[wplug-board] January board meeting

[Pat Barron]

On 1/12/2015 4:51 PM, John Lewis wrote:
> On 01/12/2015 02:00 PM, Pat Barron wrote:
>> 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.
> Are they properly being informed of this? I didn't know that until I was
> on the board this year, and this is my second time on the board.
Well, the information is on the public wiki for anyone who wishes to 
read it:

http://www.wplug.org/wiki/MailingLists

"Discussion among the WPLUG Board of Directors 
<http://www.wplug.org/wiki/WPLUGBoard>. You only get subscribed to this 
list by being elected to the Board. Everyone is welcome to view the list 
archives."

(Maybe I'm not the best data point, but I was aware of this before I 
ever even joined WPLUG...)

> We have heads of committees that are technically in a bard seat, but 
> it would be a dumb idea in my opinion to make it any harder than it 
> already is for them to present a report since those reports are what 
> allows use to keep WPLUG running. When a committee has nothing to 
> report it means that the committee wasn't effective in doing that job 
> in between meetings.

Some committees, of course, have nothing to report because there was 
nothing they needed to do.  For instance, hopefully the Investigating 
Committee will only rarely have anything to report.

> A good example of WPLUG not doing its job is the WSCC network project. 
> It was an epic failure because we somehow didn't have the skill to 
> read and implement ANSI/TIA-568-C and we commissioned a third party to 
> do it whenever which tuned out to be never. It is things like that are 
> why there absolutely needs to reform our process. 

There is a problem here that you are highlighting, but it's not a 
process problem.

We didn't commission a third-party to do it, we had one of our own 
committees that was responsible for it.  That particular effort was in 
the hands of multiple skilled network/wiring people.  The first chair of 
the committee eventually left WPLUG almost entirely due to other 
priorities, which left the project in limbo.  The most recent chair of 
that committee had offered to contribute most of the hardware necessary 
to complete the project out of his own pocket (which was a non-trivial 
expense), and had access to a licensed electrician with the appropriate 
tools who'd offered up some free labor.  Finishing the job properly 
would have actually involved drilling some holes through the building's 
exterior walls, and running some conduit.

In the end, we had plenty of skills - what none of the people who'd 
stepped up for this ended up having, was time.  (There was also, as I 
recall, an issue with WSCC being available to give site access to the 
electrician to inspect the site at a time when he was available to do 
that - Terry was involved with that, so he could probably fill in some 
of the details for you.  The point I guess I'm making is that what 
happened was a bit more complicated than just "we dropped the ball".)

These are problems that organizations that run on all-volunteer labor 
force often experience.  If we'd been in a position to pay actual cash 
money to have that work done, I'm confident that it would have been done 
reasonably quickly.  The way we ended up trying to do it (both the first 
time, and the second time when we tried to "reconstitute" the project), 
we made ourselves dependent on a single individual who had the skills 
necessary to do the job, and left ourselves twisting in the wind when 
(in both cases) those individuals moved on.  If I had been around at the 
time (yeah, I know what they say about hindsight being 20/20....), I 
would probably have recommended that we not even take the project on, 
because (in both cases when we tried) we had a person who was a "single 
point of failure", where the project couldn't continue in any practical 
sense without them.

> The problem is that the general membership can't trust the board to 
> provide the general membership with the minutes as requested. Some one 
> asked for the minutes to be read and we didn't have the minutes! 
> Things can't be handled properly in regular business meetings because 
> the board isn't providing the membership all of the information 
> necessary to make a good decision.

Your point about providing minutes in a timely fashion is well-taken, 
and I believe we're in better shape now.   The minutes you refer to 
above were in fact available, it just took about 60 seconds to locate 
them - because there was only one item of business transacted at the 
meeting in question....

But yeah, the membership does deserve timely communication about the 
board's activities, and we need to make that a priority.

> We must encourage participation of the Membership in board meetings 
> for the good of WPLUG. We are responsible to make it as easy as 
> possible for the membership to look over the board's shoulder and 
> making sure we are functioning properly.

That is what the meeting minutes are for, so being more sensitive to 
publishing these quickly will really help a lot here.  The board works 
for the membership (not the other way around...), so we owe the 
membership timely communication.

> If the board is handling day to day operations properly how do you 
> explain the bust that is the WSCC network project or all of the 
> bowling events in 2013?

Well, there was only one bowling event planned in 2013, and it basically 
failed (though those who did come had a pleasant dinner together, so it 
wasn't a complete loss) because we made an assumption that I don't think 
we'll ever make again during event planning - that some third-party (in 
this case, the bowling establishment) would surely be willing and able 
to accommodate us upon our arrival, without us checking with them well 
in advance.  It turned out that we went at one of their peak times, they 
could not accommodate us (as we would have known ahead of time if we'd 
checked ahead of time).  Rest assured, I don't think we'll be making 
that mistake again.

This is another problem with all-volunteer labor forces that we've faced 
(and I'm sure we'll continue to face).  In that instance, it would have 
been nice if we'd had someone responsible for setting that up who had 
some experience with event planning.  But we didn't, largely because 
there was no such person available to us - we only had "us", and we did 
the best we could with the skills that each of us could bring to the 
table.  And we learned from it.

> If 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" then maybe, just maybe we are doing it wrong.

Also keep in mind that (as is common with lots of user-group type 
organizations), most of the people who align themselves with the 
organization primarily want to derive some benefit from the organization 
(in exchange for their dues, or whatever else they've agreed to provide, 
if anything - in our case, we don't even insist on dues, we just ask 
people to show up), in terms of being part of the "fun" and/or 
"technical" program we've planned, but they have neither the inclination 
nor the time to be part of the organization's planning and day-to-day 
operations.  And that's fine, and we don't want to alienate those folks 
by trying to "force" them into a role where they're expected to make a 
larger commitment.

--Pat.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.wplug.org/pipermail/wplug-board/attachments/20150112/1fa18d61/attachment.html>