Re: Oops (Re: Efficient board meetings, revised)

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004, Ian Jackson wrote:
> There's been some disagreement recently about the proper conduct of
> board meetings, and the role of IRC discussion. I think the best way
> to settle this would be for the board to vote to affirm and update
> the `Efficient Board Meetings' resolution from last September, or, if
> the board disagrees with me, to explicitly overturn it or replace it
> with something else.

While the by-laws allow the board to outline procedures for our meetings,
I do not think that the rules from 2004-10-15.iwj.1 are at all beneficial
to the efficiency of our board meetings.

> 2004-10-15.iwj.1 Efficient Board Meetings
>
> A. WHEREAS

I agree with none of your preambles, with the possible exception of number
six.

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

No it isn't. It's important that they be effective.

I would rather have a two hour meeting in which a correct, thought out
decision is made than a twenty minute meeting where we vote on unpolished
work or without considering issues, including last minute issues.

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

No they don't. A typical SPI BoD IRC meeting that takes an hour results in
about 300 lines of logs, half of which is substantial. This email alone
will be roughly the size of an entire meeting's IRC log.

IRC logs, especially when read against a meeting's agenda are easy to
parse into the discussions that took place, and provide an accurate and
candidate representation of the views of those present.

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

Logs are distributed. Meetings are scheduled around when board members can
attend. Some resolution discussion takes place privately on the board
mailing list and is not even as open a process as the IRC meetings.

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

IRC discussions are an effective, efficient way to conduct meetings
provided the chairman of the meeting enforces procedural rules, such as
not allowing digression, a far bigger enemy than topical discussion. OFTC,
for for one, uses weekly IRC-based meetings to great effect and has so
since the day it was founded, for internal administrative purposes. Nearly
all discussion takes place at these meetings, which have ranged in length
from 2 minutes to 3 hours.

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

IRC meetings are an excellent means of discussion, being similar to a
telephone conference call with a written record automatically kept, where
people cannot speak over eachother and everyone's voice is heard.

> 6. Board members should give due consideration to proposed decisions,
> and reports, presented to the board.

Yes, and all board members should participate between meetings, other than
to write or enforce rules which prevent meeting participation beyond
voting.

> B. IT IS RESOLVED THAT
>
> 7. Discussion at on-line real-time Board meetings of Software in the
> Public Interest shall be limited to the minimum necessary, by the
> specific measures below, and by the active cooperation of the Board
> and others during the meeting.

The minimum necessary is the discussion needed to get through any issues
we have outstanding. This is what we would do with or without this
resolution.

> 8. The Board aims to be able, during the meeting itself, merely to
> approve or decline proposals already worked out in detail in
> advance.

Help with that and it will happen, with or without this resolution.
Resolutions are often posted days or weeks in advance and no replies are
received until 3 hours before the meeting.

If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

> 9. Issues (other than short fixed routine items such as apologies) for
> consideration by the Board at its next meeting shall be notified to
> the Board, to the Secretary, and if confidentiality is not required
> to the Members, at least 7 days in advance of the relevant Board
> meeting. Such notification shall include the text of any report to
> the Board, or a draft of any proposed resolution by the Board, as
> relevant.

A 7 day minimum restriction means some issues, even if urgent, may go 5
weeks without being voted on.

> 10. The Secretary shall include on the agenda of the meeting those
> items which were notified in time, as described above. Items
> arising and notified less than one week ahead of the meeting will
> be postponed until the next subsequent meeting. However, if the
> Secretary believes that it is necessary to consider an item
> immediately, for example because it is urgent, it may still appear
> on the agenda with less than 7 days' notice.

All items can and should be put on the agenda. The board has the right to
defer any issue for further consideration.

> 11. During the 7 days prior to the meeting, Board members shall
> consider and discuss the agenda items as notified. Just as Board
> members should attend Board meetings, as part of their duties as a
> Board member they have a responsibility to participate actively in
> the Board's email deliberations. A board member who wishes to
> raise an issue regarding an agenda item should do so as soon as
> possible, and in any case aim to do so within 48 hours of the
> notification.

You're the longest-serving board member in the history of SPI and this
resolution is the first time in many months where I have seen you do this.

The only thing stopping inter-meeting discussion of resolutions is board
members not participating, and this resolution won't change that. People
have to choose to participate in order to do so.

> 12. Where a formal report is to be made to the Board, but no specific
> resolution is envisaged, the usual formal action to be taken by
> the Board during the meeting will be to vote whether to accept the
> report. The person making the report should avoid elaborating on
> the report during the meeting; any questions or updates should
> have been dealt with by email during the preceding week.

