[svlug] bylaws, list policies, web pages...

[Ian Kluft]

>From: Don Marti <dmarti at zgp.org>
>begin Marc MERLIN quotation of Fri, Apr 18, 2003 at 09:05:15AM -0700:
>> Not gonna happen, at least as long as I have something to do with it.
>> 1) svlug is supposed to be fun and technically oriented. Writing bylaws,
>>    having monthly meetings with quorums and votes is boring as hell
>>    (I know, one of the clubs I used to belong to did that)
>
>There are important reasons to organize as a Non-profit Corporation,
>but it's a lot of work.  This is why our parent group, sbay.org,
>is doing so, and we're not: http://corp.sbay.org/intro.html

And even sbay.org went to some effort to keep that procedural stuff out
of the social events and mail lists.

As a particular reference to what Don is talking about, we made a section
on Special Interest Groups with SVLUG in mind.  See Article 12, the last
section in the by-laws.

>> 2) svlug used to be a SIG of SVCS, which has its own bylaws so
>>    that we don't need to deal with that, and thanks to Ian Kluft and others
>>    we are now a SIG of sbay.org
>
>Anyone who is interested in volunteering for a more formal
>organization can check out SVLUG's parent group:
>
>http://www.sbay.org/
>
>I encourage you to attend sbay.org events if they appeal to you.
>If you get to know that group and want to volunteer, they may have
>opportunities available.

In either SVLUG or sbay.org, volunteer positions can be created and
appointed by the respective elected leaders of each.

In SVLUG, the president and VP are elected for 2-year terms.  For the
parent organization sbay.org, officers (president, VP, secretary, and
treasurer) are elected annually while seats on the Board of Directors
are elected on 2-year terms, staggered so that half are up for election
each year.

>> > An undercurrent to this entire discussion is "what are the SVLUG rules
>> > of the road?"  I assumed SVLUG was democratic in nature, but now I'm not
>> > so sure.  I may not be alone.  A good set of bylaws would clarify any
>> > confusion on this topic and others.
>>  
>> See above
>
>Democracy in SVLUG:
>
>The President and Vice-President of SVLUG are also SIG Coordinators
>from the sbay.org point of view.  They are elected by the members
>of SVLUG (not by all sbay.org members) and each have a two-year term.
>
>The next SVLUG elections will be in the fall of 2004.
>
>Other officers of SVLUG are appointed positions:
>http://www.svlug.org/officers.shtml
>
>The board of sbay.org will be elected by the entire membership.

Since a subscriber was questioning the role of democracy in SVLUG,
I guess something that will help with the big picture in SVLUG is to
clarify that it's more than the mail list... there's also the web site,
meetings and installfests.  It takes a core team of volunteers to run all
of those.  They deserve credit for their hard work they do every month.
Though we'll never get everyone in a thousand-member organization to all
agree, some "big picture" info can help establish some common understanding.

SVLUG has been a semi-formal organization (always a SIG of another parent
organization) which has met monthly for 15 years.  (It started at a
PC Unix SIG, which explains how SVLUG is 3 years older than Linux. :-)  

There's a more detailed history on SVLUG's web page.  But in brief, for
its first 10 years, the PC Unix SIG of SVCS, then Linux SIG of SVCS,
and then SVLUG as its name changed over the years, was lead by its founder,
Dan Kionka.  In December 1997, SVLUG held its first election, with Ben Spade
as president and Chris DiBona as VP.  It was decided at the time that these
were 2-year terms.  The election terms got shifted in 2000 when Chris DiBona
asked to cut his term as president short at a year when his wife was
expecting a baby.  Everyone agreed on an early election, so elections now
occur on the Fall of even-numbered years.  (Unlike the 2000 US presidential
election which took place at the same time, SVLUG was able to resolve a
close election. :-)

So today's SVLUG leadership structure is a follow-on of the procedure that
was made so that the founder could hand off the organization to someone else
after he led it for its first 10 years.  Other positions besides the two
elected ones are appointed by the president of SVLUG.  Some of those roles
include mail list admin (Marc Merlin), webmaster (Joyce Cao Traugott),
meeting speaker coordinator (Steve Traugott), meeting facilities coordinator
(Tracy Vierra), Installfest coordinator (Brian Chrisman) and others.

It's normal to have elected leaders have authority and responsibility over
daily operation of an organization.  In any club, those in elected roles
usually have far more responsibilities than privileges, especially to
maintain sustainable conditions for its volunteers.