Re: Candidate question re: SPI Board election

I notice that Michael Schultheiss, currently holding the office of SPI Treasurer and whose term on the Board is expiring, is running for re-election. I believe firmly that those stepping up to volunteer for leadership positions in their non-profit open-source communities deserve special recognition and kudos, and therefore Michael, I applaud your long service to the SPI on top of the many other communities you are active in.

I also firmly believe that volunteer-run organizations do best when we’re all honest with ourselves. I have had to painfully learn the lesson myself that when in volunteer leadership roles, we need to recognize when we don’t have the means or time to reliably follow through on commitments we would nevertheless love to make out of dedication to the respective organization, and that failing to doing so ultimately does more harm than good.

As many here are probably well aware, the SPI Treasurer office has in recent years frequently not been able to conduct even simple tasks in a way that would ensure or even only reliably communicate or update expectations for completion. (I say this in the belief that what OBF as an associated project has experienced is similar to, and not substantially different, from what others have.)

Michael, since you are silent on this in your candidate statement, I’d like to ask the following questions here, and look forward to your responses.
(1) If elected, would you continue the office of SPI Treasurer? If yes,
(2) What changes do you plan to make that you believe will return the SPI Treasurer office (arguably one of SPI’s most important from an associated project’s perspective) to providing functional and timely service and communication.

Thanks,

-hilmar
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Hilmar Lapp -:- lappland.io

Hilmar Lapp wrote:
> Michael, since you are silent on this in your candidate statement, I’d
> like to ask the following questions here, and look forward to your
> responses. (1) If elected, would you continue the office of SPI
> Treasurer?

I plan on continuing as SPI Treasurer for at least one more year if I'm
re-elected to the board.

> (2) What changes do you plan to make that you believe will return the
> SPI Treasurer office (arguably one of SPI’s most important from an
> associated project’s perspective) to providing functional and timely
> service and communication.

I plan on dedicating hours to SPI treasury work each week rather than
working ad-hoc on tasks. I also appreciate the assistance recently
provided on Treasury work by several other board members, including, but
not limited to Martin Michlmayr, Martin Zobel-Helas, Andrew Tridgell,
and Tim Potter.

--
----------------------------
Michael Schultheiss
E-mail: schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org

* Michael Schultheiss <schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org> [2018-07-13 16:59]:
> I plan on dedicating hours to SPI treasury work each week rather than
> working ad-hoc on tasks. I also appreciate the assistance recently
...

Just to add to that, we've been discussing getting more paid help, so
Michael doesn't have to do all of the day-to-day work. There are no
meeting minutes of the July meeting yet but you can read the log at
http://spi-inc.org/meetings/logs/2018/2018-07-09-log.txt

We'll seek input from projects on this in the near future.

--
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/

> On Jul 13, 2018, at 5:05 PM, Martin Michlmayr <tbm(at)cyrius(dot)com> wrote:
>
> * Michael Schultheiss <schultmc(at)spi-inc(dot)org> [2018-07-13 16:59]:
>> I plan on dedicating hours to SPI treasury work each week rather than
>> working ad-hoc on tasks. I also appreciate the assistance recently
> ...
>
> Just to add to that, we've been discussing getting more paid help, so
> Michael doesn't have to do all of the day-to-day work. There are no
> meeting minutes of the July meeting yet but you can read the log at
> http://spi-inc.org/meetings/logs/2018/2018-07-09-log.txt
>
> We'll seek input from projects on this in the near future.

Thanks for pointing to that, Martin. I have to say I’m heartened to hear (read) about those plans. I have proposed this at an SPI Board meeting a few years ago and gotten zero traction. So, very happy to hear that it is being considered in earnest now. The only thing I would throw in here is that “doing more”, although nice, needn’t be the major argument in favor from my perspective. Simply just doing reliably, timely, and responsively what SPI commits itself to already in terms of services for projects would be an enormous plus. And if this were the result, I’d have no objections to raising SPI’s fee either (provided the increase is within reason :-)

-hilmar

--
Hilmar Lapp -:- lappland.io