Ah yes, the sucks-to-be-you clause.

As I said above if we cannot reach a resolution during the meeting, a
final decision can be deferred. But I think it is incumbent upon us as a
board upon which many projects depend, to resolve any issues we have as
quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Asking a question for clarification in a report is no reason to defer it
for a month, nor is it reason to force closure and vote immediately.

> 13. The meeting chair shall be responsible for enforcing the rules
> above.

The meeting chair is already responsible for enforcing decorum and
administering the meeting in an efficient manner.

> 14. The above rules may in any case be deviated from in case of
> necessity, such as external deadlines, emergencies etc.

In other words:

These rules apply as long as they apply and if they don't apply well they
won't apply because we don't need them to apply unless they apply, but if
they do apply they do apply provided there are no reasons for them not to
apply.

> C. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT
>
> 15. Guests will not be asked to state their name during the meeting.
> 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.

The practice of having guests state their name to the channel has been
abolished independant of this resolution in favour of the secretary
receiving the list over the course of the meeting by private messages.

Following the suggestion of a member, future minutes will include both the
name and the on-line handle of all present, in the interests of
understanding logs.

> D. SUPERCESSION
>
> 16. This resolution supercedes and replaces 2003-09-01.iwj.1
> `Efficient Board Meetings'.

I'd keep this clause.

Thus my version of this resolution would read:

"The board resolves that resolution 2003-09-01.iwj.1 is stricken from the
books."

---
David Graham, SPI Secretary
cdlu(at)spi-inc(dot)org D5F45889

Oops - sent to board and spi-general separately. if replying to my last
email, please ensure both are there. (board(at)lists is not valid).

Thanks.

---
David Graham, SPI Secretary
cdlu(at)spi-inc(dot)org D5F45889

On Fri, Oct 15, 2004 at 12:59:56PM -0400, David Graham - SPI Secretary wrote:
> > C. IT IS FURTHER RESOLVED THAT
> >
> > 15. Guests will not be asked to state their name during the meeting.
> > 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.
>
> The practice of having guests state their name to the channel has been
> abolished independant of this resolution in favour of the secretary
> receiving the list over the course of the meeting by private messages.

It was abolished as part as a previous resolution by Ian.

I find the assumption that guests stating their names being the cause of
some IRC meeting inefficiency being ludicrous at best and given the
small number of guests attending meeting, being friendly to them cannot
harm the organization.

Putting the blame on others can relieve some stress but won't solve the
real problems of SPI, I am afraid.

Cheers,
Bill.

Bill Allombert writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> On Fri, Oct 15, 2004 at 12:59:56PM -0400, David Graham - SPI Secretary wrote:
> > The practice of having guests state their name to the channel has been
> > abolished independant of this resolution in favour of the secretary
> > receiving the list over the course of the meeting by private messages.
>
> It was abolished as part as a previous resolution by Ian.
>
> I find the assumption that guests stating their names being the cause of
> some IRC meeting inefficiency being ludicrous at best and given the
> small number of guests attending meeting, being friendly to them cannot
> harm the organization.

The problem isn't having the guests state their names. The problem is
having the meeting held up for n minutes for no good reason. I don't
think this is a huge problem, but it seemed obviously daft to me and
since the meeting chair didn't do what I wanted putting it my
resolution and letting the board decide seemed sensible.

`Being friendly' to someone doesn't mean keeping a dozen or two people
waiting for them to type their name. It means making them feel
welcome and able to participate. One way to make them feel more
welcome, perhaps, would be to give them the ability to discuss what's
going on in the meeting without disrupting it. This is something
that's difficult to provide in meat-life, but quite easy to do with
IRC: there should be a companion unmoderated channel.

Ian.

David Graham - SPI Secretary writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> I do not [like] the rules from 2004-10-15.iwj.1
...
> IRC discussions are an effective, efficient way to conduct meetings

This is, I think, the key point of disagreement between us. I've
described my problems with IRC more fully in another message, so I
shan't repeat myself here.

> IRC logs, especially when read against a meeting's agenda are easy to
> parse into the discussions that took place, and provide an accurate and
> candidate representation of the views of those present.

I disagree with this. Indeed, we've had discussions even during the
meeting about what people were referring to when they said something
and even in some cases about how they voted.

> Asking a question for clarification in a report is no reason to defer it
> for a month, nor is it reason to force closure and vote immediately.

