I understand. I guess my concern here is that I’ve never heard anything about abdication by the sitting chair. Only an assertion there is none. And I suppose if there IS a sitting chair who’s uninvolved enough that these assertions are not met with rebuttal, so be it. But I hate to think the sitting chair was out of town for the week and was ousted.
It’s all good. And I appreciate your taking the time to fill me in on the goings on.
I, to, hope for a good meeting, good chair-elect, and great things from the great folks doing great classes and very interesting projects in this committee. 
Well I resigned as Chair of Machine Shop when I was elected to BoD. At the next committee meeting Nick Silva was elected.
In fact, I was elected at a committee meeting after Brian Gangwere resigned his membership.
Hatcher’s elected it’s chair at a committee meeting after a resignation. I believe VECTOR has also done this.
It occurs more frequently than people suspect, just the transitions seem to be smoother and not noticed unless you were active in that committee.
In fact to all outward appearances it would seem @Ashley_Newland is still the Science chairperson: https://talk.dallasmakerspace.org/u/ashley_newland/summary
https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Science_Committee#Members
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But I remember (most of) those. I recall the chairs expressing interest in turning over the reins (or in some cases even more obvious abdication, e.g. “unmembering”). Or as in past science chair elections, it’s having been obvious the supposedly sitting chair was inactive or disinterested. And unless Ashley has graduated, she’s likely got school going on now, with little time for DMS, so it’s certainly not unprecedented nor unbelievable that the chair might be considered vacant. But it IS news, which I found to be peculiar in its presentation. No matter. Best wishes. Pip pip. Cheerioh, and carry on and all that.
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Ashley posted a message on Talk when she quit, and attached a very official-looking letter of resignation.
I know someone, possibly Ashley, should have done something about arranging for succession before it, but I guess everyone thought it must be someone elses job. I sure did, but I am a newby and thought wheels were turning somewhere. I still don’t quite get how it all works.
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Ah, as far as who is in the running, that is very good question. Maybe it would be a good idea not to elect at this meeting, but just to lay down ground rules and establish who wants the job and what their “campaign positions” are, then leave voting to next week.
There must be a better way to do this. Couldn’t we do it all on talk? OK, maybe using the “DMS members only” section. Its not like we have a secret ballot. Everyones Votes, proxies, arguments pro and con various candidates would all have a permanent record. Including what exactly candidates propose to do as chair, for later comparison with actual performance.
off topic, I don’t think congressmen should ever all be in the same city at the same time either, just to vote on legislation. No longer necessary, and brings down the neighborhood.
She did post her resignation very publicly on Science Talk
You might be right, although I am sure we agree it is somewhat moot at this point. That said, as a regular scanner of Talk forums, I don’t remember, nor can I find with a quick search, the post to which you are referring.
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As recently as August 24, she appeared to be active on TALK as the chair of the Science Committee (which is still attached to her TALK profile, making me think the Infrastructure folks were unaware, or they would have removed that; or Ashley could have, as well, upon resignation, but did not).
So it might have happened privately on TALK, but I have agree with Marshall; if it happened publicly, I’m unable to find it on TALK, nor on Discord, nor anyplace else.
But at this point, I’m just
You COULD, but you’ll get doofuses like me who want to butt in and argue things to death at our keyboards. In person meetings tend to be the best place to get the folks who actually get things done to come to consensus. Which having said, nothing prevents any candidates from publicly announcing that fact, or their platform. David Kessinger tends to do that, from time to time, as I recall. It’s kind of nice for those of us who spend less time chewing the fat @ DMS than we’d like, or can’t make the committee meetings, which inevitably seem to be scheduled on nights where we’ve already got commitments.
You might be on to something there… 
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This. Greatly cuts down on the chicken:pig ratio.
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In that case proxy votes completely eliminate the advantage of in-the-flesh meetings. As things are, no one needs to attend in order to vote.
In fact, although science wiki has an official member list (which I had to add myself and Josh to, it being quite out of date) I dont think you have to be on this list or to ever have participated in any science event to vote for science chair.
I definitely see the need for some screening on the basis of committment, but dont really see just showing up this sunday or emailing a proxy really accomplishes this. Not sure what would. If it was based solely on teaching classes, I’d have no vote, even though I do in fact do plenty of work for the committee.
Someone has to attend a live meeting - be it in person, on Skype, conference call, spiritual medium - to vote proxies and run the meeting.
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This is a classic conundrum of the 'Space and its committee model as configured.
There are oodles of threads and debate herein to peruse at-will.
