common:

They discuss the issues before them.

That's right, even at in-person meetings issues are discussed, not just
voted on. It's an integral part of a meeting. Without discussions,
meetings would be utterly and completely pointless. We could just open the
channel with a votebot and people could come by and !vote yes or !vote no
over the course of the day and we could call that our meeting.

I've hardly ever been to an in-person meeting of anything that's taken
less than 2 or 3 hours precisely *because* they are willing to sit down
and discuss what's in front of them.

SPI board members have an irrational urge to be finished whatever meeting
we have in under an hour, whether or not we're done. If we can finish our
meetings in 30 minutes, great! If it takes us 2 hours, so be it! That's
what being a board is all about.

> I would like to see SPI's meetings operate more like the meat-life
> meetings of serious organisations: we should do our preparing of
> position papers, discussings of our arguments, and attempts to
> persuade, drafting of resolutions, etc., offline. Only the most
> urgent or contentious issues should remain for undigested discussion
> during the meeting - and even for contentious issues, ideally, the
> meeting provides the venue for the formal settlement of the dispute
> one way or the other, via a vote.

A vote following a discussion. The discussion is important.

> I also find IRC is fine for more informal settings. If what you
> want is to quickly get a high-interaction-rate discussion amongst a
> few people, and exact questions of what was agreed and making sure
> everyone is carried along by the discussion are less important, then
> IRC can be a very good alternative to phone calls.

IRC is also good for this, yes.

> So I would be very happy (for example) to schedule a more interactive
> flame-fest^W discussion with David Graham and others, so that we can try
> to understand each other better and maybe shortcut some of these
> arguments. But, I think that for formal decisionmaking IRC should be
> used not because it is a good medium for discussion, but because it (a)
> meets the requirements that we have a _meeting_ as opposed to an
> exchange of memos and (b) has some value in being able to chivvy people
> to turn up and/or chastise them if they come unprepared or without
> sufficient participation in advance.

The requirement for a meeting is not some abstract concept cast upon us by
an uncaring government, but given to us because it is an important
mechanism in the process of making decisions.

I'm in no way advocating only using IRC meetings, but I disagree
wholeheartedly and completely with the assertion that IRC meetings are not
a place for discussion.

---
David Graham, SPI Secretary
cdlu(at)spi-inc(dot)org D5F45889

On Sat, Oct 16, 2004 at 11:30:49PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> * Various legalities mean that we have to have a meeting. It's

Just to clarify: yes, we must have a meeting, but we are only mandated
to have actual meetings quarterly -- that is, once every three months.

The bylaws prescribe the business that is to be conducted at those
meetings, which, I will note, we have not generally followed very
well.

There is also one annual meeting on July 1 each year, and our bylaws
mandate that it be held "electronically".

The meeting once a month thing is actually of somewhat questionable
validity itself. The only mechanism for that in the bylaws is that of
special meetings, which "may be called by the President when he deems
it in the best interest of the organization or by two members of the
board. Notices of such meeting shall be mailed to all members at
their addresses as they appear in the membership roll book at least
two weeks but not more than 30 days before the scheduled date set for
such special meeting. Such notice shall state the reasons that such
meeting has been called and the business to be conducted." Which we
also have not really followed to the letter, and that ought to be
fixed too. If we really are to have these monthly meetings, we ought
to amend the bylaws to recognize them as normal meetings, or comply
with the special meetings procedure.

Also, if you are to consider an e-mail vote a "meeting", you should be
aware that the bylaws would require this 2-week advance notice prior
to the vote, unless it happens to be a quarterly meeting. Therefore I
think attempts to call e-mail voting a "meeting" are rather flimsy.

-- John

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I hereby propose the following Amendment 2004-10-18.dbg.1 to Resolution
2004-10-15.iwj.1:

- - - - - - - -
Amendment 2004-10-18.dbg.1:

Sections A, B, and C are stricken from Resolution 2004-10-15.iwj.1. The
Section D header is removed. Paragraph 16 is renumbered to paragraph 1 and
read as follows

1. "Resolution 2003-09-01.iwj.1: Efficient Board Meetings" is cancelled.

Thus the entire resolution shall read:

Resolution 2004-10-15.iwj.1: Efficient Board Meetings

1. "Resolution 2003-09-01.iwj.1: Efficient Board Meetings" is cancelled.
- - - - - - - -

Original resolution follows:

> 2004-10-15.iwj.1 Efficient Board Meetings
>
> A. WHEREAS
>
> 1. It is important that board meetings, which require simultaneous
> presence of a quorum of the board, be short.
>
> 2. IRC discussions provide less easily read archives of discussions
> than email archives, and require substantial efforts at redaction
> to produce minutes.
>
> 3. IRC discussions are less accessible to people who are not available
> at the time of the meeting than email.
>
> 4. IRC discussions are more prone to misunderstandings, accidental
> offence, and personality clashes, than email.
>
> 5. On-line board meetings via IRC are a poor medium for
> discussion for the reasons given above.
>
> 6. Board members should give due consideration to proposed decisions,
> and reports, presented to the board.
>
> B. IT IS RESOLVED THAT
>
> 7. Discussion at on-line real-time Board meetings of Software in the
> Public Interest shall be limited to the minimum necessary, by the
> specific measures below, and by the active cooperation of the Board
> and others during the meeting.
>
> 8. The Board aims to be able, during the meeting itself, merely to
> approve or decline proposals already worked out in detail in
> advance.
>
> 9. Issues (other than short fixed routine items such as apologies) for
> consideration by the Board at its next meeting shall be notified to
> the Board, to the Secretary, and if confidentiality is not required
> to the Members, at least 7 days in advance of the relevant Board
> meeting. Such notification shall include the text of any report to
> the Board, or a draft of any proposed resolution by the Board, as
> relevant.
>
> 10. The Secretary shall include on the agenda of the meeting those
> items which were notified in time, as described above. Items
> arising and notified less than one week ahead of the meeting will
> be postponed until the next subsequent meeting. However, if the
> Secretary believes that it is necessary to consider an item
> immediately, for example because it is urgent, it may still appear
> on the agenda with less than 7 days' notice.
>
> 11. During the 7 days prior to the meeting, Board members shall
> consider and discuss the agenda items as notified. Just as Board
> members should attend Board meetings, as part of their duties as a
> Board member they have a responsibility to participate actively in
> the Board's email deliberations. A board member who wishes to
> raise an issue regarding an agenda item should do so as soon as
> possible, and in any case aim to do so within 48 hours of the
> notification.
>
> 12. Where a formal report is to be made to the Board, but no specific
> resolution is envisaged, the usual formal action to be taken by
> the Board during the meeting will be to vote whether to accept the
> report. The person making the report should avoid elaborating on
> the report during the meeting; any questions or updates should
> have been dealt with by email during the preceding week.
>
> 13. The meeting chair shall be responsible for enforcing the rules
> above.
>
> 14. The above rules may in any case be deviated from in case of
> necessity, such as external deadlines, emergencies etc.
>
> C. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT
>
> 15. Guests will not be asked to state their name during the meeting.
> Instead, the Secretary shall start logging the channel 15 minutes
> before the meeting, and guests will be asked to state their name
> during that period, or when they arrive if they arrive later.
>
> D. SUPERCESSION
>
> 16. This resolution supercedes and replaces 2003-09-01.iwj.1
> `Efficient Board Meetings'.

- ---
David Graham, SPI Secretary
cdlu(at)spi-inc(dot)org D5F45889

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[I don't see the point in CCing the private -board list when mailing the
public -general list, which every Board member should read.]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2004 at 12:53:09AM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Bruce Perens writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> > Are you sure it's broken?
>
> Well, currently the official position as approved by the board is
> 2003-09-09.iwj.1, which has much of the same content as my proposed
> new resolution. There are four things wrong with the status quo that
> I'm trying to help fix with my new resolution:
>
> * Things are being put on the agenda of meetings at very short notice,
> so that there isn't time to consider/discuss them properly. The
> current `Efficient Board Meetings' merely says `there ought to have
> been at least a week or so for discussion by email' which I think
> needs strengthening so that we _actually_ get that week of discussion.

If the Board hasn't had time to do necessary pre-meeting cogitation over
something that's been added to the agenda at the last minute, we have a
remedy:
Someone moves to shelve the item until the next meeting.

Either the item will be discussed sufficiently on the lists in the interim
or it won't. If it isn't, maybe it didn't need to be on the agenda in the
first place, or was a bad fit for the Board, and should be handled by a
committee or a particular officer.

> * Some people, myself included, aren't participating enough on the
> email lists in between meetings. I'm trying to set new expectations
> with my new resolution. (And of course I'll try to meet those
> expectations myself.)

To be frank it's been a long time since I've seen you put a significant
effort into anything *but* attempts to reform our IRC discussions.

> * Some board members disagree with 2003-09-09.iwj.1 and are raising
> this at meetings when I try to get people to do as it says. I think
> the right way to clear the air is to vote to reaffirm, or abolish, the
> Efficient Board Meetings resolution.

I agree. I'd vote in favor of abolishing it in favor of continuing more or
less as we have since the last Board elections.

> That way we can get on with the meetings rather than argue acrimoniously
> about procedure.

I doubt that will follow. You, for instance, will probably continue to be
dissatisfied with any procedure that doesn't service your goal of a very
low quota for time spent in IRC.

--
G. Branden Robinson, Deputy Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
branden(at)deadbeast(dot)net
http://www.spi-inc.org/

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 03:25:13PM -0400, David Graham - SPI Secretary wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I hereby propose the following Amendment 2004-10-18.dbg.1 to Resolution
> 2004-10-15.iwj.1:
>
> - - - - - - - -
> Amendment 2004-10-18.dbg.1:
>
> Sections A, B, and C are stricken from Resolution 2004-10-15.iwj.1. The
> Section D header is removed. Paragraph 16 is renumbered to paragraph 1 and
> read as follows
>
> 1. "Resolution 2003-09-01.iwj.1: Efficient Board Meetings" is cancelled.
>
> Thus the entire resolution shall read:
>
> Resolution 2004-10-15.iwj.1: Efficient Board Meetings
>
> 1. "Resolution 2003-09-01.iwj.1: Efficient Board Meetings" is cancelled.
> - - - - - - - -

I second the above resolution.

--
G. Branden Robinson, Deputy Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
branden(at)deadbeast(dot)net
http://www.spi-inc.org/