[Noisebridge-board] Noisebridge annual board meeting

[miloh]

On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org> wrote:
>
> miloh writes:
>
> > Would love to meet, I'll be at 2169 on Tuesday if we do, I have a few points
> > to make below.
> >
> >  *why* are we discussing holding a board meeting?  The Noisebridge
> > membership needs to consent on a new board for 2011.  We need to give the
> > membership of Noisebridge a chance to organize and come to a Tuesday meeting
> > to do that.
> >
> > However, as far as I see, we haven't even discussed or broached this subject
> > yet at a Tuesday meeting.
>
> Hi Miloh,
>
> The current board has never, as far as I know, had an official
> board meeting, and the bylaws call for the board to do that
> every year (which seems to mean that each board would typically
> meet once -- right around the end of that board's tenure).
>

The board met earlier in the year during the executive kerfluffle. It
was there that we started figuring out how to get a Noisebridge
Executive, Mitch's name was floated, and we decided to take that issue
to the membership for consensus.

> The previous procedure for choosing a new board was to have an
> election with paper ballots in a ballot box.  Last year this
> happened on a Tuesday but it wasn't a consensus agenda item; it
> was pursuant to a resolution of the board at a board meeting. :-)
>

I'm not clear on this -- did the board decide that the board would get
voted on, and the membership gave consent?

If so, do you think the current membership will consent to the same
process of election this year?

> As Rachel says, Kelly is working on getting an official membership
> list by excluding people who aren't in good standing because
> they've stopped paying dues.  I think this is based on the
> intuition that members should have a reliable way to find out
> whether they're eligible to vote before they vote.

Getting the membership cleared up is very important to me.  People
I've heard from keep looking for benefits of membership and don't
understand the responsibility.   Members on intentional or
unintentional 'hiatus' don't seem to understand that they won't be
part of final consensus on where Noisebridge heads.  This leaves a
shrinking pool of people to steer the org, which is really ironic
given all the rhetoric about democracy and consensus this year.


I'll be there tomorrow, board meeting or no...


-rma