Bear in mind, the vote is only a recommendation to the BOD for a chair for the committee, who actually appoints the chair. If they find shenanigans, they can easily call the vote invalid, or other action as indicated.
This is true, in theory. It actually works pretty well for us, since folks rarely want to coup at these events (or, perhaps more importantly, rarely are so interested in coup that they bother, or if they do, it rarely goes well afterward).
OH BOY!
I definitely picked a bad day to stay off of talk!
Since my resignation was really hasty and unexpected let me clear up a few things.
I decided to step down as chair for many reasons:
1.) I literally do not have the time. When I first picked up the position again in May, I had a full time job, was going to school full time, AND dealing with some kind of heavy stuff, BUT Eric desperately seemed burned out and in need of a break, so I stepped in. I am now a senior at UT Dallas and I need to dedicate all of my time and energy into my studies (and sanity at this point if I’m being honest).
2.) THERE ARE SOME PERSONALITIES IN SCIENCE. I am at a loss for words to try to politely describe some of the people I had to work with in science. This is something that I tried to deal with in person, but failed, partly due to my own ignorance on how to deal with everything…
3.) I do not agree with the direction science has taken as a committee. When I first volunteered as science chair I really wanted to incorporate the “makery” spirit into the committee. I really supported beer brewing and aquaponics, and was really sad when the freeze dryer went away. Now I don’t know what half of the equipment in the science area is (although I’m slowly learning it in my biochemistry lab this semester :p). Both Eric and @Josh_Melnick have expressed to me that they want the science area to be an open source lab, where anyone can come and use our facilities to do the types of research they want regardless of whether they have access to the equipment or not. I personally think this is an unrealistic goal, and is not something that would fit well into our space (even though it is a REALLY cool concept; like…i won’t be upset if you prove me wrong). When I started having these thoughts, combined with such unpleasant interactions with the members within my committee, I decided to step down.
The reason I didn’t schedule a meeting is purely out of spite.
I am very angry for 1.) being pressured into the position by more than one person and 2.) being talked down to and disrespected by other members who were definitely more active than me at the time and STILL didn’t take the position.
I’m sorry if this sounds like a rant or vaguebooking, BUT because @Gonzalo stirred up this conversation I felt the need to clarify everything. There is definitely a lot more I could say about all 3 points, but I actually don’t have the time or patience to really invest anything more in this whole ordeal.
I LOVE this community and want to eventually get back to that happy fuzzy place where I want to be involved more but right now I need to unplug and focus on school.
Thank you everyone for your understanding ^.^
Also, I didn’t post my resignation on talk, I emailed it to the BOD and the science peeps -____-
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Awesome share. 
I now feel soo much better about all this; that you’re not being blindsided or just out of town a vacation and will return to finding your chair usurped (not that I THOUGHT that was happening, but there were dots missing in my picture).
Shitty that there is some history and baggage, but you’ve done the right thing for you, and it appears the committee is doing the right thing for the committee. Thank you for clearing it up for “the rest of us”. Now, for great things from you, the Science Committee, and DMS as a whole! 
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Zack,
I don’t think wrong is the correct word. Interpretation maybe. The rules on committees are listed below:
If you start at the top, Committees are authorized by the BoD (this is enumerated in the by-laws), and the BoD appoints a Chair (usually the nominee of the committee) so the BoD expects there to be a Chair. There are some requirements imposed on the committee chair.
Rule 8 is what is commonly referred to as the “Benevolent Dictator” which is the default authority of the Chair, however, what the powers of the Chair are vs how the committee wants to be governed, i.e. by vote of the committee or by fiat of the chair, is what is being referred to as part of the governance model. Additionally, some committees - Logistics is an example, the Chair /committee has structured itself in to smaller functional areas.
I believe and interpret this as being a choice of governance model. However, the BoD requires a chair to exist as a single focal point. In fact, in the past some committees opted to have co-chairs as their governance model. This was tried for a while but found to be not workable as there was not a single voice-POC that could speak on behalf committee, so co-chairs were done away with. That is why there is the title Vice-Chair. This is a committee created position.
Does that makes sense?
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We have a new chair, Brian, I hope I spell ed it right
Please remember to submit an agenda item for the board meeting on 9/29 to have the new chairman ratified by the Board.
There is another chair confirmation on the agenda already if you need to see an example.
I believe Chair confirmations are to be in October.
This isn’t Chair confirmation it’s an out-of-session election because Science doesn’t currently have a chair.
That’s my understanding.
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