response 125 of 171:

Jan 3 02:46 UTC 1995

What suggestions do you have to improve our management style, Kent?

response 127 of 171:

Jan 3 19:07 UTC 1995

DanR says:

Labelling Grex's management style as "reactive" and "crisis management"
 really isn't quite right, and frankly, I resent this characterization.
 You may say we're conservative, and I'd go along with that.  You all
 are free to attend board meetings, see exactly how we make decisions,
 and voice your opinions.

Well, Kent's right on from my standpoint. I've been to the board meetings
and I've seen plenty of non-action. I believe 3 or 4 meetings went by
where no planning, even tho it was on every agenda, was done.  I've been
jumped on before, just as Kent is now, for complaining about the way things
were being handled. Only, instead of MJU vs Kent, it was Greg vs Pattie.
The effect is the same. Those who feel frustrated by the problems not
being worked on are jumped on by those who are frustrated that they can't
fix the problems.

I've offered help, and not having the technical experience, been turned down.
So, what options does that leave me to help grex? Send money. But even
that's not doing it, since Grex now has over $4,000 in the account. All
these factors, plus the slowness that things happen, let along change,
affected my decision not to renew my membership at this time.

We need to make sure Grex doesn't repeat the cycle of having new people
come in, like the place, and then get frustrated that things don't get
better.

        Pattie

response 129 of 171:

Jan 4 21:15 UTC 1995

May I gently suggest that trading labels about Grex's management style is
not productive about the thrust of this item, which is to put together a
coherent financial plan for Grex.  How about taking the discussion of
Grex's management philosophy to another item.

It seems to me that we need two plans: a short term plan (about three
months) and a longer term plan (for the rest of 1995).  It seems like the
short term plan is already dealt with, since the board has already
budgeted money to deal with some of Grex's worst problems.  So let's look
at a long term plan.

Whdo we want for Grex in the next year?  What will it cost?  How will we
raise the money?  These seem the three cardinal questions involved in
setting up a plan.

What does Grex want?  This is probably the hardest, since there are a lot
of competing visions for Grex and some appear mutually exclusive.  Do we
want to push the envelope of machine performance to attract and hold new
users/members?  Do we want to restrict our growth so that our technology
can keep up?  Do some of us wish that we'd never gone as public as we did?
 Will Grex remain conference-centered?  Will other services displace
conferencing as the soul of Grex?  What can Grex do to fulfill the
charitable articles of its charter?

What will it cost?  That's easy to determine, once we know what "it" is.

How do we raise the money?  We need to know approx how much money we need
to raise, so we can try and raise that much and little more.

So it boils down to the first question, from the answer to which, all
other answers flow.

Just my $0.03141592653....
     Chris

response 131 of 171:

Jan 5 21:44 UTC 1995

re: the consensus management style and reactivity

consensus is a powerful and empowering tool.  however consensus
requires special skills to use effectively.  and, not all decisions
can be made by consensus because it is a time-consuming process.

planning is something that can be done using consensus, but reacting
to crisis is probably best handled by two or three people who have
the expertise and authority to handle the problem.  if a consensus
process appears to be floundering, then perhaps it is being used
inappropriately.

re #129:

having some agreement on long-term goals and purpose is the best
thing to start a planning process with.  throughout this
discussion i've felt a lack of agreement about purpose.

even though many goals motivated the creation of specific by-lays,
long-term goals aren't espoused in the by-laws, are they?

response 133 of 171:

Jan 6 02:19 UTC 1995

There's a lot of good stuff here, and I'm very glad to see this
discussion taking place.  I'm particularly pleased to see people
thinking in terms of what this system is for and why it was setup the
way it is; and what it should be in the future - because you can't
manage, plan, or measure success until you have a goal to provide a
coordinate system for success.

Kentn, andyv, and davel all seem to think we have a management problem.
kentn goes to far as to say "no management", which with all due respect,
I have to disagree.  The system would not be here today if there were
"no management".  "davel" proposes adding more management; again, with
all due respect, I disagree.  There's a famous adage in computing
circles -- "the worst way to speed up a late project is to add more
people".  I think the *real* problem here is not a "management problem"
but a "identity crisis" - ie, who is grex really, and what is it for? To
be fair; andyv in #56 alludes to this very point.

One of the goals of the founders was that grex be a viable organization.
As we stand today, I'd have to say grex is an unqualified success.  It
exists!  We can have this discussion here! It pays its bills, it has a
large and active membership, interested in improving the system, and we
have the luxury of deciding how we are going to meet the challenges of
the future.  I'd have to say Grex is an unqualified success in terms of
this goal.

There is not much in the bylaws about grex's goals, because they don't
belong there.  There is a "statement of purpose" but it was deliberately
written to be as broad and general as possible, to define the direction
grex was heading in, rather than the exact path, landmarks, and
destinations grex was actually going to use.  Technology & people
change: the founders certainly had no idea, for instance, that grex
would be part of the world wide web, and the very notion of an internet
link was very much "pie in the sky" when grex was founded.

