Commission to Reform WPLUG

The Commission to Reform WPLUG (CRW) is an informal group created to draft proposals that fix long-standing problems in WPLUG. It was created on December 9, 2012.

Purpose

WPLUG is struggling to compete against other technology groups. CRW's purpose is to expedite the reform process so that WPLUG can become competitive again as soon as possible:

-Update the bylaws
-Chart a new direction for WPLUG
-Explore ways to make WPLUG less formal/political
-Bring WPLUG's resources up to par with current technological standards

Operation

CRW has no membership requirements. If you decide to join, add your name to the membership list on this page.

Each month, CRW gathers its best ideas into a "reform package" that is formally proposed during the following month's WPLUG general user meeting. Ideas can be proposed or voted on at any time, but it is recommended to propose ideas outside of meetings and vote on them during the meetings so that people have time to think before they vote.

If an idea is approved by a majority of CRW members, it will be added to the current reform package.

Since CRW is not an official WPLUG organization, it doesn't receive official funding and is not governed by the WPLUG bylaws. Members are encouraged to apply the same "free and flexible" mindset to their deliberations: check your preconceptions at the door, be open-minded, and support the best ideas to reform WPLUG. Everyone who wants to present ideas will have an equal opportunity to do so.

Members

• Justin Smith
• Terry Golightly
• Pat Barron
• Vance Kochenderfer
• Joseph Prostko

Upcoming Meetings

Saturday, December 15: 2:00 p.m. @ WPLUG IRC

Reform Package History

Reform Package 1: Bylaw changes, to be proposed January 2013.

Reform Package 1 Ideas

Pat Barron

Section 4.5 (Board Meetings)

Add new paragraph #3, which reads "Members of the Board may waive notice of any meeting by unanimous consent of all of the Directors. Consent may be manifested by roll call conducted during the meeting for which notice is to be waived, may be delivered in writing to the Secretary prior to the start of the meeting for which notice is to be waived, or may be delivered and recorded prior to the start of the meeting for which notice is to be waived by any means specified by rule for this purpose."

RATIONALE: Notice requirements for meetings exist (at least in part) to prevent a subset of the Directors from cutting other Directors out of the governance process, by conducting business at meetings called with unreasonably short notice, deliberately timed such that the disenfranchised Directors would not be able to attend. But in the most recent Board term, this caused us endless frustration - many instances of having us in the same place, at the same time, and needing to take some action - but not being able to because the bylaws require business to be conducted at an in-person meeting held on at least 24 hours notice. WPLUG has evolved into an organization whose Directors are spread out over a fairly wide area, and who have jobs and other responsibilities (not to imply that prior boards have not had such concerns, of course - more that, at least in the last board, members may be in a different place in their lives than previous boards, and may not have this type of flexibility, especially in view of the geographic dispersion --Pat.). So the requirement to travel to an in-person meeting in order to take any action is not conducive to getting things done. It is particularly frustrating when there is an occasion where the Directors find themselves together for other reasons, but can not take any action as a Board at that time because the bylaws don't permit them to conduct an impromptu meeting. The proposed waiver of notice provision solves this problem, while preserving the rights of all of the Directors by requiring unanimous consent to waive notice of the meeting (even if any of the seated Directors are unable to attend the short-notice meeting, they could still agree to waive notice). The last sentence would give us leeway to implement this consent via something like Loomio in the future if we so choose. In my (limited) experience, most organizations operated in this way do implement a provision to waive notice of meetings, I would hope that WPLUG could do so too.

Section 8.4 (Virtual Meetings)

Strike paragraph #1 entirely, or perhaps replace it with something that indicates that either in-person meetings or virtual meetings are equally acceptable, and whether a meeting is to be in-person or virtual is at the discretion of the chair of that meeting.

RATIONALE: This was another huge frustration for us, for similar reasons. Virtual meetings are great for quickly hashing out an urgent topic, if it's not possible or not practical to get everyone together in person. But the bylaws currently require that any virtual meeting be scheduled in advance, during a prior in-person meeting, and requires that consent to a virtual meeting be made by a 2/3 vote (in other words, erects an even higher bar to doing it than the typical majority consent). This effectively makes virtual meetings useless for quick turnaround of urgent issues. I honestly don't understand the rationale for this provision as it stands. My best guess is that it's intended to prevent erecting a barrier to entry to participation - perhaps thinking that all members of the Board, or all members of a Committee, may not have the means or technical knowledge to use one of the allowed virtual meeting technologies, and that the high barrier is designed to protect these people and keep them from being disenfranchised. That may have made sense in 2006. In 2012, I would say that as WPLUG is a technology-focused organization, it is reasonable to expect the leadership of that organization to be comfortable using such technology, and thus virtual meetings should be granted a status equivalent to in-person meetings for all Board and Committee meetings. One thing we did last year was that we implemented another Special Rule of Order that permits virtual meetings via conference call. The rule includes a provision that allows the chair of an in-person meeting, at his/her discretion, to allow someone to an attend an otherwise in-person meeting via conference call; this provision of the rule is technically a circumvention of the bylaws, and fortunately we never had to test it - but we need to clean that up too.

Accepted Reform Package 1 Proposals

None yet