[wplug-board] January board meeting

[Pat Barron]

Also, responding to your other points / questions asked in your previous 
note.

As we mentioned before, there isn't anything in the bylaws that prevents 
anyone from attending a board meeting.  While other committee members 
can't subscribe to the wplug-board list, they can follow the traffic in 
the archives.

That being said, unless my understanding is flawed (and someone can 
correct me if I'm wrong here...), while there isn't anything that stops 
anyone from attending a board meeting to observe, others aren't entitled 
to actually participate in deliberations unless invited to do so by the 
board (for example, having a committee report it's status to the board, 
or like before when we asked a non-board member to attend to discuss the 
WSCC network project with us).  Certainly, if the board wants to know 
what news a committee may have about it's activities, it's definitely 
helpful to have someone from that committee in the room already.

But, board meetings are not general member meetings, and aren't intended 
to be.  It sounds like some of what you want to do might be better 
handled in regular member business meetings.  Except as constrained by 
the bylaws (e.g., only the chair is allowed to sign contracts on behalf 
of the organization), the membership can do pretty much anything in a 
business meeting as long as there is a quorum present, including 
overriding a decision made by the board, or directing the board to take 
some action.  In fact, some things (like authorizing the spending of 
funds on new/different activities that aren't currently being done) are 
reserved exclusively to the membership.  The board's function is to 
handle the day-to-day operation of the organization so that the 
membership doesn't need to be concerned about that - but as long as 
there is a quorum of members present, there can be any kind of 
deliberations during a general membership meeting, and maybe we should 
do more of that. Maybe there is a view that the member business meetings 
are "just some annoying thing that we need to get over with before we 
get on with the presentation of the day", while we could be doing more 
with them.

--Pat.