[wplug-board] Todays meeting: the good, the bad, and the ugly

[Bill Moran]

Chris Teodorski <chris at teodorski.com> wrote:

> In all seriousness --
> 
> Perhaps we select someone as a Conductor -- who conducts the meetings 
> and ensures that things move smoothly on time and stay on track.  
> Unfortunately that person has to be comfortable being "The Man".
> Maybe that is the role of the Chair and maybe it's not -- Perhaps it 
> would also be the role of the conductor to be sure that the secretary 
> will have the proper documents -- simply looking at the agenda should 
> give him/her a rough idea of what docs are needed for the meeting -- 
> since he/she is in charge of the meeting "flow" .

Per Roberts (p 432), that is the duty of the chair.  I've been aware
of this, and I made some decisions yesterday based on the theory that
a gradual migration would be better than immediate gaval-pounding
discipline.

I go back to the idea that we should take this up at the next board
meeting and come to a consensus on how we want to "migrate".  Personally,
it will be easier for me to make decisions about how to deal with these
things (as chair) if I know the rest of the board (or at least a majority)
is behind said decision.

> On the quorum issue -- I think members who joined that day should not 
> count towards quorum -- IMHO I think only members eligible to voting 
> should count towards quorum.

Now that this conversation has me thinking, I can think of 1000 security
holes in the bylaws that could be used to subvert the organization.

However, I don't think most of them are worth considering as legitimate
threats.  Specifically, I don't believe that "quorum poisoning" constitutes
a viable attack against WPLUG.  I can think of a number of attack
scenerios that would be much more practical, most of which involve getting
us into legal trouble.

> On the time issue -- we all need to insure that we are at the meeting on 
> time -- if the board can't be counted on to be there on time how can we 
> expect the membership -- I count myself in that -- I was late.... I 
> agree with the idea that we have the meeting quorum or not. 

There's nothing to say that a member who arrives late can not step in and
begin taking part in the meeting.  The major issue we had was getting the
quorum.  The outstanding problem I have with what happened is that a
number of people showed up, apparently having planned on arriving all along,
but showed up late.  Not only late, but 30 minutes late.

Hence I'm seeing this as a migration of WPLUG from totally informal to
a more formal organization.  And I expect, like any migration, that it will
take some time.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com