[OOTB-hive] [GOV] Draft by-laws

Wed Sep 3 13:34:20 BST 2014

Several comments from my side:

> Who can join

At this moment not anyone can join. We have 1 requirement: a person should
do something for the community: developed a free add-on, write a helpful
post about Alfresco, organize a meet-up or speak on Alfresco Summit. We
don't want to see 100 new members from one company who just want to seize a
power by voting to the points they are interested in.

> Board

How does Board relates to committees? Board coordinates the activities, but
Committees work on activities, and Chair is responsible for their actions.
There is the link?

> Board Elections

2 years is a very big period of time. What about half of a year? Or a year
as a maximum?

> Voting and Alfresco employees

>From my point of view, it is ok to allow Alfresco employees to vote. We
will not approve requests to join the Order from someone from the Sales
team, as far as they don't contribute to community. And I believe in sober
assessment of the situation from the technical people. The only restriction
I see here is that Alfresco employees cannot become Board Members.

> Voting members

I don't think that all members should introduce themselves via the public
list, it can generate too much noise. As for now, (almost) all new members
filled information about themselves while sending request to join. If they
didn't mention any contribution, I asked them for a list of contributions
via email, and didn't add them to the website before they reply. Using this
schema some people have not been added as a members, but they will follow
us in social networks until they make some contributions. Everyone
understands and like the idea of "contributions as a requirement to join".

One more idea about Board Election. Maybe it's crazy and we should not
follow it:
We elect 5 independent members that should communicate a lot with each
other and collaborate in many activities. Together they should cover all
our activities and committees. I afraid of the situation when all members
will be specialists in the same area.
Sample:
If there are 6 candidates:
4 of them work on add-ons
1 - for Gov committee and
1 - for events organization
Many members like add-ons, so 4 members from the Add-ons committee will be
elected easily. And let's imagine that voting members chose 1 candidate
from Gov as fifth Board Member. After that we don't have any control in
coordination on meetups and conferences, because all Board members are not
interested in this topic.
What about electing a full Board (team of 5 people)? Campaigning phase can
be a time then nominates tell not only about their activities and who are
they, but also how can they coordinate with each other and how will they
work as a Board? So we should vote not for 1 person, but for the team of 5
people. One person can be a member of several candidate teams.

Another way to solve this issue is to create roles in the Board. Like: 1
person should be responsible for new activities and committees, 1 person -
for technical aspects of our add-ons and Honeycomb, 1 - for marketing and
events, other 2 can be elected as independent.

Any comments?

Oksana

On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:52 PM, Jan Pfitzner <jan at alfrescian.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> first of all: thanks Jeff for writing this down.
>
> From my point of view, it is OK to allow Alfresco employees to vote. But,
> this also opens a way for Alfresco Inc. to undermine the OOTB. As long we
> are talking about Alfresco Engineers (& Richard ;-)) I'm sure that they
> will respect & support our vision. I wouldn't say the same about general
> management, sales ...
> Jan
>
>
>
> 2014-09-03 7:17 GMT+02:00 Richard Esplin <richard.esplin at alfresco.com>:
>
> I really like the draft of by-laws.
>>
>> However, I am still concerned by the restriction that prevents employees
>> of
>> Alfresco from voting.
>>
>> I understand the concern about independence, but I also think it is de-
>> motivating that an Alfresco employee could contribute to the Order and
>> not be
>> able to participate on decisions involving their efforts.
>>
>> So I propose a compromise.
>>
>> Alfresco employees would vote in their committees, but not in a general
>> membership vote. I think anyone actively contributing on a committee
>> should be
>> treated equally with other members of the committee. But if a committee
>> issue
>> is impactful enough or divisive enough to require a broad membership vote,
>> then Alfresco employees would not participate in that vote.
>>
>> This would require removing "committe vote" from the first sentence in the
>> section on "Voting Members". The section on "Non-Voting Members" would
>> need an
>> additional sentence like "Non-Voting Members who are members of
>> committees may
>> vote equally with other members of their committees on subjects
>> restricted to
>> the affairs of those committees of which they are a member, but are not
>> counted
>> in general votes."
>>
>> Does this address everyone's concerns?
>>
>> Richard
>>
>> On Tuesday, September 02, 2014 23:10:39 Jeff Potts wrote:
>> > Hi Bees,
>> >
>> > I've drafted a rough set of by-laws. I am trying to keep it short--it is
>> > primarily focused on how we are organized, how board elections work, how
>> > voting works, and voting eligibility.
>> >
>> > https://github.com/OrderOfTheBee/gov/blob/master/bylaws.md
>> >
>> > A lot of it is repeat from my original "organizing ourselves" email with
>> > some feedback from that thread folded in (a longer voting period, for
>> > example).
>> >
>> > The document is purposefully free of mission/vision/strategy statements,
>> > specific committee names, or anything that needs to be fungible.
>> >
>> > I'll give everyone some time to digest this and suggest feedback, then
>> when
>> > it seems like we're close to something we can agree on we'll put it to a
>> > formal vote.
>> >
>> > I would like to have these ratified before Alfresco Summit so if you
>> have
>> > feedback, don't sit on it.
>> >
>> > Jeff
>>
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>
>
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-- 
С уважением,
Оксана Курышева
<okurysheva at gmail.com>
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