Dallas Makerspace Annual Meeting (including board of directors election) 4/23/17 @ 4:00pm

[AlexRhodes]

The Dallas Makerspace will be holding our annual meeting on April 23rd at 4:00 PM in the Interactive Classroom at the Dallas Makerspace located at 1825 Monetary lane, suite 104, Carrollton, Texas, 75006. All times are local time. The board of directors election will conclude at this meeting where online votes and paper ballots will be tallied.

Voting online is optional and will be available on April 15th at 7:00 PM until April 23rd at 12:00 PM. To vote online you must request voting rights before April 15th at 12:00 PM. Paper ballots will be provided at the annual meeting for in person voters and proxies (only signed proxies will be permitted). If a vote is cast online a vote cannot be cast in person or by proxy. The line to vote will be cut off at 5:30 PM during the meeting. Anyone not already waiting in line at that point will not be allowed to vote.

If you’d like to run for the board of directors you must enter your statement of intent on the Dallas Makerspace wiki before April 12th at 9:00 PM to be included on the ballots. If you need assistance with this please let us know.

Important dates to consider…
Deadline to be included on the ballot: April 12th at 9:00 PM
Candidate Q&A at member meeting: April 13th at 7:00 PM
Deadline to request voting rights to vote online: April 15th at 12:00 PM
Annual meeting begins: April 23rd at 4:00 PM
In person voting cutoff: April 23rd at 5:30 PM

An email containing a link to vote will be sent out to voting members at the appropriate time. See our calendar of events for details on the annual meeting schedule. The agenda will be on the wiki in the usual fashion. To request voting rights please see the instructions on the wiki.

Note that processing requests for voting rights takes time. Please don’t wait until the last minute to request voting rights.

[John_Marlow]

Paper ballots will be provided at the annual meeting for in person voters and proxies (only signed proxies will be permitted)

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?

[lukeiamyourfather]

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).

[merissa]

A month away and no names in the hat yet.

https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Category:2017_Statements_of_Intent

[nickdangerous]

Are we doing annual resets of voting rights or does everyone who had them still have them?

[LisaSelk]

Voting rights were reset after the Board elections last year.

Edit to add, here is the link to a recent thread about it:

Voting Rights... Please don't wait until the last minute to request change in status!

https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Rules_and_Policies#Voting_Rights (as of March 1, 2017. Please click on the link for the most recent revision) All members start off as Supporting Members, with no voting rights. A Supporting Member may submit an application to become a Regular Member only after 90 days of membership. A member’s application to change from Supporting Member to Regular Member must be submitted via email to [email protected] from the email address registered on their a…

[merissa]

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

[urbite]

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?

[Brandon_Green]

is this the DMS policy

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.

[John_Marlow]

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

Wow. That makes sense. Thanks for explaining it.

[urbite]

I figured there was some reasonable logic behind the policy. Thanks for the explanation and clarification.

[lukeiamyourfather]

The last member meeting about 15 minutes in. They’re underutilized to say the least.

[Lampy]

You needed to put out more chairs for the standing room only crowd.

[LisaSelk]

The last member meeting about 15 minutes in. They’re underutilized to say the least.

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.

[jast]

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…

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.

[Lampy]

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 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.

[mstovenour]

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

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:

On another topic

Quorums required to change by-laws, usually done at annual meeting when voting, Tappers proposal woul effectively kills membership meeting if registered folks don’t so up or proxy.

If that is strategy, it is an effective one. In the name of Democracy make it so it can not occur.

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.

[Tapper]

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…

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.

[Nick]

@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.