[Noisebridge-discuss] meet tomorrow?

Tue May 27 20:01:16 UTC 2008

Stewards, Cucumbers!

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 11:27 AM, Rachel McConnell <rachel at xtreme.com>
wrote:

> 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.
>>
>
I'd really like (Love?) to have such a person like Julia present at such a
meeting to do a Q/A. I find it difficult to learn from experience second
hand. I agree that term limits, basic stable mission statements are
important. I don't want to have any directors. What makes me hesitate about
her advice is that she seems to have the view that there'll be
directors/board who'll have power to decide and do things, which in our case
is what we kind of NOT want to have. We don't want it to be like a
corporation, but for tax reasons we will probably choose so. We essentially
want "legal puppets", who are privately protected but that oversees and make
sure we fullfill/conform to the law. That is my limited view. Power
struggles are difficult, I get the impression that they may be more common
in US to worry about this since  there is a strong individualistic culture
and people are used to (ab)use organisations and people for their own
purposes. I almost see it as we would like to build an organisation that
doesn't exists by itself but IS the MEMBERS.

That's my view, maybe too idealistic ;-)

    Jonas

>> 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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>>
>>
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-- 
.sigh
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