[Noisebridge-discuss] meet tomorrow?

[Rachel McConnell]

So Julia's suggestion was basically, have small-m members who are a) 
eligible to have keys to the space and b) expected to contribute cash or 
effort regularly?  Those are the two things, to my mind, that we need 
explicit membership for in a practical sense.

Can you lay out a couple of the scenarios you thought of and how the 
no-Member strategy played out?

Rachel

Noah Balmer wrote:
> I'd be fine with going to Mission Creek again, though they'll probably 
> close before we're done.  My house is an option too, it's a block east 
> of Rachel's place, at 3353 cesar chavez, next door to Chicken John's.  
> Three couches and a projector.
> 
> There are a couple things I'd like to have on the agenda tonight.
> 
> I met yesterday with Julia Love, the associate director the Volunteer 
> Center.  We talked about the relative advantages of different 
> organizational structures and she gave me a bunch of reading material.  
> She does free quarterly training in how to be a good director on a 
> non-profit board.  She offered to do a special session of that class 
> just for us in a couple weeks.
> 
> She took a look at our site and the current state of our bylaws, and 
> made a pretty compelling case to (oh dammit I worked hard on that 
> section) not have voting members.  I know, I know. We've already been 
> around the block on this one, and want to move on,  but she works with 
> non-profits all over the bay area, and knows a bit about what makes an 
> organization healthy, so I'm inclined to learn from her experience 
> here.  She effectively said that the voting members thing is possible 
> and might work if there aren't many members and they all agree with each 
> other, but, as new people get involved and cliques start to form, it 
> encourages power struggles that end up taking up all the organization's 
> time and eventually swamping the whole venture.  She suggests term 
> limits, a clear mission statement, and a "mission first" job description 
> for the directors as better ways to avoid abuse of power.
> 
> After our meeting, I played out a few scenarios in my head, and 
> completely came around to Julia's way of thinking on this.  In most of 
> the "bad director" situations I could think of, her approach led me to a 
> better outcome.  Maybe we should just go back to the no-members bylaws, 
> make sure the directors are term-limited and have well-defined jobs, and 
> call it done.
> 
> We can talk about all this at the meeting, but I'm putting it in email 
> here so everyone has a chance to think about it beforehand.
> 
> 
> On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 4:58 AM, David Molnar <dmolnar at eecs.berkeley.edu 
> <mailto:dmolnar at eecs.berkeley.edu>> wrote:
> 
>     Jacob Appelbaum wrote:
> 
>         Noah Balmer wrote:
> 
>             anyone up for meeting tomorrow?
> 
> 
>         Sure. I'm down to hack on stuff. Bylaws or otherwise. Perhaps we can
>         switch things up and meet somewhere other than Rachel's house?
> 
>         I'm a fan of a coffee shop with wifi.
> 
> 
>     Agree with all above.
> 
>     Would suggest Peoples Cafe in Berkeley (phone 510-666-0666 !), but
>     it's not SF. The place we ended up at last time was pretty decent,
>     if we can get that back room again.
> 
>     I took another look just now and we're close...
> 
>     -David Molnar
> 
> 
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