There *is*, however, a "manifesto" that comes out when you run
"newuser".  It's stored in /usr/noton/nu/nu.info, and there's even a
short bibliography (perhaps anticipating, in embryonic form, the notion
of a world wide web of hypertext.)  One of the specific phrases that's
there is "open membership" -- which may explain who there are so many
people (including me) who share robh's sentiments in #74 regarding any
attempt to abrogate that principle.  (I ought to mention that the
manifest is in fact a bit ambigious here; does "open membership" mean
anyone can become a member, or anyone can access the system?  In fact,
experience shows that it has to mean *both*; one without the other is
meaningless.)

The reason why steve says, early on, that we are not a "business" is
because we are not.  We are not a "for profit commercial business".  A
"for profit commercial business" exists to make money.  A privately
owned commercial business exists to make money for its owners.  The
owners may have other interests as well, but the IRS will in fact get
upset if it loses money too often (since it taxes profit.)  A publically
traded business *has* to have as its primary goal making money.  That's
called the "fiduciary" responsibility of the company towards its
stockholders.  You measure the success of a business by the amount of
money it makes and the amount it has - that's why Steve got upset with
the notion of calling Grex a "business" - and why elsewhere I was upset
with the notion of trying to accumulate a large bank account.  Because
of the way Grex was incorporated, it would be *AGAINST THE LAW* for grex
to succeed in either of these "normal" business goals; so we need to be
*Very* careful to avoid these traps when we talk of grex being a
"business".

Many people here have the unspoken assumption that the system needs to
be "improved".  Most of these concern technical issues (network link
#27,#30, newuser #108, mail/smtp #113, usenet news) that should be
addressed in another item.  I might note, however, that it's a mistake
to assume grex is somehow stalled on these issues.  Grex has been under
a continuous process of improvement since its inception: and is today a
much more capable system than it was when it was first setup.  Both
hardware and software have been upgraded many times to improve
performance, reliability, and to add new features.  There have also been
mistakes -- I think that's inevitable, and to be expected.  It's not
possible to avoid all risk without spending a lot of money--the
warehouse and the rom's were both gambles.  On the whole, I'd say we
came out ahead on the warehouse however much a disappointment it's also
been, and the ROM's were a cheap gamble, but we might yet even recoup
that; there is every chance our supplier may yet redeem himself; and if
not, oh well, it's a mistake we can well afford and should be willing to
tolerate.  We can (and should) talk about details elsewhere.  But it
would be a mistake to assume nothing is happening here.  Indeed, I
really think Grex has nothing to apologize about in terms of technical
capability (if I may be so bold as to brag.)

At the risk of reintroducing a technical issue that should be discussed
elsewhere, if we're interested in ISDN, we should talk not just with
merit & icnet, but also msen, cicnet, and psi-net.  We should get prices
from all the players, and consider other factors such as "closeness",
"reliability" and "other business constraints" before making a definite
decision.

The real reason for the system slowness is certainly the "open access"
policy.  There are many more people out there than we can hope to
service.  So the people we service are the people who are willing to
tolerate the slowness for the other advantages of grex.  That puts us in
a state of dynamic equilibrium - any increase in system capacity only
result in more users, not a faster system; and there will always be
users who wander away disgusted at the speed.  There aren't many ways to
fix that.  Limiting pty's only shifts the equilbrium point; people will
then leave because they can't get on - plus new "selfish" behavior like
camping out on pty's will happen.  Dropping "open access" will certainly
change that - what it means is we've converted ourselvf into a "for pay"
system competing with merit, msen, icnet, compuserve, aol, and prodigy.
Anyone care to take bets on who will win?

response 135 of 171:

Jan 6 18:24 UTC 1995

Maybe the problem is more of a leadership problem than a management 
problem.  Where management deals with day to day activities and leadership
is focused on the future.

response 137 of 171:

Jan 7 02:06 UTC 1995

I'd like to see technical issues take a back seat for a bit in this
discussion, since too often we've had to put the cart before the horse,
i.e solving a technical problem without actually planning what to do with
the solution.  I think that Grex has grown to the point where we need to
start making plans independent of the technology, then figuring out how to
implement them later.  This isn't so much an issue restricted to financial
planning as it is meant to address Grex's "identity crisis" (I think
that's apt here).

There's an item way back in Coop called "What do we want for Grex?"  It
began as sort of the "What if technical resources were huge and we could
do anything", but quickly returned to the "we can't do this because..." 
Now I do not wish to demean, deflate or any other words starting with "de"
those who keep bringing these considerations to our attention, but let's
throw away that mindset for a moment and get down to some serious cases. 
What do we want Grex to be this time next year?  If a consensus emerges on
this question, everything else will follow, and even if technical
considerations forbid part of the agenda, we can at least make strides
toward it, which would in turn remove some of the quagmire aspect that
people are feeling about Grex policy discussions.

