Board meeting procedure

I think we should change the usual procedure at board meetings:

1. No items on the agenda that aren't accompanied by a firm proposal
(or alternative versions, if there's a disagreement) in
ready-to-vote resolution form. There ought to have been at least a
week or so for discussion by email.

2. Reports: these should be posted in advance to the board list. They
should be accompanied by a standard form resolution like
`the board thanks so-and-so, and accepts the report'.

3. No discussion during the meeting. Strictly. Anything that
requires discussion to be postponed until next meeting or email
voting. If board members feel the discussion has not been adequate
then they should vote NO on the relevant motion.

4. Meeting chair to be ruthless.

5. Above rules may be deviated from in case of necessity (external
deadlines, emergencies etc.).

There is no need for us to formally approve this as a motion, although
it might help. It would be sufficient for the board to informally
signal agreement and for the meeting chair to implement it.

Ian.

After last board meeting, I said that I think we should change the
usual procedure at board meetings to avoid them turning into argument
fests.

No-one followed up to my email, so I assume people didn't think it
unreasonable, but this last meeting turned into another collosal waste
of time and IRC argument.

So, since just stating my opinion hasn't worked, I'm going to propose
a formal resolution, which I'll ask Wichert to put (as the first
item!) on the agenda of the next meeting. A draft is below.

Please comment on them now so that we can have a nice argument.

My goals are:

- to save the Secretary from having to write up enormous IRC logs into
coherent minutes

- to get our routine meetings down to 15-20 minutes

- to improve the quality of our decisionmaking by allowing wider,
easier, and better discussion

- to improve the accessibility of our decisionmaking by moving the
bulk of it to email.

A. WHEREAS

1. It is important that board meetings, which require simultaneous
presence of a quorum of the board, be short.

2. IRC discussions provide less easily read archives of discussions
than email archives, and require substantial efforts at redaction
to produce minutes.

3. IRC discussions are less accessible to people who are not available
at the time of the meeting than email.

4. IRC discussions are more prone to misunderstandings, accidental
offence, and personality clashes, than email.

5. On-line board meetings via IRC are a poor medium for
discussion for the reasons given above.

B. IT IS RESOLVED THAT

6. Discussion at on-line real-time Board meetings of Software in the
Public Interest shall be limited to the absolute minimum necessary,
by the specific measures below, and by the active cooperation of
the Board and others during meeting.

7. No items shall appear on the agenda of a Board meeting that are
not accompanied by a firm proposal (or alternative versions, if
there's a disagreement) in ready-to-vote resolution form. There
ought to have been at least a week or so for discussion by email.

8. Reports of any kind shall be posted in advance to the board list. They
should be accompanied by a standard form resolution like `the board
thanks so-and-so, and accepts the report'.

9. There shall be strictly no discussion during the meeting. Anything
that requires more discussion than has taken place before the
meeting shall be postponed until next meeting or email voting. If
board members feel the discussion has not been adequate then they
should vote NO on the relevant motion.

10. The meeting chair shall be ruthless in enforcing the rules above.

11. The above rules may be deviated from in case of necessity, such as
external deadlines, emergencies etc.

C. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT

12. The practice of waiting for guests to state their name during the
meeting will cease. Instead, the Secretary shall start logging the
channel 15 minutes before the meeting, and guests will be asked to
state their name during that period, or when they arrive if they
arrive later.

D. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT

13. The information about the availability of board members for the
next meeting will be collected by email in advance of the meeting
by a volunteer member of the Board, who will correlate the
information and propose a date for approval by the meeting.

Ian.

Previously Ian Jackson wrote:
> No-one followed up to my email, so I assume people didn't think it
> unreasonable, but this last meeting turned into another collosal waste
> of time and IRC argument.

I did request everyone to post resolutions before the meeting,
admittedly somewhat late though.

> 9. There shall be strictly no discussion during the meeting. Anything
> that requires more discussion than has taken place before the
> meeting shall be postponed until next meeting or email voting. If
> board members feel the discussion has not been adequate then they
> should vote NO on the relevant motion.

Is this too strict possibly? This will reduce meetings to voting and
notices. I would like to leave some room to discuss alternate already
proposed resolutions.

> 12. The practice of waiting for guests to state their name during the
> meeting will cease. Instead, the Secretary shall start logging the
> channel 15 minutes before the meeting, and guests will be asked to
> state their name during that period, or when they arrive if they
> arrive later.

