[wplug-board] various issues from today's meeting

David Ostroske eksortso at gmail.com
Wed Aug 9 09:10:42 EDT 2006


On 8/5/06, Patrick Wagstrom <pwagstro at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> Overall I think we had a good meeting today.  I was glad to see that we
> had some new people show up, but I'm sad we couldn't make quorum.

It was a pretty good meeting. I'm glad it was lively. I'm sad, too,
but I'm also getting riled. More on that, below.

> Anyway, I think we've got some issues to talk about.
>
> First - As all of us except Chris agreed, we'll postpone the meeting for
> one week.  We'll meet on Wednesday, August 16th.  REPEAT FOR CHRIS
> TEODORSKI - We're postponing the meeting until Wednesday, August 16th.

Chris, you out there?

> Secondly - I'd like to put two issues on the docket for this meeting:
>
> 1. Committee activity - how do we get them to do stuff

We should charge them with our recommendations, make them formal.
* Set short-term goals and have them do them.
* Have point guys and point gals for each of these tasks, and
* Make them report their activities and findings.

It might also help to remind them who their committee mates are. They
could have forgotten.

> 2. Dues - everyone seemed to think that $10 may not be enough and seemed
> to be cool with $20.  Discuss.

I'm open to $20 annual dues. Somebody mentioned establishing a sponsor
pool (?) for members willing to pay needy students' dues. Has anyone
had experience with this sort of thing?


I'd like to add a third thing. Seriously, we'd better rethink the
quorum calculation and prepare for an absentee ballot to change it.
That's because even if the dues increase prevents some renewals, those
members not renewing will remain on our membership list for five
months as non-voting members, which still affects the board size and
quorum!

See the bylaws, sections 3, 4.3, and 5.4. Also, see Robert's, p. 335,
l. 29-32: "The quorum should be as large a number of members as can
reasonably be depended on to be present at any meeting, except in very
bad weather or other exceptionally unfavorable conditions."

The quorum should be large enough to prevent the Board from
controlling any given membership meeting, yes. But under the current
calculation, we've had meetings that have been close to quorum, but
not close enough. So, by reducing the quorum size by one or two
people, we can guarantee lively meetings that are official but still
representative.

I've got some ideas on how we could amend the calculations. Even
something as simple as using double the Board's prescribed size for a
membership quorum would work well (up to about 170 members). Anyone
want to consider this matter further?

> We're getting good at this meeting thing.

I agree, Patrick. I'm more confident at preparing and going into these
things than I used to be. Even with all these frustrations, I still
think we can get things done.

But we'd better prepare now, and fast, for next month, or else we'd
have to ram nominations down people's throats (RONR, p. 337, ll.
19-23), and I don't want to have to do that!

-- 
David Ostroske <eksortso at gmail.com>



More information about the wplug-board mailing list