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Grex > Coop13 > #364: Agenda for BOD meeting, Tuesday, 9/26/06, 8PM | |
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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 66 responses total. |
aruba
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response 3 of 66:
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Sep 24 13:37 UTC 2006 |
I agree, that should be a part of the discussion.
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remmers
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response 4 of 66:
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Sep 24 14:21 UTC 2006 |
I should mention - since it hasn't been emphasized lately - that board
meetings are open to the public.
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cross
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response 5 of 66:
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Sep 24 16:52 UTC 2006 |
Yes, I'd further make it a goal to come up with a suitable policy. How do
members of the public attend the board meeting if they aren't near Ann Arbor?
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other
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response 6 of 66:
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Sep 24 19:12 UTC 2006 |
That's not the board's concern. It's no different for any other company.
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cross
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response 7 of 66:
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Sep 24 19:14 UTC 2006 |
Staff revoking other staff members' privileges is not the board's concern?
Then why is it the board's concern if a staff member gives another staff
member staff privileges?
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glenda
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response 8 of 66:
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Sep 24 19:49 UTC 2006 |
I think that Eric's response is to the second question in #5, not the first.
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cross
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response 9 of 66:
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Sep 24 20:18 UTC 2006 |
I think you must be right, Glenda. To clarify: I think the board should come
up with a suitable policy for staff members revoking the privileges of other
staff members.
I was just curious on a personal note how one attends a board meeting if one
is not local to the area, and was not suggesting that the board form a policy
for such things. Clearly, that is beyond the scope of the board's
responsibilities.
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nharmon
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response 10 of 66:
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Sep 24 21:37 UTC 2006 |
Building on Dan's suggestion in #9, I think the BoD should consider
appointing a person to be in charge of staff activities. This would be
in the form of a corporate officer (say like a CIO or CTO) who would
report directly to the board. The board would vest supervisory authority
in this person including the authority to add and remove people from
staff, approve system changes, etc. Staff members added by this
administrator could be given limited administrative access to the system
using sudo, with full access to the root password still requiring BoD
approval.
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gelinas
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response 11 of 66:
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Sep 25 03:14 UTC 2006 |
The only ways to attend board meetings, that I know of, are to appear in
person at the meeting site and to call in. The latter option is limited
to the number of available dial-in lines (and speaker-equipped telephones).
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drew
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response 12 of 66:
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Sep 25 04:33 UTC 2006 |
FWIW: A Three-Way Call can now be placed, for a per-call charge, even
from a line that does not have 3 way calling as a regular feature, This
should add at least one extra person worth of capacity to each phone line
available at the meeting site.
For long distance charges, the current low bid seems to be calling
cards sold at Dollar Tree (tm), 35 minutes worth of long distance for,
of course, a dollar; though two to four such cards will probably be
necessary to cover a meeting, with necessity of redialing for each card.
This should make attendance of a meeting remote possible for < $10,
probably much less than the cost of traveling to the meeting site.
Also, some cell phone plans may be of help. (I *think* that 3-way
is an included feature of most.) Sprint, for example, has an airtime
free after 7PM plan; and I've been hearing commercials lately for a
Talk-All-You-Want for $40/month service.
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nharmon
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response 13 of 66:
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Sep 25 13:10 UTC 2006 |
Or you could book a telephone conferencing system for board meetings.
Some are free without 800 numbers IIRC.
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scholar
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response 14 of 66:
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Sep 25 14:04 UTC 2006 |
At the very least, why doesn't the Board see to it that meetings are recorded
and then published on the Internet?
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nharmon
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response 15 of 66:
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Sep 25 14:35 UTC 2006 |
I think the minutes are published on the internet.
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tod
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response 16 of 66:
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Sep 25 17:37 UTC 2006 |
re #10
We did that on M-Net. We created a "sys admin" and that person is currently
Rex Roof. The buck stops with him when staff gets questionable. He is also
the one that answers for any weirdness. I'm actually suprised that sort of
title hasn't been extended to STeve since he obviously operates under such
an assumption.
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nharmon
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response 17 of 66:
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Sep 25 17:41 UTC 2006 |
Well, whether it exists informally or not at all, I think formal unity
of command is a good thing and would prevent problems like this.
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tod
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response 18 of 66:
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Sep 25 17:55 UTC 2006 |
I think addressing it formally would be a way to inform people that want to
volunteer for staff that they have to seek approval of the guy behind the
curtain before they attempt something silly like logic. Nobody is going to
come right out and say that there are going to be bruised egos if you attempt
to fix anything so it should be formally noted at least.
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scholar
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response 19 of 66:
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Sep 25 18:05 UTC 2006 |
Re. 15: Yes, but no matter how good a secretary Grex has, minutes can't be
as good as audio recordings, which is what I'm suggesting.
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nharmon
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response 20 of 66:
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Sep 25 19:05 UTC 2006 |
re 19: Sounds like an issue to be taken up by a BoD candidate.
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tod
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response 21 of 66:
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Sep 25 19:29 UTC 2006 |
re #20
I agree. Hope we have a good volunteer to be on BoD.
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steve
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response 22 of 66:
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Sep 25 20:34 UTC 2006 |
I'm going to see if I can't record the meeting. I'm not sure
how I'll take it off the device, so I'll have to figure that out
before I can put it somewhere for people to get to it.
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tod
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response 23 of 66:
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Sep 25 20:39 UTC 2006 |
You could use a laptop and Total Recorder to put it right on mp3.
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naftee
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response 24 of 66:
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Sep 25 22:01 UTC 2006 |
re 19
But then we'd have to guess the person who's snoring during the meeting :(
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cross
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response 25 of 66:
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Sep 25 22:35 UTC 2006 |
How does M-Net go about selecting this sysadmin above all sysadmins? How are
the personality conflicts that seem inevitable to arise between that person
and others handled? What if that person just says, "no" to anything that
anyone else proposes? Like I said, you're giving one person an awful lot of
power without a lot of checks and balances. Having someone responsible for
the system is one thing. Having them responsible for and have authority over
the rest of the staff is quite another.
Regarding #22; If you have an iPod, you could get an iMic and plug it in to
take a recording.
I wanted to try and call into the meeting, but now it looks like tomorrow
night isn't going to be so hot. :-(
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tod
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response 26 of 66:
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Sep 25 23:04 UTC 2006 |
The sysadmin is basically an appointed position by the prez. If the
membership has a beef with the choice or conduct of said sysadmin then they
can issue a request with alternative choices. If they still are unhappy, they
can ask the membership to issue a vote of no-confidence against the president
that made the appointment and ask him to step-down.
I would say that Grex should do that but once again, there are toes and
egos that might be bruised so I'd be almost completely blown away by such
an act of mature accountability.
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cross
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response 27 of 66:
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Sep 25 23:31 UTC 2006 |
The problem is that that forces the membership to either (a) understand the
technical issues involved, or (b) just go blindly with one side or another.
The problem with grex is that it isn't so much a working democracy as it is
a popularity contest; I'm wondering if we'd just be formalizing that.
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