[svlug] ISSUE: SVLUG's continued status with SBAY

[Ron Hinchley]

 The same feeling come out in Churches and NGOs.

My experience serving an org is that you serve, you give. It's the Tragedy of the Commons, the benefits are shared by the many the work by the few. My recollection was that I got no benefits at all, socially or otherwise, so I canonize anyone willing to serve.

Does the structure make a difference? I think it helped the United States, but smaller orgs, ...who knows. Would the mission be served better by changing anything? Would the assets be used better? Would people who are better qualified be put in positions of authority? Would the hypothetical better people make any difference?

Organization is a demon. I was thinking something funny yesterday. Does the election process elevate people who are qualified to serve or does it instead elevate people who are too willing to bend to special interests, people who would use specious arguments to weald the baser elements of a mob?

Now the funny part. Instead of democracy which has too many weaknesses, (some of them I mentioned), use a lottery. Laugh if you want, but I think you will get better results. :) It might work in this org. Use overlapping terms. If humanity ready for this?

Ron Hinchley


-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Ward [mailto:bill at wards.net]
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 09:55 AM
To: 'Rick Moen'
Cc: svlug at svlug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] ISSUE: SVLUG's continued status with SBAY

On 2/22/06, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:Moreover, I think it's a very bad precedent to remain part of a
corporation that has twice, in two different contexts on two different
occasions, threatened behind our backs to remove our elected leader.
And more recent events have proven that they're not even capable of
expressing regret over that! (Again, so much for leadership from _their_
side.)
Let's be clear on this whole "elected leader" thing. As anunchartered SIG, the only officer of SVLUG that has any legal standingis "SIG Coordinator" which is an appointed position by the president ofsbay.org. Ian has graciously allowed SVLUG to choose itspresidents for the past three and a half years, and granted them SIGCoordinator status, to preserve continuity with SVLUG'straditions. But he is under no obligation to do that, and could,within the bylaws, remove the SIG Coordinator status from the SVLUGpresident and assign it to someone else. We (sbay.org boardmembers) talked him out of it, out of deference for SVLUG's democratictraditions, but it would have been totally within his rights to doso. Unless, that is, SVLUG wrote a charter (in which case itwould require a 2/3 vote of the sbay.org board to remove a SIG officer).

Where were you when the sbay.org bylaws were being written and votedon? Where were you when the sbay.org board members were beingnominated and elected? Why do you care about this only now, afternearly FOUR YEARS of operating under these bylaws?


Also, SVLUG has never been independent. First it was a branch ofSilicon Valley Computing Society, and then switched to being a branchof sbay.org. So it can't resume being independent if it never was.


-- 
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