Let me present a scenario, which is quite conservative in counting the
cost of IRC discssion. Firstly, supposing the person with the
question asks the report author by email in advance:

Let us say that enquirer spends perhaps 1 minute writing that email,
and the report author (let us say) 3 minutes at their convenience to
read it and write a response (we'll assume that the question is
simple, the answer is known, and a 200-odd-word answer will do). This
pair of mails will take the other interested parties perhaps a total
of 20 seconds each to read; let's say the response might take the
enquirer a full minute to read. If we have 30 interested parties,
that works out as follows:
1 minute of the enquirer's time to write the question
3 minutes of the report author's time to write the answer
1 minute of the enquirer's time to read the answer
10 minutes (20s x 30 interested parties) others' reading time
---
15 minutes total

If we do the same thing by IRC, then if we conduct the meeting in
full lockstep with everyone taking turns to speak and waiting for the
enquirer to read and ack the answer, it'll take 5 minutes of elapsed
time. If the number of interested parties is the same, that's:
5 minutes elapsed time
* 30 interested parties
---
150 minutes total

If the question or response are more complicated, or more discussion
is needed, or the report author needs to look up the answer, the
figures can easily get much, much worse.

Now, you may protest that the number of people on the mailing list is
much larger than the number of people who attend IRC meetings. BUT
this is just a reflection of the comparitive inaccessibility of IRC
meetings ! People react to the waste of time by failing to
participate.

You may also say that we don't do things in lockstep like that.
Indeed, we don't. We try to overlap the various activities somewhat.
This means that the enquirer may well be too busy reading and
considering the answer to pay proper attention to the next item, or
that the report's author may be too busy preparing their answer to
read the minor exchange that happens in the middle (which they maybe
had a comment on), etc. With a synchronous low-bandwidth medium like
IRC, the only way to make sure people have enough time is to do it in
lockstep.

So, this is just a collosal waste of everybody's time, and totally
unnecessary. After all, if someone wants to tell the board something
they can just email it to us and we don't need to formally accept it
or anything at all. If they want to know that we've read it and are
happy for whatever it is to exist / carry on / be true / whatever,
then having the board members formally indicate their acceptance is
fine but there is _no_ reason to have everyone waiting around for it.

> > 3. IRC discussions are less accessible to people who are not available
> > at the time of the meeting than email.
>
> Logs are distributed. Meetings are scheduled around when board members can
> attend. Some resolution discussion takes place privately on the board
> mailing list and is not even as open a process as the IRC meetings.

I think that we should usually discuss our board resolutions on
spi-general, or if applicable spi-private. (I admit that I haven't
always been as careful about the To: headers of my messages as I
should.)

> provided the chairman of the meeting enforces procedural rules, such as
> not allowing digression, a far bigger enemy than topical discussion.

Have you asked the meeting chair by /msg to ask people to say on
topic ? I agree that the digression is harmful.

> Resolutions are often posted days or weeks in advance and no replies are
> received until 3 hours before the meeting.

I agree that this is a problem.

> If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

I'd appreciate it if you'd respond to what I'm saying in good faith.
I agree that one of the problems has been the lack of timely
between-meeting participation and that I've been one of the culprits.
I'm trying to help fix that, by setting an explicit expectation for me
and other board members to meet. I think that's more constructive
than finger-pointing or shouting at people on IRC.

> A 7 day minimum restriction means some issues, even if urgent, may go 5
> weeks without being voted on.

I think 5 weeks is fine if they're not urgent. If they're urgent then
we can deal with them at the next meeting or by email; I explicitly
say that urgent things can be dealt with speedily.

> All items can and should be put on the agenda. The board has the right to
> defer any issue for further consideration.

The board can always decide to consider something immediately.
Perhaps I should explicitly mention that, although I thought it was
obvious from the discretion my resolution gives to the treasurer.

> The only thing stopping inter-meeting discussion of resolutions is board
> members not participating, and this resolution won't change that. People
> have to choose to participate in order to do so.

I think explicitly stating that they are supposed to participate, and
explicitly ensuring that the `it was only posted 48 hours in advance'
isn't an excuse because it's not true, and giving a period during
which their attention may be required, will probably help.

> > 14. The above rules may in any case be deviated from in case of
> > necessity, such as external deadlines, emergencies etc.
>
> These rules apply as long as they apply and if they don't apply well they
> won't apply because we don't need them to apply unless they apply, but if
> they do apply they do apply provided there are no reasons for them not to
> apply.

Don't be daft. These rules are guidance to the secretary and
president (or whoever is writing the agenda or presiding over the
meeting). I hope we can rely on then to interpret what's written in
the way it's intended, and if not we can formally or informally
clarify it.

> The meeting chair is already responsible for enforcing decorum and
> administering the meeting in an efficient manner.

