[wplug-plan] Organizational considerations

[David Tessitor]

> 3.) Your 'organizational' meetings *DO* exclude people.  Not all members
> attend.  Not all members can read the information you've provided.  And
> most importantly, NO OTHER MEMBER OTHER THAN YOU CONTROLS WHAT TOPIC WILL
> BE DISCUSSED.

There is an opportunity for anybody to submit items for agenda items and they have been
included.  There is also an opportunity for the agenda to be revised at the beginning
of the meetings and that has occurred.  The main body of each of the meetings has been
group discussion and nobody has been silenced.  I have moderated the meetings and
recorded the comments that have been made on the easel chart.  In addition, David
Ostroske has recorded some notes which have been compiled with my own to produce the
record of the meetings.  The minutes from the meetings are submitted to those in
attendance for their corrections.  (I have yet to finish the minutes of the last two
meetings but have their discussion product ready for the website.) It would be nice to
have a recording secretary who would record and a corresponding secretary who would
send out notices, and a refreshment committee which would take care of those
arrangements, but it has all fallen upon me and I believe I have handled it in an above
board and fair manner.  The decision to continue the meetings was consented to by all,
including you (you did not object when the request for objections was raised).

There are no plan meetings and there have been no plan meetings for over half the
existence of the group.  The plan meetings were canceled and my requests for such
meetings were repeatedly ignored.  I did not call the organizational meetings, a group
of members did by majority vote at a valid member meetings.  I sent out the notice for
the first only after the designated individual, Michael O'Connor, had email problems
with Pitt's server and it became necessary for me to fill in.  I offered to convene the
meeting and act as moderator.

The meetings were designed to lay the ground work for the eventual development of
bylaws.  The series began by looking at what people want to see WPLUG do in the
future.  The second identified the existing and historic structure of the group and
delineated the decision process as it has been practiced -- both matters necessary to
know before coding any bylaws and neither available on the website or in any manual or
other form.  The third meeting looked at what people like and dislike about WPLUG; the
former helpful to make sure we keep what we want, the latter to try to avoid what we
don't.  In the meantime, issues about the MarketPro show were added at member requests
and decided, as well some minor considerations about Installfests and meetings.


> A planning meeting would not exclude.  It would be
> scheduled by the planning group (which you are a part of, I admit), run by
> the planning group, recorded and published by the planning group.  Any
> member could attend, but we leave the tedious stuff like scheduling,
> running discussions and posting minutes up to a select group willing to do
> so.
>
> I refuse to attend your organizational meetings not because i wish to
> exclude, but because you'd rather flame other members and take a false
> ethical high ground that work with other people.
>
> --jonathan

Jonathan, I don't want to rev up a flame war.  You may wish to personalize things and
make them out to be a power struggle or something, but I rest on the record which I am
confident more than adequately dispels your accusations.  You can decide for yourself
whether you want to participate with the others.  As it is, the next member
organizational meeting to discuss and work upon organization structure will be held at
2 pm after the next GUM, and that is by a decision of the group, not by you or by me.
If you want to boycott it that is up to you.

Dave