response 105 of 299:

Aug 28 02:40 UTC 2002

When two remote board members are calling in to a meeting can their
share one incoming call and one speakerphone or would two connections
and two speakers be needed?  I doubt Zing's would be willing to 
allow us free meeting space and access to their phone lines for 
hours.  So any ideas on where this could happen, on the cheap?

response 107 of 299:

Aug 28 05:28 UTC 2002

I served on the board of a national all-volunteer non-profit for many
years.  Board meetings were held thirdly, all around the country. Board
members were responsible for their own transportation costs (all
deductible if on itemized, of course). Accomodations were provided at each
meeting location by members living in that area (so was the party
location).

When I was president I introduced meetings of the four officers between
board meetings, in order to deal with an increasing management
responsibility as the organization grew. We met and stayed at each others'
homes and *shared* the travel expenses (total divided by the number of
officers (4)). (The organization is incorporated in the District of
Columbia, but we never had board/officer meetings there.) 

So, anything is possible. 

response 109 of 299:

Aug 28 06:46 UTC 2002

The main goal the founders had was to provide the least structure that
would be maximally functional and satisfy state law.  FTF meetings have
hundreds of years of legal heritage, and thousands of years of human
evolution before that, they're well tested both to functionality and
legality.

The founders hoped that any really controversial decisions would be
made by the membership at large, hopefully via the electronic
conferencing, and not by the board behind closed doors, but there's not
a lot of logic in the bylaws to force this to happen, and certainly
nothing to dictate when or how it happens.  The logic that is there
consists mainly of the fact that members vote for the board, the board
minutes and treasurers report are to be made available online, and of
course the member referendum facility.

It may be useful to remember that when the bylaws were written, it was
by no means clear that a member owned & operated public computing
system was in fact viable.  There were no such systems in existance
then; there are precious few today.  Starting such a system was in
itself a pretty massive experiment; the founders tried to be
conservative and pick solutions that would work, rather than create new
frontiers or barriers in terms of group management.  Nearly everything
in the original grex design was not original to grex; ideas were
borrowed from many places, and incorporated into a synthesis that it
was hoped would be as viable as possible.

It is also worth keeping in mind that the founders did not necessarily
expect that grex would be come either national or international in
membership.  Grex's initial connectivity was 100% phone lines, &
internet connectivity was at best a pipe dream of some of the
founders.  Grex's original funding model and operating design was
definitely as a "local" system based in Ann Arbor.  The bylaws were not
cast in stone and expected to be the final answer for all time; it was
always expected that when they proved to be inadequate, they could be
amended, provided the problem was serious enough.

Jamie seems to be arguing that there is some sort of mass conspiracy
amongst the founders to keep people like himself from serving on the
board.  This is not so; simply put; the founders did not think it was
necessary to predict that somebody from Maryland would want to serve on
the board of a small local bulletin board system based in Ann Arbor.

Jamie seems to think that grex meetings last too long.  Well, from his
perspective, he's probably right.  Too many people on the board feel
group hugs are important.  Probably if we didn't engage in so many of
them, meetings would be over a lot faster.  Also nobody on the board
wants to hug a speakerphone.

Grex clearly exceeded the wildest expectations of the founders.  It's
now got international membership, and a *lot* more users than we ever
expected.  It's also doing things that the founders had no reason to
expect.  Grex does a lot more email than was ever originally expected.
Web access, both for pages hosted on grex, and outgoing access are both
quite popular; the web basically didn't exist when grex was founded.
It is certainly a good question where grex's original design, created
for a local system, is still valid today.  I suppose there are really 2
parts to that: is it broke today, and is it what we want for tomorrow?
Even today, I think it's difficult to find places where grex's
design is really broken.  A lot of things *do* get decided in the coop
conference.  Grex is still operating, and that's nothing to be ashamed
of right there.  There is not a real schism between members & board.

