I. Call to Order
II. Treasurer's Report
a. Transition of Duties Report
b. Tax & Corporation Forms Update
c. Membership Report
III. Staff Report
IV. Business
a. Mission Discussion
b. Dial-in Lines
c. E-mail on Grex
d. What Services Should We Offer?
V. AOB
VI. Next Meeting
VII. Adjourn
73 responses total.
Please let me know if other agenda items are needed or if these need any modification. We need the location for this meeting, too.
We decided to have the meeting at my place in southern Ypsilanti Township. But to let everyone know, there's some construction work being done, closing one of the intersections on the way to my place. The detour takes us 2-3 miles out of the way, so allow for that. My address is: 7584 Dover Drive, Ypsilanti, 48197. I'll email the board and other regular attenders the detour route [anyone else interested, let me know]. The other side note is that Sunday afternoon I need to take a couple people to the airport. I'm planning on going early enough so I'll be back in time. But in case I get caught up somewhere on the way home, wait for me! If people think that with construction traffic will be a problem, perhaps we can try and get the room at Zing's?
That construction is such complete bullshit too. I can't believe those idiots are putting a damn roundabout there. Ugh.
What do you bet they put trees and shrubs in the middle of the roundabout so you can't see cars coming from the other side?
That seems pretty likely. My favorite new light is the one by the brewery on carpenter road that controls carpenter and a dead end road (it dead ends both directions). My tax dollars at work.
and of course, there's no money in the budget to put a light by the school on carpenter and bemis, where people routinely die during the morning and afternoon commutes after school. that's just too costly.
Okay, back to the agenda. Are there any additions or modifications?
We'll try using the Grex speakerphone for this meeting. How many folks plan on dialing in?
I probably won't make it to tonight's meeting, so I'll post my staff report, such as it is, here. The crash of a few weeks ago, which might be related to some mail spamming/flooding that was happening, has already been reported on and discussed somewhat. Grex seems to have been running smoothly since. One area of concern is that when I attempted to reboot Grex, it wouldn't boot directly from the hard drive. I had to boot from an installation CD, remove the CD, then do a soft reboot from the console. Further exploration (by someone more hardware-savvy than me) may be called for.
Thanks, John. Hopefully this will get discussed with the rest of the staff during the staff report.
I apologise for the late notice - I will not be able to attend this evening's meeting, as much as I had been looking forward to it.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to attend this evening either. Sorry for that.
This meeting did not take place as only Denise and I attended. Regrets were received from STeve and Gelinas prior to the meeting. We did not hear from others until after the meeting. We would have been below a quorum in any event. Denise and I did discuss some upcoming items and I'll add those to the agenda. And of course, we discussed when a postponed meeting could take place. May 30 is Memorial Day weekend, so not good. We decided to propose Sunday, June 6 as the make-up day. Are there any objections to this date? Will board members be able to attend? If not, please propose a better date. We need to have a quorum in order to conduct business. If we won't have a quorum, it might be best to save everyone the trouble of driving here for a meeting that can only discuss issues but not decide anything. It is important that we meet before the end of the month for two reasons: the 6 month "let's see how it goes" period is running out in a few weeks, and we had discussed having a town hall meeting. It's time to start planning for both of those events. Comments?
By the way - has Grex filed its form 900N? That's a new form for nonprofits with income less than $25,000/a, and was dues a week or so ago (with the threat of concelling tax exemption if not filed on time).
I was told it was sent in 2009. Or at least before it was due.
re 14 .. aruba said he dd teh [ostcrd tingie .. and i belelve hime. yeh, it's a nwee 'keepoing treack'/ bit of big brother ... whtever.
Can all of the board members let us know either way if the rescheduled meeting date of June 6th [6pm] will work for you or not?
Right now, I don't know. And my schedule is so chaotic I cannot propose a better date. :(
When would you know, Gelinas? Is it always going to be so chaotic you can't tell? Or are there certain days or weeks that work better? Thanks.
In theory, I take Tuesdays off. So a Monday or Tuesday evening would probably work best. On the other hand, I don't own a (working) car, so I can meet any where not downtown Ann Arbor only on days I work. The sixth inst. is a problem only because I don't know what time I will start working that day: Son-chan is flying in for another visit. As things stand right now, the thirteenth inst. should be fine.
OK, great. The 13th sounds like it might work better for others, too. If we get a quorum worth of responses in favor of that day we can set up the meeting.
Mondays wouldn't work for me unless we met sometime after 7 [like 7:30 or 8]. Hopefully, 6/13 will work for everyone. We still need to hear from STeve, unicorn, and tsty [and I'm assuming Cross wouldn't be able to dial in].
re #22 why is Cross even on the board if he's out of the country for the rest of the year? He should have resigned before deploying so he could be replaced. Declaring his seat vacant should be considered on the agenda for the next meeting.
