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Grex > Coop > #261: Where is Grex moving to when provide.net closes in a few months? | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 60 responses total. |
richard
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response 7 of 60:
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Jan 9 20:46 UTC 2010 |
They shouldn't be though. Why shouldn't any user who is interested in
grex and wants to partake of the discussion be allowed to attend a
staff meeting if they want? I think that staff meetings should be
announced as taking place and anyone who wishes to attend need only
rsvp staff to be told the time and location.
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jgelinas
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response 8 of 60:
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Jan 9 21:58 UTC 2010 |
As mentioned in regards to the Board meetings, staff meetings usually
include discussion of security matters and similar things.
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tonster
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response 9 of 60:
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Jan 10 16:51 UTC 2010 |
You really have to routinely discuss "security matters" in private?
What "similar things" are so confidential? That seems overly cautious.
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tod
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response 10 of 60:
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Jan 10 18:01 UTC 2010 |
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rcurl
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response 11 of 60:
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Jan 11 06:11 UTC 2010 |
Only non-profit board need to be open to the public (except for certain closed
sessions). Committees (like "staff") are much less constrained. They usually
just conduct their business within themselves, though often open enough to
encourage member participation, as appropriate.
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nharmon
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response 12 of 60:
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Jan 11 17:55 UTC 2010 |
Staff should realize that such a lack of openness is easily mistaken for
absence and members who see the system go down for an amount of time
with nobody explaining why or how are not going to continue lending support.
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rcurl
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response 13 of 60:
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Jan 11 18:31 UTC 2010 |
Quite right. Committees should also report on their activities at least at
every board meeting and the reports should be available to the members (apart
from necessarily confidential information).
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arthurp
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response 14 of 60:
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Jan 13 06:55 UTC 2010 |
The staff used to report at every board meeting. I doubt that has
changed.
Think of it like this. I own some (now rather worthless) bank stock. I
am invited to be at the yearly shareholders meeting and to vote for
members of the board of directors. But it would be rediculous of me to
insist I be allowed into the IT department's planning session for
deploying a new generation of ATMs.
I also vote for my legislators, but I am shocked to find that I am not
allowed to sit in on the meetings of the oversight commitee for the
Central Intelligence Agency even though my senator is a member of that
commitee.
Prospective members of staff do get invited to staff meetings so I
wouldn't say they are exactly closed, but they are the next best thing
to it. And that is as it should be.
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veek
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response 15 of 60:
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Jan 13 13:06 UTC 2010 |
umm.. after Enron and Fannie May, I'm sure it's a good idea to sit on
the IT department's planning session, so to speak. A lot of people have
been calling for more transparency in the way companies and governments
are governed.
The real question to ask should be: how transparent can you get without
sacrificing profitability in the long run (include cost to society -
global-warming, etc).
A lot would depend on the nature of the business and what needs to be
protected. You might not want the latest Stealth-bomber schematics to
be part of the public domain, but a lot of routine work could be made
public at great cost savings to the tax payer.
In Grex's case, it's a non-profit, so barring security/privacy concerns
(accidentally airing the root password in public) there should be no
reason not to permit a open staff conference. It certainly is doable
since security through obscurity is a bad idea anyway. It's not like we
are an ad agency that needs to guard against theft of creative effort.
Mind you, in a truly advanced and enlightened society, you probably
won't need to bother about guarding against theft of your latest
Stealth-bomber and even that would be public-domain.
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nharmon
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response 16 of 60:
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Jan 13 13:52 UTC 2010 |
It just seems bizarre to me that staff insists on maintaining the
privacy of their work when it really is to their detriment to operate
like that. I don't think member support of staff is very high right now,
but that might be different if they saw the effort being made.
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veek
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response 17 of 60:
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Jan 13 15:00 UTC 2010 |
Re #16: In order of importance:
1. No functional board
2. Not enough users
3. More money, more volunteers, more users, more users
I really don't see current staff as being much of a problem right now.
Steve might have taken a month? to get Grex back, but he did get Grex
back for the New Year; so what have we/board accomplished in the last
13 days?
Right now, what Grex REALLY needs is a functioning board! Then lets get
some policy for handling volunteers - some efficient mechanism for
handling new users, updating the web-site, contributing code, setting
up an Internet presence (YouTube, FaceBook, MySpace, Wiki, Flickr),
more features (MySQL access, virtualHost: veek.cyberspace.org, bigger
disk quotas).