Indeed, but it seems that I disagree with the secretary and/or meeting
chair about what's efficient and I hope the board will agree with me.
If the board agrees with me I trust the secretary and meeting chair to
respect the wishes of the board, just as I will respect the wishes of
the board if the vote goes against me.

> > 15. Guests will not be asked to state their name during the meeting.
...
> The practice of having guests state their name to the channel has been
> abolished independant of this resolution in favour of the secretary
> receiving the list over the course of the meeting by private messages.

That practice was abolished by 2003-09-01.iwj.1, which this new
resolution explicitly supercedes. Therefore anything that was in
2003-09-01.iwj.1 which we want to continue should be in the new
resolution.

> Following the suggestion of a member, future minutes will include both the
> name and the on-line handle of all present, in the interests of
> understanding logs.

That's very sensible, thanks.

Ian.

David Graham - SPI Secretary writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> Thus my version of this resolution would read:
>
> "The board resolves that resolution 2003-09-01.iwj.1 is stricken from the
> books."

If by the time we get to the meeting you still feel this way, I'd
encourage you to propose an amendment deleting all of the rest of my
resolution. I'd like to see the board vote one way or the other.

If we can make sure we've said beforehand in discussion everything we
think we're going to say I'd be happy to help with any niggly
drafting/clarification issues. I'm sure you'll agree that it'll be
important that when we vote on this and its amendments that the agenda
clearly shows what we're voting on and that the board members don't
get confused by the different votes.

I'd be happy if you want to take this to private email; of course I
don't want to seem to be trying to do your job for you ...

Regards,
Ian.

David Graham - SPI Secretary writes ("Oops (Re: Efficient board meetings, revised)"):
> Oops - sent to board and spi-general separately. if replying to my last
> email, please ensure both are there. (board(at)lists is not valid).

I'm sorry, I missed this mail before sending my two replies. The To:
header of my mails was also wrong, but I have sent a separate copy to
board(at)spi-inc(dot) So please, if you reply to me, don't make the same
mistake as I did ...

Ian.

> <>Following the suggestion of a member, future minutes will include
> both the
> name and the on-line handle of all present, in the interests of
> understanding logs.

Can we go one step farther and use our real names instead of handles as
our IRC identifiers during the meeting? It seems to have worked fine
when I do it.

I must confess that sometimes during a discussion I forget which of our
members is Cthulhu, etc.

Thanks

Bruce

Bruce writes:
> Can we go one step farther and use our real names instead of handles as
> our IRC identifiers during the meeting? It seems to have worked fine when
> I do it.

> I must confess that sometimes during a discussion I forget which of our
> members is Cthulhu, etc.

I would certainly appreciate that. While I don't intend to participate I
sometimes monitor the meetings when I have time, and I generally have to
work out who is Cthulhu, etc. from context.
--
John Hasler

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > The practice of having guests state their name to the channel has been
> > abolished independant of this resolution in favour of the secretary
> > receiving the list over the course of the meeting by private messages.
>
> It was abolished as part as a previous resolution by Ian.

The previous resolution required people to state their names in the
minutes leading up to the meeting, which, to the best of my knowledge, has
never actually happened. Members are no more likely to show up prior to
the meeting than the board members themselves.

---
David Graham, SPI Secretary
cdlu(at)spi-inc(dot)org D5F45889

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004, Ian Jackson wrote:
> David Graham - SPI Secretary writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> > I do not [like] the rules from 2004-10-15.iwj.1
> ...
> > IRC discussions are an effective, efficient way to conduct meetings
>
> This is, I think, the key point of disagreement between us. I've
> described my problems with IRC more fully in another message, so I
> shan't repeat myself here.

This may well be the key to our disagreement, but I stand by the
effectiveness and efficiency of IRC meetings, as discussed later in this
email.

> > IRC logs, especially when read against a meeting's agenda are easy to
> > parse into the discussions that took place, and provide an accurate and
> > candidate representation of the views of those present.
>
> I disagree with this. Indeed, we've had discussions even during the
> meeting about what people were referring to when they said something
> and even in some cases about how they voted.

Disagreements happen in all situations. If we were meeting in person we
would have the added problem of not having a definite record of who voted
how that can be looked at later without a stenographer or secretary
writing everything down during the meeting (unable to really participate
at the same time, no less).