Maybe out of respect for his service to his country and because we need his expertise on the board when he is able to participate? Nothing like coming back home after serving your country and finding that all your previous associations booted you the day after you left. To be sure, we need a board member in that seat so maybe a temporary or short term position would work?
resp:24 I think that is an excellent idea, Kent.
I don't think there is anything in the bylaws that would allow election of a 'temporary' board member. Just vacate his position and fill it normally, but with an unofficial understanding that whomever gets elected agrees to resign when he returns if he wants the job back.
wow, we're seriously talking about kicking a guy serving in the military off the board? is there a clamor of people waiting to sit on the board I haven't seen? Is there REALLY that much business that is going to be so contested that his vote is vital for that couldn't wait a few months?
It is quite normal and not an insult or indictment of anyone if they are unable to attend most board meetings and so step down so that the board can appoint someone that can attend. When the person returns, they can again run for the office in the usual way. No one needs to be "kicked off". This is not a matter for getting worked up about. It happens all the time in most organizations. I've done it. Some organizations have bylaw provisions that terminate a board member's service if they miss some specified number of board meetings in some period of time. It is at least worth considering what would be reasonable in this regard for Grex, even if not in the bylaws, in which case persons can act upon their expectations of absence.
resp:27 I wouldn't support kicking him off the board permanently but I don't see that it is insulting to fill his position temporarily while he is gone. when is he coming back anyways. I would be willing to fill in for a few months.
tonster, grex couldn't have a board meeting in May because they couldn't make quorum. Surely you can see that it is responsible for an organization to have board members who are available. What if all the board members were serving overseas? You'd just shut grex down rather than 'insult' military members? Please. Its not about respecting or disrespecting anything, its about what might need to be done to continue conducting business.
On a side note, I think grex needs to change the requirements for a quorum if that is even possible. Either that or reduce the number of board members.
If we can't get any more members (and I'm not counting those who were given "membership" for purposes of voting in the election), and we run out of our 6 month moratorium on board members being members, there will only be two of us with paid memberships (as far as I know; treasurer has not given us a membership report yet). So, we'll again be hard-pressed to have an election if we need one (whether to replace board members or to change the by-laws).
right. I am not currently a member. I am a bit short on cash at the moment but should be back to my normal cash flow soon. (I'm buying a car with all cash and forgot about the $600 in sales tax).
re #32 so what are you implying, that after the six month moratorium expires that Grex should again consider shutting down for good?
No, that Board Members need to, to the best of their ability to pay, renew their memberships. And that we need to encourage other people to become members or renew their memberships. That, of course, also means we need to do more than keep a system running, such as provide software and/or services that encourage people to use grex more. Unfortunately, we're still dealing with system instability. One solution to that, buy a new system, would mean paying out the majority of the money we have (and with no memberships to pay for operations). And we still have no clue what we'd do with a new system other than what little we are doing now.
Grex needs to prove it can attract new users before it can justify buying a whole new system. It cannot attract new users without a fully open user. Staff made a fatal decision when it agreed to let Cross put in his patch on newuser so that newusers have to be verified. Newusers that are asked to wait to be verified won't, don't and haven't stayed around. By the time staff waves their wands and says, 'thou art not evil, thou art worthy of grex', they are gone. But again and again board meetings happen and nobody agrees to take that patch out.
perhaps richard can fill in for cross while he's off banging afghan chicks?
Yeah, talk is cheap. Volunteering takes more effort than most would like to give.
"re #22 why is Cross even on the board if he's out of the country for the rest of the year? " er...maybe because he's worth a hundreds pinko faggot morons like you?
Can't say I'm too keen on the idea of booting Cross from the BoD.
The bylaws were changed to allow participation by telephone. So far, Dan has attended the meetings that have been held, to the best of my recollection. We discussed his continued participation before he left; he did not think it likely to be any more of a problem than it has been for the other remote Directors. I don't see that the situation has changed. And yes, if we cannot get the members to support the Corporation, then grex *should* shut down. I don't _want_ it to shut down, but my wants are not particularly important.
IF Dan has been attending board meetings by phone, there is no reason for us to even be having this discussion. He's one of the best board members grex has ever had.
he's like STeve minus the bad memory chips!
and the 400lbs of blubber
As a reminder to the board and staff, there's a meeting scheduled for this upcoming Sunday, 6/13 at 6 pm. Check your board or staff email for location and phone #. See 0 in this item for the proposed agenda.
Thanks to all the board members who attended tonight's meeting and the others who came and contributed to a good discussion. Thanks, Denise, for allowing us to use your home for our meeting.
Yes, thank you for having us over. And thanks in advance for figuring out how to summarize what was a long and twisty discussion. I don't think I could do it sober.