The whole problem as I see it is that suggestions just seem to
dissipate once it reaches the board.. perhaps I'm mistaken, which is
why that video thing would be really useful! Right now, all I see is
Steve patching the box and heaving and hoing.. but a lot of policy type
stuff seems to be missing.. eg: the web-site could do with some minor
fixes; I need input for the Grex wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/User:Vivek.m1234/Myyyyyyyyyyyy_Cyberspace_Stuff) I don't know how
to handle the Grex logo thing TownHall.png - copyright+wiki??; etc Most
of this stuff requires board input??
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tonster
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response 18 of 60:
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Jan 13 17:42 UTC 2010 |
Comparing grex staff to a bank's IT department is rather ridiculous, but
some of what you say is certainly true. I doubt there's really that
much that's truly private or poses a risk if seen publicly involved in
the discussion.
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tod
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response 19 of 60:
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Jan 13 19:59 UTC 2010 |
re #14
I also vote for my legislators, but I am shocked to find that I am not
allowed to sit in on the meetings of the oversight commitee for the
Central Intelligence Agency even though my senator is a member of that
commitee.
What about the GAO and congressional constituents? They listen to popular
opinion frequently. Why wouldn't Grex want to spend funds according
to the membership?
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cross
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response 20 of 60:
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Jan 18 02:27 UTC 2010 |
I see no reason not to open up the staff meetings. Then again, I've never
been invited to a staff meeting. I'm not sure they're particularly useful.
Also, for the last few years, the staff conference has been almost dead.
Before that, it was more of a gossip session than anything else. I would
go so far as to suggest restarting it and opening it up read-only (unless
you are on staff) so that people have visibility into what staff does. It
would embarass folks to open up older generations of the conference, but
opening it up going forward would be good.
The security concern is not relevant; security issues haven't been discussed
there in years. If they need to be, that's what email could be used for
(perhaps with a copy kept in a file on grex).
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tsty
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response 21 of 60:
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Jan 18 05:23 UTC 2010 |
if the timing is right, you can particoipate as you did, by phn, with
the board meetigs.
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cross
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response 22 of 60:
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Jan 18 06:03 UTC 2010 |
I think the timing should be made right so that I can participate.
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richard
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response 23 of 60:
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Jan 19 04:43 UTC 2010 |
re #20 how would it embarass folks if older versions of the staff
conference were opened as read-only? Was the staff conference being
used as a place to trade hurtful and malicious gossip about other
users and say things about them that you wouldn't say if they could
read it?
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cross
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response 24 of 60:
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Jan 19 16:27 UTC 2010 |
In my opinion, yes and yes.
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tod
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response 25 of 60:
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Jan 19 17:35 UTC 2010 |
re #23
I think you've pretty much found the hot button. Sure, there might be that
1 out of 20 security discussion but I'm betting the true fear is that
there was too much unprofessional bashing taking place.
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cross
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response 26 of 60:
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Jan 19 17:39 UTC 2010 |
Yup.
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tod
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response 27 of 60:
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Jan 19 18:00 UTC 2010 |
Open the archives!!
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tsty
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response 28 of 60:
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Jan 20 19:16 UTC 2010 |
re 22 ... and i agree totally. how many hours different are you from est?
btw, sned me an email with a phn number so i ca test out magicjack
here, from home, befoe we try a board meeting.
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richard
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response 29 of 60:
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Feb 25 21:16 UTC 2010 |
see this item is a perfect example of what is wrong with grex. Read
the title, " Where is Grex moving to when provide.net closes in a few
months?" and then find any of the twenty eight responses that actually
discusses that.
I think it is becoming clear that Grex's board and staff have become
entirely reluctant to make any real decisions. Probably out of pure
complacency and disinterest.
Clearly the downtime grex has had due to the box being at a co-lo where
nobody has the time to go over to it shows that things need to change.
How many times does Grex have to be down days at a time simply because
nobody has the time to go over to provide.net and reset it? Grex's
board needs to get off their asses and accept Tonster's very generous
offer.
If the inclination of Grex's board members is to not do anything and
make no decisions, why are they serving in that capacity? To put it on
their resumes?
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mary
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response 30 of 60:
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Feb 25 21:26 UTC 2010 |
I think we could move forward here without beating up our volunteers.
Really I do.
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slynne
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response 31 of 60:
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Feb 25 22:01 UTC 2010 |
I think that the beating up of the volunteers just makes things run even
slower
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