> > Asking a question for clarification in a report is no reason to defer it
> > for a month, nor is it reason to force closure and vote immediately.
>
> Let me present a scenario, which is quite conservative in counting the
> cost of IRC discssion. Firstly, supposing the person with the
> question asks the report author by email in advance:
>
> Let us say that enquirer spends perhaps 1 minute writing that email,
> and the report author (let us say) 3 minutes at their convenience to
> read it and write a response (we'll assume that the question is
> simple, the answer is known, and a 200-odd-word answer will do). This
> pair of mails will take the other interested parties perhaps a total
> of 20 seconds each to read; let's say the response might take the
> enquirer a full minute to read. If we have 30 interested parties,
> that works out as follows:
> 1 minute of the enquirer's time to write the question
> 3 minutes of the report author's time to write the answer
> 1 minute of the enquirer's time to read the answer
> 10 minutes (20s x 30 interested parties) others' reading time
> ---
> 15 minutes total

I would call this 'spin'. The reality is this, in a mailing list
discussion, as this very one demonstrates:

Scnario: A committee sends in their report on the Monday following a board
meeting. This month, that would (have been) October 11th.

People have a chance to read it, and someone sends in a question on
October 12th. The presenter of the committee has already checked his mail
for the last time that day as he's in a different timezone and does not
read it until the 13th. He replies that afternoon and sends his reply to
the list and the person asking the question.

Total time elapsed: 2-3 days.

And that's assuming everything goes perfectly.

Measuring in man-hours is silly. This discussion about 'efficient board
meetings' has already eaten up several board meetings worth of man-hours
of time among those of us discussing it largely to rehash the same
arguments, when it's unlikely that either of us, at least, will change our
opinions.

I believe some things are better served by e-mail discussions, but I also
believe some things are better served by IRC discussions. Simple matters
can be done effectively on IRC.

> If we do the same thing by IRC, then if we conduct the meeting in
> full lockstep with everyone taking turns to speak and waiting for the
> enquirer to read and ack the answer, it'll take 5 minutes of elapsed
> time. If the number of interested parties is the same, that's:
> 5 minutes elapsed time
> * 30 interested parties
> ---
> 150 minutes total

I don't know where you get 5 minutes of elapsed time, nor 30 interested
parties each wasting those 5 minutes.

Even at 50 words a minute, a 200 word answer takes 4 minutes. I don't know
about the rest of the board, but I type between 100 and 150 words per
minute and tend not to give 200-word answers on IRC.

If the question is indeed short and the answer is indeed already known
then a simple answer will suffice, taking as little as a single minute.

If the question is a more complex answer than your whole example is moot
anyway as it is a different kettle of fish. A complicated question/answer,
if asked during the meeting, can be deferred back to discussion or
originate there and be resolved by meeting time.

My point is that the simple questions *are* appropriate to IRC.

> If the question or response are more complicated, or more discussion
> is needed, or the report author needs to look up the answer, the
> figures can easily get much, much worse.
>
> Now, you may protest that the number of people on the mailing list is
> much larger than the number of people who attend IRC meetings. BUT
> this is just a reflection of the comparitive inaccessibility of IRC
> meetings ! People react to the waste of time by failing to
> participate.

People disappearing is, I believe, a cause rather than an effect of
further people disappearing. We have some board members who don't even
respond to calls for votes for several minutes. That's the biggest waste
of time I've seen during the meetings since I became secretary. If people
make an effort to pay attention, we will get a lot done, and quickly.

> You may also say that we don't do things in lockstep like that.
> Indeed, we don't. We try to overlap the various activities somewhat.
> This means that the enquirer may well be too busy reading and
> considering the answer to pay proper attention to the next item, or
> that the report's author may be too busy preparing their answer to
> read the minor exchange that happens in the middle (which they maybe
> had a comment on), etc. With a synchronous low-bandwidth medium like
> IRC, the only way to make sure people have enough time is to do it in
> lockstep.
>
> So, this is just a collosal waste of everybody's time, and totally
> unnecessary. After all, if someone wants to tell the board something
> they can just email it to us and we don't need to formally accept it
> or anything at all. If they want to know that we've read it and are
> happy for whatever it is to exist / carry on / be true / whatever,
> then having the board members formally indicate their acceptance is
> fine but there is _no_ reason to have everyone waiting around for it.

On the contrary, I would support a brief allocation of time at the start
or end of meetings for prepared announcements to be made. Paste, done! Ok,
everyone knows, it's on the record.

E-mail discussions, for all the archiving, are not on the official
records, which only exist in the form of minutes and resolutions.

> > > 3. IRC discussions are less accessible to people who are not available
> > > at the time of the meeting than email.
> >
> > Logs are distributed. Meetings are scheduled around when board members can
> > attend. Some resolution discussion takes place privately on the board
> > mailing list and is not even as open a process as the IRC meetings.
>
> I think that we should usually discuss our board resolutions on
> spi-general, or if applicable spi-private. (I admit that I haven't
> always been as careful about the To: headers of my messages as I
> should.)

We should, perhaps, define when things belong in spi-private. I don't
think we have any clear guidelines as to what belongs in the public domain
and what doesn't. My understanding is that a 501c3 that doesn't keep its
business public can lose its 501c3 status.

> > provided the chairman of the meeting enforces procedural rules, such as
> > not allowing digression, a far bigger enemy than topical discussion.
>
> Have you asked the meeting chair by /msg to ask people to say on
> topic ? I agree that the digression is harmful.

Yes.

> > Resolutions are often posted days or weeks in advance and no replies are
> > received until 3 hours before the meeting.
>
> I agree that this is a problem.
>
> > If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
>
> I'd appreciate it if you'd respond to what I'm saying in good faith.
> I agree that one of the problems has been the lack of timely
> between-meeting participation and that I've been one of the culprits.
> I'm trying to help fix that, by setting an explicit expectation for me
> and other board members to meet. I think that's more constructive
> than finger-pointing or shouting at people on IRC.

This is completely in good faith. After months or years of inaction and
non-participation you expect me to believe you out-of-hand that you will
participate completely. While you're doing so now, the real question is
sustainability. Will you still be participating in three months? six
months? a year? It's long term that matters.

> > A 7 day minimum restriction means some issues, even if urgent, may go 5
> > weeks without being voted on.
>
> I think 5 weeks is fine if they're not urgent. If they're urgent then
> we can deal with them at the next meeting or by email; I explicitly
> say that urgent things can be dealt with speedily.

What's the point? The board can defer things on its own with or without
this rather onerous resolution.

> > All items can and should be put on the agenda. The board has the right to
> > defer any issue for further consideration.
>
> The board can always decide to consider something immediately.
> Perhaps I should explicitly mention that, although I thought it was
> obvious from the discretion my resolution gives to the treasurer.

Surely you mean secretary or meeting chair. As I've said before, the board
does not need a resolution stating that we can or cannot deal with what
when, when we have the power to, as we have done, defer issues.

I would rather have now be the default and later be the fall-back than
later be default and now be the fall-back.

> > The only thing stopping inter-meeting discussion of resolutions is board
> > members not participating, and this resolution won't change that. People
> > have to choose to participate in order to do so.
>
> I think explicitly stating that they are supposed to participate, and
> explicitly ensuring that the `it was only posted 48 hours in advance'
> isn't an excuse because it's not true, and giving a period during
> which their attention may be required, will probably help.

I don't honestly believe any board member will change their behaviour in
the long term because of a resolution any more than any members of the
board who drink or smoke would stop doing so simply because we passed a
resolution stating they should stop. The behaviour will change by self-
and leadership-motivated board member involvement.

My opinion is fundamentally this:

Sitting on the board of directors -- any board of directors, not just
SPI's -- is a commitment. If someone is not willing to put the time in
without being pushed to do so, perhaps they shouldn't be on the board at
all. SPI's board of directors is *not* a huge commitment. Even as an
officer of the board it takes only a few hours per month of work. As an
administrative body we have some issues to consider and the duty to
discuss and make decisions on them. It's not asking a lot to ask people to
discuss these matters between meetings, but no matter how hard you try,
you won't succeed in getting full participation in any meaningful long
term manner by legislating it alone.

> > > 14. The above rules may in any case be deviated from in case of
> > > necessity, such as external deadlines, emergencies etc.
> >
> > These rules apply as long as they apply and if they don't apply well they
> > won't apply because we don't need them to apply unless they apply, but if
> > they do apply they do apply provided there are no reasons for them not to
> > apply.
>
> Don't be daft. These rules are guidance to the secretary and
> president (or whoever is writing the agenda or presiding over the
> meeting). I hope we can rely on then to interpret what's written in
> the way it's intended, and if not we can formally or informally
> clarify it.

Clause 14 of 2004-10-15.iwj.1 nearly explicitly says that this resolution
is nothing more than a set of recommendations, ie that the resolution is
not binding and has no effect. So you're putting onerous rules on and then
explaining that they're really just ideas and we should follow them when
it's convenient. It really doesn't make much sense to me, though it does
explain why some people are willing to bend these rules then turn around
and enforce them.

> > The meeting chair is already responsible for enforcing decorum and
> > administering the meeting in an efficient manner.
>
> Indeed, but it seems that I disagree with the secretary and/or meeting
> chair about what's efficient and I hope the board will agree with me.
> If the board agrees with me I trust the secretary and meeting chair to
> respect the wishes of the board, just as I will respect the wishes of
> the board if the vote goes against me.

