On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Jonathan Gardner wrote:
This is slightly off-topic. What has to happen is the community has to give
duties and responsibilities to the council. Otherwise, the council has no
mandate and has no right to do anything in the name of the group.
Here's what I see the council doing:
(1) Advocating and advertising SPF.
(2) Ensure that SPF adopters are being supported by whatever means
necessary.
(3) Managing the mailing lists and the web resources for the SPF community.
(4) Building a coalition of companies, organization, and individuals that
support SPF.
These are broad statements, but they are broad for a reason. Intelligent
humans like we have on the council will understand what they mean and use
their intelligence to meet them.
It is an excellent starting point. I don't think the council should limit
itself to these activities, and I don't think others not on the council should
avoid these activities. They are definitely important.
I know I am sounding like a freak for advocating this repeatedly. But I will
repeat myself nonetheless. You cannot function as an organization unless
you get a set of bylaws with all of these very basic things spelled out and
written down. You must get these bylaws adopted by the community. There is
one of two ways to do this: Get everyone to agree to the bylaws all at once
(practically impossible), or start with a small seed group and then draft
the community into the group over time (very practical).
The "bylaws" or other documented control structure is a valid way of bringing
order to an organization. This is important in a formal setting such as a
company, government organization, anything that handles money, or the like.
It's probably overkill for other types of organizations (such as interest
groups or families).
One theory of organization is that the "formal" systems and practices are
necessary when trust is not sufficient to hold the organization together. I
would much rather have a strong mission statement than strong bylaws any day.
--
Greg Connor
gconnor(_at_)nekodojo(_dot_)org
Everyone says that having power is a great responsibility. This is a lot
of bunk. Responsibility is when someone can blame you if something goes
wrong. When you have power you are surrounded by people whose job it is
to take the blame for your mistakes. If they're smart, that is.
-- Cerebus, "On Governing"