WRT proxies, the bylaws state:
"Section 4.8 Proxies
At any meeting of members, a member entitled to vote may vote by proxy executed in writing by the member or by his duly authorized attorney-in-fact in accordance with the requirements of law. "
What would constitute a valid written/signed proxy? Do we have any special form that we require?
Something printed out we can keep either with a signature or an email from the person using the same account they used to register their DMS account (print the header with the email).
A month away and no names in the hat yet.
https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Category:2017_Statements_of_Intent
Are we doing annual resets of voting rights or does everyone who had them still have them?
Voting rights were reset after the Board elections last year.
Edit to add, here is the link to a recent thread about it:
Five positions up for grabs and two names in the hat now. The deadline is three weeks away.
https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Category:2017_Statements_of_Intent
Is there any philosophical or security reason that voting rights are not be made accessible and changeable by the user in their profile preferences? Seems to me this would streamline DMS’ voter registration process and eliminate the need to process registration requests. I can certainly see that this capability may not be present because no one has had the time or resources to implement said procedure - we all have real jobs 
On a related note, were/are the voting rights intentionally reset after the last election? If the reset was intentional, is this the DMS policy and why is it so?
Yes it was voted on at some point before the board election last year.
The problem is people who are voting members stop showing up to meetings and then its impossible to ever reach quorum at a member meeting as the voting member list would always grow. The reset was implemented to try and make member meetings possible again, but as it happens member meetings are still effectively not a thing because no one shows up to them or adds anything to the agendas.
Getting together 10 voting members(the minimum for quorum) for the first member meeting after the reset would be a good way to pass whatever you want and hijack DMS. There are supposed to be rules on you have to put items on agenda a certain amount of time before the meeting so that you can’t blindside the organization, but that rule has been ignored in the past.
Wow. That makes sense. Thanks for explaining it.
I figured there was some reasonable logic behind the policy. Thanks for the explanation and clarification.
You needed to put out more chairs for the standing room only crowd.
LOL!
Seriously though… I think a big reason that members don’t bother going to the Member meetings is because people have gotten into the bad habit of putting everything on the Board Meeting agendas…
If there is nothing on the Member Meeting agenda at all - or things that are put on without any “buzz” (posts on TALK, poster on the bulletin board, etc…) so members have no real “reason” to show up.
I would love to see the Board Meetings go back to where the Board reviews major purchases, and the handful of other things that must be done by the board (appointing officers, etc…); and, remind members who put things that should typically be discussed at the member level to put those items on the Member Meetings. That would make the Board meetings much more manageable for the board; and, would put the bulk of the “member discussions” back on the Member meetings.
I have no doubt if the “hot topics” (proposed rule changes, etc…) that members really care about are added to Member meetings - where they should be discussed (instead of the Board Meetings), then the Member meetings would once again be the “big meetings” that members would make a point to attend.
I agree. And generally with the rest of your points. In addition, for what this is worth, I would like to see Member Meetings officiated by someone who is not on the board. Having “the board” at the front and running the meeting makes it seem like it’s BOD Meeting Lite. I assume there is history here, and likely a dearth of volunteers to serve as “Member Meeting Referee Coordinator” (title may need work) but this seems like the way to go, from my perspective.
Then there’s the Thursday night thing, but that’s probably only me.
I like this. Prior to calling the meeting to order, the members present can elect by a show of hands a temporary chair to host the meeting.
This seems like a natural outcome of a behavior supported by the current members that make up the board and openly championed by @tapper and @Brandon_Green in this thread: Free the DMS Five
You can go put in a request for Voting rights. … If you don’t come, or refuse to vote, they cannot achieve quorum … If you simply don’t show up, It will effectively end the sham system currently in place …
The outcome was predicted by @photomancer in that same thread:
The individuals supporting this subversive behavior clearly do not want the small minority of members, which care enough to show up to the Member Meetings, to make decisions. This is largely the same minority that bother to show up to the board meetings as well. The only recourse is the current system where we put everything on the BOD meeting agenda and let five members decide everything for DMS. This is exactly what @tapper promoted. The five members that make up the current BOD have accepted this responsibility by entertaining every topic placed on the BOD agenda.
If we want to restore participation in the Member Meetings, we will need to somehow discourage the subversive behavior promoted by @tapper and @Brandon_Green so the members see value in the meetings. I can think of a couple of approaches; one is for the board to refuse to hear items that they feel should be left for the general Member Meeting; another much more difficult but more permanent solution is to enact bylaws that limit the items that the BOD can decide to specific classes of topics.
Finally maybe we just need to decide that Member Meetings no longer have a role in the much larger DMS of 2017 and that only the BOD have enough motivation, vision, and foresight to lead DMS forward.
Actually, I think the reason people stopped going, is that they took the time to read the bylaws, and realized that the “voting” there was of no legal consequence, and that the meetings had become a way for a very very small minority of unelected members to lead the Board around by the nose.
@mstovenour
I feel like we have lost our member meetings as well. I have another idea though for how we may be able to bring them back. I stress this is just an idea.
What if we moved our member meeting to TALK?
We could add two new categories and a new tag.
Categories: “Member Meeting Discussion (member only)” and “Member Meeting (Voting Members Only)”
Tag: Voting Member - referencing a data set of our voting member much like the Member Tag references a data set.
We treat the “Member Meeting Discussion” as a forum to discuss the topics at hand and suggest language to be put up for vote. We require each thread to be up for at least 7 days before it can be added to a monthly “Member Meeting” Thread. The member meeting thread will have a poll for each item with a link below it to the discussion in the other thread. Because this is online and doesn’t require everyone sit in a room, we can leave these polls open for say 3 to 5 days to allow everyone a much greater chance to read the issues and discussion involved with each item. We also gain an easier ability to make quorum. As if any item meets quorum amount of votes then we can claim that all items were offered to a quorum of our membership.
Once we cut off the voting, We post the finished threads results on our wiki.
Hard question to answer for me:
Who makes the thread with all the polls? Do we have the member that is presenting the idea add the poll, which would probably be a nightmare to explain and implament? Or do we have a board member or selected group build the meeting thread, possibly allowing them to influence the phasing of the poll?
Do we allow discussion on the actual meeting thead? I lean ‘no’ on this I think it should just be a ballot and keep the discussion on the other thread.
Can we time limit polls publicly?
Are votes public or private?
I know this isn’t the time to add to the mess of talking about member meetings with the up coming election. Just an idea I’ve been pondering on my own for a while now. I’m sorry if this is considered off-topic, please feel free to move it to another thread. I don’t intend to subvert the thread.
I think that is a fine idea; of course the devil is in the details. We could immediately implement something like that for at least developing an agenda for the member meetings, even if we didn’t replace them right away.
However, I’m not sure it addresses the underlying issue. IMO, there is no consensus around what is an appropriate topic for a member meeting. What should we discuss in these meetings? There is even less agreement around what we should vote on in these meetings; some would say there is nothing we should vote on other than the annual election. Watching all this unfold over the past year that I’ve been a member, I am left scratching my head trying to understand the purpose of a monthly member meeting. It is the reason I’ve not attended the past 2 months. Could this be a primary reason no one shows up for them?
BTW, I think this is a perfect time to have this discussion. I think members might want to know where their candidates stand on this topic. Do the BOD candidates favor a more autocratic leadership style or do they believe that some decisions about the culture and direction of DMS should be left to the small group of members that have enough initiative to show up to the meetings?