I'll begin.  I'd like to see Grex taking the education part of its stated
goals more seriously  As I have previously proposed, Grex could perform
invaluable services to the public (or private) schools in teaching
computer literacy and Internet stuff.  I intend to set up a usable gateway
to government information as and when I have time and can get the info
together, (and when I can figure out how to ftp to grex through Merit
<grin>)  I've heard support for the second idea, once I assured people
that I had no intention of Grex storing gigabytes of Socks' press conferences
.  But in order to pursue the first part of my agenda, I'd need some
backing, and a lot of help.  

This is the sort of thing I'd like to see this discussion tackle.  If we
decide to do these things, we can figure out how, how much they'll cost,
what new resources we'll need, and how to find staff (and I'll join staff
to do these things) time to do this.  What do people think?  What ideas do
you all have?

     Chris, who wishes that this were multi-media and that he could get
Winston Churchill to declaim for him.  <smile>

response 139 of 171:

Jan 7 07:22 UTC 1995

(Whiel it's all well and good to discuss ideals without worrying about
reality, it's also important to temper ideas with reality when it
comes time to make decisions.  Ignoring the implementation details
in the design stage leads to things like the X Window System.)

response 141 of 171:

Jan 7 07:54 UTC 1995

mju slipped in.  Surprised?   :>  But hey, my comment is even better with his
response first!

response 143 of 171:

Jan 7 09:39 UTC 1995

yeah, I hadn't gotten to that item yet!  I agree.  In a year I'd like us on 
a spark cpu with an ISDN link 125-150 members, and going strong!  (Sound
like I know what all that stuff is don't I :) )  I'd like to see us expand
our role in the community somehow, perhaps by being a kind of electronic
colonial coffee house.  (Who's idea was that?  Bartlett's?  (I know Newt G.
claim's it too, but I'm not ceding it to him.)

response 145 of 171:

Jan 7 16:17 UTC 1995

Andy, I honestly don't think anyone here has "the power of veto".  The
board does in a sense, but ... well, you'd have to attend board meetings.
The problem with doing things is that *someone* has to do them, not normally
that anyone prevents their being done.

Beyond that: what Marc said.  (Except that I've barely met X Windows, so I
can't comment on the aptness of that particular example - but Marc's likely
to know what he's talking about on something like that.)

response 147 of 171:

Jan 7 21:50 UTC 1995

as well as marcus' finely stated set of goals, one might want to add

        1)  a better sense of self-preservation and identity as a
            community of people.

        2)  more avenues of outreach to people who may not otherwise
            have the opportunity or finances to become part of the
            knowledge age.

response 149 of 171:

Jan 8 05:54 UTC 1995

Actually, whoever up there who said that staff has veto powers
is pretty much on target.

Now, staff certainly isn't going to start getting into power games,
or refusing to do reasonable things because they feel like it.
However, it's important to realize that anything which has to
be implemented by staff is subject to staff's (at least implicit)
approval.  And I don't necessarily think that it's a bad thing,
either; if you can't find one person out of the six or seven
staff people who's willing to implement something, then it's probably
not such a hot idea.

For example, the membership could vote to instruct staff to
travel to each newuser's home and personally tutor them on how
to use Grex.  Or the members could decide that the longest amount
of downtime we can tolerate is 30 minutes, so all staff members
should be issued a pager and one staff member should be on call
at all times to fix Grex if it should go down.  Now, there's
nothing in Grex's bylaws which say that this is against Grex's
principles.  In fact, both ideas are excellent ways to further
Grex's cardinal purposes.  However, I think staff would probably
veto both of them, since we get something like 50 newusers a day,
and no one wants to have their private life disrupted because they
have to go fix Grex.

As a closer-to-home example, let's look at the revised access
policy for the Internet connection.  That was voted into place 
several months ago, but no one from staff has bothered to implement
it yet.  This is not really due to a "lack of staff time", but
more due to a "lack of time and sufficient motivation on the part
of the staff members who are willing to do it".  At least one of
the staff members has said privately that they do not agree with
the new access policy, and although they will not hinder its implementation,
they won't help with it either.  While this is not necessarily a
morally optimal position, there's really nothing that Grex can do
to force that staff member to do work that they don't want to.  And
some of the other staff members, while not specifically against
it, don't consider it important enough to spend time on in front
of things like fixing the disk problems or planning the move.

Unfortunately, there isn't much that Grex can do to eliminate this
problem, other than hire staff people who work for us not becaues they
want to, but because they get a paycheck every month.  Until then
the issue of the "staff veto" will continue to exist.