[Noisebridge-discuss] consensus process

[Shannon Lee]

The way a lot of organizations run this is to have several different kinds
of meetings, to whit:

* the general weekly/montly meetings, at which the business of the group is
done -- that is, the meeting at which we do whatever it was we formed the
group to do; in our case, this probably means hacking and discussion
thereof.

* the board meeting, at which the board hashes through the details of
actually running the organization, one aspect of which is deciding which
decisions they can make and which are passed on to general / voting
meetings.  this meeting is usually held slightly less often than the general
meeting.

* the member's voting meeting, where questions the group needs to decide on
get hashed out by the whole group.  mostly this means proposals the board
has decided to refer to the members.  this meeting is generally held
quarterly or annually.

Now, I'm not saying that this is the format we *have* to stick to, just that
this is the one I've seen work over and over again.  Consensus driven
organizations can work within the above framework just as well as
heirarchically-oriented organizations can.  One way to make this work in a
more consensus-driven way is to have a much larger board, and to have it be
fairly porous, such that we still have a lot of member input while not
requiring those not interested to sit through the boring stuff.

I'll be leaving my copy of Robert's at the space for anyone who wants to
peruse it.

--S

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 1:44 AM, Jonas S Karlsson <jsk at yesco.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 1:46 PM, Rachel McConnell <rachel at xtreme.com>
> wrote:
> > I have several takeaways from last night.  I think everyone is aware that
> we
> > made a lot of decisions and the one about the keys was
> >  a) not actually a consensus, but this got lost, and
> >  b) I changed my mind about what I was OK with last night
> >
> > I'm happy to go into my reasoning for the below but hopefully it will be
> > clear why these are good ideas.
> >
> > Suggested process guidelines:
> >
> > 1. We set a time limit for meetings and anything that doesn't get
> discussed
> > within the time limit is pushed off until the next meeting.  I think an
> hour
> > and a half is a reasonable time limit, or an hour.  Two hours seems too
> > long, to me.  I don't want to limit discussion time on specific items
> > though.
> >
> > 2. Someone leads the meeting.  Someone records the meeting.  Last night
> Andy
> > and David respectively filled these roles and up to a point it worked
> very
> > well, but more definition will be good.  The leader's role would be to
> > introduce the agenda items, keep discussion on topic, and ensure everyone
> > gets heard.  The recorder's role is to write down important points and
> the
> > consensus decision, if any.
> >
> > 3. Once it appears that consensus has been reached, the recorder reads
> back
> > their understanding of it so everyone knows what the Official Record is,
> and
> > has a last chance to object if necessary.
>
> And post it directly on the web as a blog/email? ;-)
>
> > 4. (This is the big one) No decisions on anything should be made at the
> same
> > meeting the idea is introduced at.  It should take at least two meetings,
> > one to introduce it and have some initial discussion, and the next to
> make
> > the decision (if it's ready to be made).  We really don't need to rush
> into
> > anything, and people should have time to think things over.  Not to
> mention
> > members who could not make it to the meeting.
> >
>
> I like this one. Meanwhile, if a decision is due to be taken at a
> meeting, send it
> in advance to the  announce list (it'll probably be implied by writing
> a record).
>
> /Jonas
>
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > Rachel
> > _______________________________________________
> > Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> > Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> > https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
> >
>
>
>
> --
> .sigh
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>
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