I might even be able to cobble up a bot to do that for me.

Wichert.

--
Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/ It is hard to make things simple.

As an interested observer who finds even the edited IRC logs of the
board meetings unbearable:

On 29-Jul-03, 15:12 (CDT), Wichert Akkerman <wichert(at)wiggy(dot)net> wrote:
> Previously Ian Jackson wrote:
> > No-one followed up to my email, so I assume people didn't think it
> > unreasonable, but this last meeting turned into another collosal waste
> > of time and IRC argument.
>
> I did request everyone to post resolutions before the meeting,
> admittedly somewhat late though.
>
> > 9. There shall be strictly no discussion during the meeting. Anything
> > that requires more discussion than has taken place before the
> > meeting shall be postponed until next meeting or email voting. If
> > board members feel the discussion has not been adequate then they
> > should vote NO on the relevant motion.
>
> Is this too strict possibly? This will reduce meetings to voting and
> notices. I would like to leave some room to discuss alternate already
> proposed resolutions.

Ian's whole point is that if the resolutions are posted sufficiently in
advance, then there is plenty of time for discussion via e-mail, and no
point in wasting everyone's time by re-iterating that discussion in a
frenzy of bad spelling and mangled sentences. (Or so I presume...)

If someone really does come up with a brilliant new alternative, then
they should say so, and everyone can't vote NO (or postpone) on the
existing proposal, and you can discuss in plenty of time for the next
meeting.

Steve

--
Steve Greenland
The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
world. -- seen on the net

I am in favor of this proposal and would certainly not shed any tears if
the entire IRC meeting practice withered away and died. I find email to
be easier to understand, more self documenting and far more secure than
IRC. Therefore, I say yes.

On Tue, 2003-07-29 at 14:53, Ian Jackson wrote:
> After last board meeting, I said that I think we should change the
> usual procedure at board meetings to avoid them turning into argument
> fests.
>
> No-one followed up to my email, so I assume people didn't think it
> unreasonable, but this last meeting turned into another collosal waste
> of time and IRC argument.
>
> So, since just stating my opinion hasn't worked, I'm going to propose
> a formal resolution, which I'll ask Wichert to put (as the first
> item!) on the agenda of the next meeting. A draft is below.
>
> Please comment on them now so that we can have a nice argument.
>
> My goals are:
>
> - to save the Secretary from having to write up enormous IRC logs into
> coherent minutes
>
> - to get our routine meetings down to 15-20 minutes
>
> - to improve the quality of our decisionmaking by allowing wider,
> easier, and better discussion
>
> - to improve the accessibility of our decisionmaking by moving the
> bulk of it to email.
>
>
> A. WHEREAS
>
> 1. It is important that board meetings, which require simultaneous
> presence of a quorum of the board, be short.
>
> 2. IRC discussions provide less easily read archives of discussions
> than email archives, and require substantial efforts at redaction
> to produce minutes.
>
> 3. IRC discussions are less accessible to people who are not available
> at the time of the meeting than email.
>
> 4. IRC discussions are more prone to misunderstandings, accidental
> offence, and personality clashes, than email.
>
> 5. On-line board meetings via IRC are a poor medium for
> discussion for the reasons given above.
>
> B. IT IS RESOLVED THAT
>
> 6. Discussion at on-line real-time Board meetings of Software in the
> Public Interest shall be limited to the absolute minimum necessary,
> by the specific measures below, and by the active cooperation of
> the Board and others during meeting.
>
> 7. No items shall appear on the agenda of a Board meeting that are
> not accompanied by a firm proposal (or alternative versions, if
> there's a disagreement) in ready-to-vote resolution form. There
> ought to have been at least a week or so for discussion by email.
>
> 8. Reports of any kind shall be posted in advance to the board list. They
> should be accompanied by a standard form resolution like `the board
> thanks so-and-so, and accepts the report'.
>
> 9. There shall be strictly no discussion during the meeting. Anything
> that requires more discussion than has taken place before the
> meeting shall be postponed until next meeting or email voting. If
> board members feel the discussion has not been adequate then they
> should vote NO on the relevant motion.
>
> 10. The meeting chair shall be ruthless in enforcing the rules above.
>
> 11. The above rules may be deviated from in case of necessity, such as
> external deadlines, emergencies etc.
>
> C. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT
>
> 12. The practice of waiting for guests to state their name during the
> meeting will cease. Instead, the Secretary shall start logging the
> channel 15 minutes before the meeting, and guests will be asked to
> state their name during that period, or when they arrive if they
> arrive later.
>
> D. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT
>
> 13. The information about the availability of board members for the
> next meeting will be collected by email in advance of the meeting
> by a volunteer member of the Board, who will correlate the
> information and propose a date for approval by the meeting.