The board has already demonstrated disagreement with this resolution by
carrying out efficient, effective discussions at our meetings. The
problems that led to the need for this resolution were related to a lack
of leadership, concern, and involvement, not a lack of rules.

Consider that at our last meeting we had 13 items on the agenda, three of
which were resolutions four of them required discussion, and one was a set
of minutes that required approval.

The entire meeting took under an hour.

A resolution was deferred to get more advice on it from interested
parties, two of the discussion topics were deferred to the lists, and the
remaining two were resolved on the spot. The minutes were approved
immediately.

If we go by your logic, that took about 8 man-hours of board time, but
when I first begain watching the board I watched meeting after meeting
wasted on what?

Approving minutes.

That's right, entire meetings were dedicated to approving the minutes of
the last meeting, or of two or three meetings previous.

The problems of the board are being addressed not through legislation but
through proper chairmanship, respect of decorum and serious attention
given to the issues that need attention.

> > > 15. Guests will not be asked to state their name during the meeting.
> ...
> > The practice of having guests state their name to the channel has been
> > abolished independant of this resolution in favour of the secretary
> > receiving the list over the course of the meeting by private messages.
>
> That practice was abolished by 2003-09-01.iwj.1, which this new
> resolution explicitly supercedes. Therefore anything that was in
> 2003-09-01.iwj.1 which we want to continue should be in the new
> resolution.

The practice you legislate is asking people to state their names in the 15
minutes leading up to the name.

Personally I'd be quite happy with guests stating their names the first
time they spoke right in the channel. It'd make for better logs and
there's no requirement that we sit around waiting for them to say so.

This isn't a conference call and noone will be interrupted by an SPI
member stating their name part way through the meeting.

I have, though, for the last couple of meetings asked members to send me a
private message identifying themselves for the purposes of the meeting
minutes. This practice is not completely effective as people who have not
identified themselves sometimes speak and I may not notice till much
later, though there is no saying that this would be any different with
people stating their names to channel.

Bruce's suggestion of everyone using their real names as IRC handles is a
good one, though for people with smaller windows having 15 to 20-letter
nicks at the start of each line can make quite a mess of their screen.

As a compromise I can either do...

> > Following the suggestion of a member, future minutes will include both the
> > name and the on-line handle of all present, in the interests of
> > understanding logs.

or, alternatively regex the log to change the nicks to names.

The log would thus have everyone's names as an accurate record of the
meeting, but the meeting itself will not be faced with the above problem,
though the unchanged log with the legend of who is who is a more accurate
record of the meeting.

---
David Graham, SPI Secretary
cdlu(at)spi-inc(dot)org D5F45889

On Sat, Oct 16, 2004 at 11:26:11PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > small number of guests attending meeting, being friendly to them cannot
> > harm the organization.
>
> The problem isn't having the guests state their names. The problem is
> having the meeting held up for n minutes for no good reason. I don't
> think this is a huge problem, but it seemed obviously daft to me and
> since the meeting chair didn't do what I wanted putting it my
> resolution and letting the board decide seemed sensible.
>
> `Being friendly' to someone doesn't mean keeping a dozen or two people
> waiting for them to type their name. It means making them feel

What are you talking about? I do not hold up a meeting waiting for
guests to state their names. I have asked them to /msg their name to
David. Making that request takes about 5 seconds. Then we move on.

We only wait for board members to state their names in the channel.

-- John

John Goerzen writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> On Sat, Oct 16, 2004 at 11:26:11PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > `Being friendly' to someone doesn't mean keeping a dozen or two people
> > waiting for them to type their name. It means making them feel
>
> What are you talking about? I do not hold up a meeting waiting for
> guests to state their names. I have asked them to /msg their name to
> David. Making that request takes about 5 seconds. Then we move on.

Yes, that's fine, I'm not saying you did.

My point was that it was the Efficient Board Meetings resolution which
helped abolish the _previous_ practice of waiting for guests to type
their names. I was arguing that that practice shouldn't be restored.

There's no need for it to be in a formal resolution if it's going to
happen anyway.

Ian.

On Sun, Oct 17, 2004 at 03:02:22PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 16, 2004 at 11:26:11PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > > small number of guests attending meeting, being friendly to them cannot
> > > harm the organization.
> > `Being friendly' to someone doesn't mean keeping a dozen or two people
> > waiting for them to type their name. It means making them feel
>
> What are you talking about? I do not hold up a meeting waiting for
> guests to state their names. I have asked them to /msg their name to
> David. Making that request takes about 5 seconds. Then we move on.
>
> We only wait for board members to state their names in the channel.

