Re: Agenda item for February SPI board meeting

Hi

On 05/02/12 19:05, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 05, 2012 at 11:56:09AM +1000, Robert Brockway wrote:
>> Jonathan, please add the item "Discussion of back office support" to
>> the February meeting agenda. I believe this should fall within
>> general business but don't mind if you put it in another category.
>>
>> My intention here is for the board to discuss this topic, not to
>> make any firm decisions during this board meeting.
>
> I have added this, but the previous approach has been that such
> discussion should take place on the lists beforehand, rather than a new,
> free ranging discussion being begun at the meeting itself.
>
> My main concern is that we lack definition of "back office support".
> What tasks do we expect this new resource to carry out? You say:
>
>> I envision that this office assistant would report to the Secretary and
>> principally provide support for the Secretary and Treasurer.
>
> but I haven't seen anything from Michael stating areas he would like
> help with, nor have I encountered any areas myself that I think would be
> greatly aided by another pair of hands.
>
> I'm not saying this because I'm against the idea, I just think that we'd
> need to have at least a rough set of defined tasks that we think are
> pain points now (or will become so as we grow) that help would be useful
> with.
>

Personally I have been thinking in a different direction - as an
approach towards handling the current quick growth of SPI. Like Noodles
I'm not against the idea of 'back office support', but I believe that
some slight organizational changes could fill some of the possible gaps.
One such change could be that each of the member project would get a
"contact-director". This would be a more pro-active approach in which
the individual SPI member project would be in an ongoing dialogue with
one identified director/member-of-board. This would hopefully make it
easier to maintain the connection between SPI and project, and on an
ongoing basis offer advice (and suggestions for development).
SPI member project a very different in terms of size, organizational
form and maturity - and I believe there is room for more direct
interaction between project liasons and SPI directors.

This does likewise relate to the more general question about; in what
directions SPI itself shall grow? SPI been a structure which partly came
alive due to Debian needs (and this is not placed in any negative
connotation), but I think it would be positive to look at the current
situation and see if things are in sync?

Chz

>
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--
Gregers Petersen
Relationship manager, layer 8 and anthropology
glp on irc

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