--
_____________________________________________________________________
Ean Schuessler ean(at)brainfood(dot)com
Brainfood, Inc. http://www.brainfood.com

Wichert Akkerman writes ("Re: Board meeting procedure"):
> Previously Ian Jackson wrote:
> > 9. There shall be strictly no discussion during the meeting. Anything
> > that requires more discussion than has taken place before the
> > meeting shall be postponed until next meeting or email voting. If
> > board members feel the discussion has not been adequate then they
> > should vote NO on the relevant motion.
>
> Is this too strict possibly? This will reduce meetings to voting and
> notices. I would like to leave some room to discuss alternate already
> proposed resolutions.

Surely we can _discuss_ alternative resolutions by email in advance.
That way everyone gets a chance to comment in detail and with a bit of
time to think out a response. If we still disagree then we can vote
on the variants.

Ian.

On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 05:29:47PM -0500, Ean Schuessler wrote:
> I am in favor of this proposal and would certainly not shed any tears if
> the entire IRC meeting practice withered away and died. I find email to
> be easier to understand, more self documenting and far more secure than
> IRC. Therefore, I say yes.

One problem we face is the unanimous vote requirement in e-mail right now.
It's also been the subject of some debate as to whether or not it's actually
permissible under the current bylaws.

The draft new bylaws include language to make the mechanics of all this a
lot easier.

Speaking of which, I got no replies to the message yesterday... I hope that
does not convey no interest.

-- John

On Tue, 29 Jul 2003 20:53:21 +0100
Ian Jackson <ijackson(at)chiark(dot)greenend(dot)org(dot)uk> wrote:
> After last board meeting, I said that I think we should change the
> usual procedure at board meetings to avoid them turning into argument
> fests.
>
> No-one followed up to my email, so I assume people didn't think it
> unreasonable, but this last meeting turned into another collosal waste
> of time and IRC argument.
>
> So, since just stating my opinion hasn't worked, I'm going to propose
> a formal resolution, which I'll ask Wichert to put (as the first
> item!) on the agenda of the next meeting. A draft is below.

I might ask that if this is carried out (I don't see any major problem
with it myself), that more board discussion is done on -private, to let
the contributing members participate.

I can't think of anything in recent history which was both a) only
discussed by the board via email or in the IRC meeting and b) had good
contributing member input, but such things can be fairly common.

Very good proposal. I'd vote in favour of it.

Just... How do you think can people change from one day to another,
completely?

It's like... on the road you shall not drive faster than n mph, yet
still it's done.

I other words: I wonder if the effect of such a resolution or written
down meeting procedure is other than zero.

Ian Jackson wrote:
> After last board meeting, I said that I think we should change the
> usual procedure at board meetings to avoid them turning into argument
> fests.

Regards,

Joey

--
If nothing changes, everything will remain the same. -- Barne's Law

On Tue, Jul 29, 2003 at 08:53:21PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> After last board meeting, I said that I think we should change the
> usual procedure at board meetings to avoid them turning into argument
> fests.
>
> No-one followed up to my email, so I assume people didn't think it
> unreasonable, but this last meeting turned into another collosal waste
> of time and IRC argument.

I would also like to see more concrete resolutions and less talk.

However, I personally I find a little bit of real-time discussion
helpful and not categorically bothersome in the way you seem to.

In particular, I'm thinking about the fact that the couple of
resolutions I have brought to the board in my short tenure generated
almost no responses from the email list but, when voted on, generated
a relatively painless, non-quarrelsome and productive set of IRC
responses that led to a few quick revisions and, in 5 or so minutes, a
more solid resolution. The fact that this resolution at first
generated no response is evidence of what I see may be its major
problem.

I hate long bothersome and argumentative meetings but I think that a
little bit of back and forth that leads to a better resolution while
we're all to hash it out should not be categorically blocked.

If we can replace IRC meeting nastiness with more productive email
discussions, I am 100% behind this. If we're just going to create less
discussions without a real increase in the number of productive work,
I don't think we're introducing a real solution. This resolution
simply doesn't seem able to explore any kind of balance in this way.