For the future, now that's a much more interesting question.  Even
though grex has a lot more users on it, the *members* have not
increased in nearly the same proportion.  The main reason we can afford
so many more users is that hardware has gotten a lot cheaper and more
powerful.  Even though most of our users are from elsewhere, most of
our *members* are not.  I believe (aruba can correct me) that most of
our money still comes from people who are either local, or who were
once local.  We still have a vocal local user community including many
members who use dialups; these are a significant fraction of our
operating overhead, but are probably irrelevant to 99% of our user
population at large.  I think this presents some real challenges
to us of which the board is only one relatively small part.

response 111 of 299:

Aug 28 13:02 UTC 2002

Our corporation elects its board.  The founders each have one vote.  As far
as I know, being a "friend" of a founder has not appeared in anyone's
campaign statement as an argument for voting for that candidate.  

Also, there is no residency restriction on BoD membership.  Some
Grexers seem to be concerned that because they, personally, have
financial problems over attending face-to-face meetings in Ann Arbor,
that the bylaws are somehow restricting their candidacy.  

I would hate to see us build in technology-based bylaws, when
technology changes so quickly.  It does seem to me that, if the
membership elected someone to the BoD who was physically restricted
from reaching the meeting place, that the BoD would apply some
creativity in solving the problem.  I don't see any reason for solving
the problem in advance, since we don't know exactly what problem we are
solving.  

response 113 of 299:

Aug 28 13:21 UTC 2002

Re way back there about multiple lines and conference calls:
It's possible (for a fee, of course) to have the phone company do multiple
line conference calls.  The quality is quite good, probably a bit better than
what you get from a real business phone system (something with a big black
box mounted in a closet) and much better than most standalone multiline
phones.

There are dedicated speakerphone products for $200-300.  I've never used them.
I will say that the usual speakerphone function built into regular/business
phones usually sucks.

It's possible that cellphones will do multiline conference calls.  Some cell
phones have a built-in speakerphone function which is probably unusably bad.

When somebody (jp2?) said that long distance charges were not an issue, it
probably meant he would call the Grex conference site.

...

We have a conflict in doing this sort of meeting.  Grex tries to always have
board meetings in a public place.  This causes all sorts of inconveniences
in finding and keeping a good meeting place.  The reason we do this is
because we get more casual attendees than we would if it was held at
somebody's house.  Casual attendees are desirable because we want the meetings
to be as open as possible.   However, it's hard to get access to a phone line
in a public place.  Might be possible to tap into a cell phone somehow and
use a dedicated speakerphone.

Here's a whacky idea which just occurred to me:  If we were to hold meetings
on cable TV it would allow even more casual observers, and provide a
guaranteed quiet room for speakerphone use.  

response 115 of 299:

Aug 28 13:32 UTC 2002

It occurs to me that it might be a good idea to try having a board 
meeting online, just as an experiment, to see if it works for us.  Since 
the bylaws only require we meet every other month, we could have our 
October meeting online without requiring any change in policy.

Partyadm could configure a channel which would be accessible at will, but 
which would not allow changing of names, so that all users in the channel 
would be identifiable by their logins.

I expect there to be some resistance to this idea, but can anyone give me 
a good reason why we shouldn't try it?  (Aside from having to provide our 
own food...)

response 119 of 299:

Aug 28 13:41 UTC 2002

Thank you.  Finally less insults and more discussion.  

Just for clafification for those who may be scrolling through.  Why 
don't people establish what the main questions are that they wish to 
have answered (someone can compile them in one post), or the main body 
of issues that the group as a whole are trying to get through.

response 121 of 299:

Aug 28 14:15 UTC 2002

And at least this particular experiment could take place with current 
members, rather than waiting for a remote member to be elected before 
trying it out.

response 123 of 299:

Aug 28 15:52 UTC 2002

Re #108: what is the relevance of this? Grex is not incorporated as a
cooperative.

response 127 of 299:

Aug 28 18:42 UTC 2002

Erp!  I mean by the next election.