[Noisebridge-discuss] meet tomorrow?

Tue May 27 20:32:45 UTC 2008

Jonas, I think that your vision of member-driven culture is achievable, in
terms of how things work on a day-to-day basis.  We can and should allow
participants to be as active as they want to be and to have their say in the
decision making process. However, in order to have a bank account,
non-profit status, and all those other operational goodies, someone needs to
take on the legal responsibility, and we can't expect people to take on that
responsibility if they aren't in control of the things they're responsible
for,  thus we need a board that ultimately has all the power.

Julia is leaving town in a few days, but when she gets back she's offered to
do the "how to be a good director" training for us.  I hope everyone with
interest can attend that.  We should try to get at least eight or ten people
there to make it worth her while.  Even people with no interest in being a
director can benefit from understanding what the job entails. She offered
the special session for us so that we'd have a chance to ask questions
related to our specific scenario, rather than competing for attention in the
open class, which normally caters to people who want to volunteer on some
board but don't know which one yet.

I think, if we get the articles and bylaws close to what we want we can move
forward.  If after Julia's class or at any other point we need to amend
them, we can do that, but let's at least try to start off with the best
documents we can muster.

On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Jonas S Karlsson <jsk at yesco.org> wrote:

> 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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