In terms of your individual resolutions, I can definitely get behind
8, 11, 12 and 13 and to a less emphatic degree (perhaps just wording)
behind 6 and 7.

In terms of 9, I think I've covered my reservations above.

In terms of 10, I think I'm going to, on principle, shy away from any
resolution that calls for "ruthlessness." :)

Regards,
Mako

> B. IT IS RESOLVED THAT
>
> 6. Discussion at on-line real-time Board meetings of Software in the
> Public Interest shall be limited to the absolute minimum necessary,
> by the specific measures below, and by the active cooperation of
> the Board and others during meeting.
>
> 7. No items shall appear on the agenda of a Board meeting that are
> not accompanied by a firm proposal (or alternative versions, if
> there's a disagreement) in ready-to-vote resolution form. There
> ought to have been at least a week or so for discussion by email.
>
> 8. Reports of any kind shall be posted in advance to the board list. They
> should be accompanied by a standard form resolution like `the board
> thanks so-and-so, and accepts the report'.
>
> 9. There shall be strictly no discussion during the meeting. Anything
> that requires more discussion than has taken place before the
> meeting shall be postponed until next meeting or email voting. If
> board members feel the discussion has not been adequate then they
> should vote NO on the relevant motion.
>
> 10. The meeting chair shall be ruthless in enforcing the rules above.
>
> 11. The above rules may be deviated from in case of necessity, such as
> external deadlines, emergencies etc.
>
> C. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT
>
> 12. The practice of waiting for guests to state their name during the
> meeting will cease. Instead, the Secretary shall start logging the
> channel 15 minutes before the meeting, and guests will be asked to
> state their name during that period, or when they arrive if they
> arrive later.
>
> D. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT
>
> 13. The information about the availability of board members for the
> next meeting will be collected by email in advance of the meeting
> by a volunteer member of the Board, who will correlate the
> information and propose a date for approval by the meeting.
>
> Ian.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Spi-general mailing list
> Spi-general(at)lists(dot)spi-inc(dot)org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/spi-general

--
Benj. Mako Hill
mako(at)debian(dot)org
http://mako.yukidoke.org/

Immediately after the most recent meeting I wrote:
> So, since just stating my opinion hasn't worked, I'm going to propose
> a formal resolution, which I'll ask Wichert to put (as the first
> item!) on the agenda of the next meeting. A draft is below.

There were few comments. Benjamin Mako Hill disagreed with some
parts. I hope we can at least vote on my draft at this coming
meeting. So, here it is again as a reminder. This time I'll give it
a number: 2003-09-09.iwj.1:

A. WHEREAS

1. It is important that board meetings, which require simultaneous
presence of a quorum of the board, be short.

2. IRC discussions provide less easily read archives of discussions
than email archives, and require substantial efforts at redaction
to produce minutes.

3. IRC discussions are less accessible to people who are not available
at the time of the meeting than email.

4. IRC discussions are more prone to misunderstandings, accidental
offence, and personality clashes, than email.

5. On-line board meetings via IRC are a poor medium for
discussion for the reasons given above.

B. IT IS RESOLVED THAT

6. Discussion at on-line real-time Board meetings of Software in the
Public Interest shall be limited to the absolute minimum necessary,
by the specific measures below, and by the active cooperation of
the Board and others during meeting.

7. No items shall appear on the agenda of a Board meeting that are
not accompanied by a firm proposal (or alternative versions, if
there's a disagreement) in ready-to-vote resolution form. There
ought to have been at least a week or so for discussion by email.

8. Reports of any kind shall be posted in advance to the board list. They
should be accompanied by a standard form resolution like `the board
thanks so-and-so, and accepts the report'.

9. There shall be strictly no discussion during the meeting. Anything
that requires more discussion than has taken place before the
meeting shall be postponed until next meeting or email voting. If
board members feel the discussion has not been adequate then they
should vote NO on the relevant motion.

10. The meeting chair shall be ruthless in enforcing the rules above.

11. The above rules may be deviated from in case of necessity, such as
external deadlines, emergencies etc.

C. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT

12. The practice of waiting for guests to state their name during the
meeting will cease. Instead, the Secretary shall start logging the
channel 15 minutes before the meeting, and guests will be asked to
state their name during that period, or when they arrive if they
arrive later.

D. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT

13. The information about the availability of board members for the
next meeting will be collected by email in advance of the meeting
by a volunteer member of the Board, who will correlate the
information and propose a date for approval by the meeting.

Ian.