And we've learned not to wait for Joey S., as he'll never do it. ;-P

--
G. Branden Robinson, Deputy Treasurer
Software in the Public Interest, Inc.
branden(at)deadbeast(dot)net
http://www.spi-inc.org/

David Graham - SPI Secretary writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> The previous resolution required people to state their names in the
> minutes leading up to the meeting, which, to the best of my knowledge, has
> never actually happened.

In fact, if you read it, it says `... or when they arrive if they
arrive later.'

> Members are no more likely to show up prior to
> the meeting than the board members themselves.

Indeed. Nor should they be required to.

Ian.

I started to write an in-detail response to David, but on reflection I
think neither of us will convince the other; other members and board
members aren't well-served by us two dissecting each others' postings
at length.

My basic premise is this:

IRC is not the best place for serious discussion of important issues.
Trying to do the discussion, reporting, resolution-drafting, etc. in a
real-time IRC meeting results in:

- Inadequate consideration of the issues because everyone is
`thinking on their feet' and there's no time to do research.

- Inadequate preparation and groundwork (lack of draft resolutions
or pre-prepared reports; informal reports about important issues).

- A pernicious combination of alternating frenzy and
boredom/impatience which makes meetings simultaneously stressful and
a waste of time (and leads to inattentiveness by some people).

- Pressure to type very quickly to get one's word in (which is bad
for accuracy, and disadvantages people who can't type as fast).

- Sometimes, pressure to skimread complex discussion in real-time in
order to keep up (which is bad for thoroughness and excludes people
who have difficulty following the fast, idiomatic and abbreviated
language).

If you agree that email, rather than IRC, should be the primary medium
for discussions, reception of reports, drafting of resolutions, etc.,
you'll probably agree with my proposed update of the Efficient Board
Meetings resolution.

Board members who disagree, and want us to start generally discussing
matters by IRC, are happy for people to type in reports while-we-wait,
and would prefer more interactive discussion of resolution drafting
details, questions, etc., during the meeting, should vote for David
Graham's amendment - i.e. to abolish "Efficient Board Meetings" - and
then vote in favour of the resolution as amended.

I'd be happy to hear constructive criticisms of my proposed draft and
discuss them and accept changes which agree with the principle, but I
feel I've said most of what I can usefully say in support of the
principle.

Thanks,
Ian.

Ian Jackson wrote:
> If you agree that email, rather than IRC, should be the primary medium
> for discussions, reception of reports, drafting of resolutions, etc.,
> you'll probably agree with my proposed update of the Efficient Board
> Meetings resolution.

Even though I agree that many things should be done via mail and not
via IRC, I also consider it a problem we cannot solve through more
and more resolutions. I'll have to work accordingly. All of us.
Every board member.

Regards,

Joey

--
Testing? What's that? If it compiles, it is good, if it boots up, it is perfect.

Martin Schulze writes ("Re: Efficient board meetings, revised"):
> Even though I agree that many things should be done via mail and not
> via IRC, I also consider it a problem we cannot solve through more
> and more resolutions. I'll have to work accordingly. All of us.
> Every board member.

Does that mean that you think we should:

(a) Maintain the status quo ? Currently my earlier `Efficient Board
Meetings' is nominally in force, but is often ignored and/or
ranted about by some of the people who run the meeting. If the
Board doesn't pass either my reaffirmation of Efficient Board
Meetings, or David's abolition of it, where does that leave us ?

(b) Abolish `Efficient Board Meetings' because although you agree
with it you think `more and more resolutions [cannot] solve [the]
problem' ? That would seem silly to me.

Note that my proposal is not `more and more' resolutions. It's
not even _one_ more resolution: it's a reaffirmation and
clarification of an established resolution, and the total number
of resolutions in force would remain constant.

(c) Vote in favour of reaffirming `Efficient Board Meetings', because
you agree with it, even though it won't solve all of our
problems ?

(d) Something else ?

I _do_ agree that reaffirmin my resolution won't solve all of SPI's
problems. But I think it _can_ contribute towards ensuring that:

* Matters which the board considers have at least had time for proper
documentation, discussion, reflection and research (unless of
course there's some external reason why it all has to be done
quickly).

* It is clearly stated that board members are expected to participate
in the pre-meeting work. A board member who fails to participate
in email discussions will also find themselves in a weak position
if they try to raise matters at the last moment in the meeting,
wasting everyone's time. A board member who consistently fails to
do their job can readily be criticised, and ultimately the
membership will decide whether they should continue on the board.

Ian.