I'm glad to be able to help out. The minutes have been posted; other attendees can add things that may have been missed in my notes.
#27 of 48: by Tony Publiski (tonster) on Wed, Jun 2, 2010 (23:47): wow, we're seriously talking about kicking a guy serving in the military off the board? ummm, no ... that was just some chad-esque chaff that has benn knownd to distract real conference thoughts nwo and then.
resp:30: I think my comments more point out that having monthly meetings is rather ridiculous for a corporation that's biggest problem is whether or not to keep the dial-in's active. That really could be discussed strictly online. Really more important than that is figuring out what to do when provide goes away, but nothing seems to happen on that topic. I think it's arguable that quarterly meetings would be the minimum period of time that should elapse between meetings.
We've tried to space the meetings out more now. When you are having system issues, etc. it makes sense for the Board to meet more frequently if they can make progress toward solving those issues. Also, the Board has agreed that e-mail and on-line would be reasonable for conducting business in some instances. I'd like to see more Board communication between meetings.
I can agree with that. Most things are really better discussed online and can get more discussion when you've got time to really think through your responses, particularly regarding the discussion on something like Hardware. Additionally, you have the added benefit of having input from others who can't attend the meetings.
yeah and I won't even troll ya if it's serious business ;)
re #50 actually the bylaws state:
[quote]The BOD shall hold face-to-face meetings on a regular,
bimonthly basis [/quote]
So the letter of the bylaws would seem to only require meeting every
other month (bi-monthly)
The bylaws could be amended to state:
The BOD shall hold face-to-face meetings no less than quarterly, and in
addition to four times a year also whenever the board (by virtue of a
phone or online poll of board members conducted by the secretary) deems
an official meeting necessary. A meeting shall be deemed necessary if
the secretary decides to poll the board members at any time and a
majority of the board members votes to meet.
I would really consider it a very positive thing to limit board meetings to four times a year.
Yeah, I really don't see any value to meeting more often than quarterly. I think resp:54 points out that the bylaws are clearly out of date (if not out of touch) in some sections. FtF meetings should not be required today.
If the Board can communicate via e-mail to take care of any issues that come up between meetings, then quarterly is fine. If not and we can't get any answers via e-mail, then FTF (and phone) is about the only way. So, if y'all want to avoid FTF meetings, answer your e-mails :) When things are falling apart though, I expect the Board to step up and meet as often as necessary to get issues resolved. We could be out of business at some time in the future within one quarter and it would be good to know if that were happening and what to do about it.
There are real problems with board members who can't answer their emails in a timely fashion. Obviously, you can always call an emergency meeting or set one up earlier if it's necessary and something major comes up, but I would say as a general rule quarterly should be fine.
Also, "the board shall meet" language does not set an upper limit on the number of meetings. It just states the minimum requirement for meetings. I would be extremely surprised if the by-laws prevent the board from doing what is necessary to keep the system operating by preventing them from meeting when then deem necessary.
The purpose of face-to-face meetings is to allow people not on the board to attend, monitor and contribute. Meetings over the telephone or in e-mail cannot be attended by others. (Note that many states have "sunshine laws" specifically banning such meetings for public commissions and boards. The laws do not apply to us, but the philosophy behind them does.) Let's hold off on amending the bylaws until we know that grex is going to survive the year. I'm still not convinced it will.
Nice pep talk
re#60 I agree,especially since you haven't gotten of your fat ass and done anything
Generally, we don't need to change by-laws, but if we want, for example, to reduce the cost of a membership, then we'll need to make a change (assuming enough members can vote). But right now, we don't need to. As for the number of meetings, it allows "emergency" meetings any time beyond the bimonthly meetings. So, we can meet as often as we want or need to.
I wish sapna were here.
i wid sapna;s pic websithe were stil on line as well as balynce's
why,most of the people on it left grex.
you woiulnd;t unnerstand
learn to spell and I might,it's hard to translate retard
Well, let me say a few things. First, I just don't think I'll realistically be able to call into any meetings until I get back from Afghanistan. (Though that would really be quite something, if you ask me.) That said, I wouldn't be offended if, for the good of the corporation, folks decided to remove me from the board. I mean, from my perspective, there's just really nothing to be offended about; it's simply a matter of practicality. If it would help, I'd offer up my resignation, as long as it was understood to come with no animosity towards Grex. That is, I wouldn't want it to be viewed as giving up on the organization, just giving a chance for others with more time on their hands to step up and take my place.
A benign resign? Why..I don't think that's ever happened before! LOL
he's got a good excuse but I think he just signed grex's death warrant
do not resign, pse
he has more important matters to attend to...like keeping the terrorists in line fuck grex
You have several choices: