How about, help develop training for the board members? You give good advice and have the experience.
2 Likes
Helping is a possibility.
2 Likes
I suspect the eventual outcome of a BOD composed on committee heads would be an evolution of politicians replacing subject experts in committee chairs. If your creative love is XYZ committee activity, would you run for chair if it came saddled with being on the BOD as well?
BOD is a unique opportunity and task to guide mission compliance and envision the future of the whole place. Or at least IMO it could be if the day-to-day operations burden is transitioned to a more appropriate person(s). I think the membership should select BOD members based on perceived ability and experience to handle the board tasks, not committee tasks.
That said, if we cannot come to a consensus around having a paid operations manager, an Operations Committee composed of Committee Chairs might be worth considering. IMHO it’s a poor second choice, but first choices of one aren’t first choices for others.
3 Likes
Allow each committee to elect a representative?
That said, there is a fundamental problem with the idea. Some committees will not be satisfied with only one representative; they will argue that since they are so much bigger, they deserve more.
Look at the debates over whether to abolish the electoral college and the historic fight over admitting “free” vs “slave” states for examples.
3 Likes
Customers shall only count as 3/5 of a member?
4 Likes
Unintended consequence discussions usually get around to a statement of “I never imagined that this would …” which is a direct admission of a poor imagination!
2 Likes
Just remember how many committees we have. Then try to get those said member together once a month. Damn near impossible.
3 Likes
Witness the “potluck member meetings” that allegedly happen once a month and feature reports from committees. The one time I saw an agenda for one (prior to the Chernobyl meltdown) there was a grand total of one committee report provided.
1 Like
I think a lot of collaboration comes from starting to just use the tools, and then you end up chatting with someone while you’re here.
Let the collaboration come naturally instead of trying to force it. IE, it’s better to allow people to come for the tools instead of trying to put policies in place that say collaboration must happen before using tools.
3 Likes
I am not advocating that at all. We certainly cannot force it nor should we have rules that try to do so. This is not at all what I am saying. I’m saying that we should provide an environment conducive to technical and social collaboration. This most definitely includes the tools but it should contain a whole list of other things besides the tools. We shouldn’t be selling the tools as much as the idea of the entire culture and how much can come out of being part of an environment such as this.
1 Like
How do you feel that DMS is failing in this regard?
How specifically do you propose to do this?
Not so much failing as that there is much we can improve and work on.
- Communication - Frequently people don’t know what is going on with other parts of the space or people in the space. There is a large rumor mill and is frequently inaccurate. Also, we have a large number of skills and talents at the space. Good communication can match people up.
- Conflict management / interpersonal relations - Being able to deal with conflicting ideas without feeling like your voice is being squashed or becoming upset. It also can help to have good communications and openness. Ideas frequently get torn apart on Talk before the parts that are valid are acknowledged.
- Teaching teamwork and Effective Leadership - Frequently, the most popular person gets to be the leader. You can be popular and not know how to lead or delegate. Teaching and setting examples of this needs to be part of our culture. This also helps in individual projects.
- Interests Groups before Customers - We have a whole lot of customers that just use our tools and do not collaborate. We have promoted this through our tours in the past. Focusing on the interests groups as opposed to tools can help. There is much more that we can do on this topic. Including inviting the public to social and technical events instead of tours where they can meet the other people interested in what they are interested in. Tours tend to focus on tools and space rather than the people and interests.
3 Likes
We are failing first by examples of behavior in our group. As the vast majority of members never read our rules and processes, we can infer that they learn how things work at DMS by observation. Given this, we really need our leadership to set a good example as they carry the most social clout in the group. When our leadership ignores or subverts our processes and rules, it has a down stream effect of the membership doing the same thing. Beyond the rules and processes, the leadership treating large groups of the membership with fear, distrust, and distain also hurts the culture of DMS as it drive a wedge between groups in the space. I know that many in the membership can be tagged with these same statements, however this being tackled at the top will lesson the amount it happens in the membership and the effect it has.
Secondly, consistency with in the group is a failing point. A large part of this can be solved by trying to design smoother transitions within the group. From staggered BOD transitions to possibly requiring multiple committee heads for our larger committees with many tools. It might be smart to stagger those terms as well.
Third, Increase the openness in the group. Again this is a comment that can be taken as a top down approach. If it is treated as inappropriate to block the access to information at the top, it will also be inappropriate to block the access to information at many levels in the group. We also need to stomp out Fiefdoms quickly as they often form around areas of controlled information in the group, and quickly serve as a poor example that spreads in the group.
1 Like
It is important also to make the distinction between our internal structure and policies and
promoting social and technical collaboration in general and outside our internal structure, which is part of our mission.
To be honest given our structure our internal and external structure should be very nearly the same.
The oft-stated complaint that the wiki (or other resource) isn’t up to date and/or a reasonably thorough search couldn’t turn up something. Perhaps committees need to focus on this with some encouragement from the BoD.
Consequence of so many members. More routine communication from leadership helps but can’t stop it.
OK. And what does this mean?
Messageboards are what they are. I don’t believe there’s a plugin, new forum software, reasonable set of moderation rules, or other handwave solution to significantly cut down on this.
The formal complaint process sux, but there’s been a reluctance to change it. I hope that boards subsequent to the one I was on have been more proactive at diffusing complaints before they result in the airing of public laundry at BoD meetings.
But what you’re mentioning here seems to be quibbles with individual behavior rather than the organization and an inevitable consequence of our present size. Small-organization culture doesn’t neatly translate to big organizations. A fellow I knew that served in the navy worked his way up from small ships to an aircraft carrier then transferred off the aircraft carrier as fast as he could - small ships everyone knew each other, you could leave tools out without worry, and the tiny brig was seldom used; on aircraft carriers everyone outside your section was a stranger, tools and work areas absolutely had to be secured, and the large brig was often at capacity.
The exchange of ideas is a full contact sport. Good ideas thrive, bad ideas wither. The definitions of “good” and “bad” are also fluid/situational, like it or not.
I’ve read a few things on the wisdom of cultivating ideas in private/refining them within a select group offline as opposed to just throwing something out there.
This is the tragedy of democracy, combined with factionalism which diverts resources and distorts the rule of law from the public good to special interests. It’s difficult to enforce qualifications in an all-volunteer group.
We do. It takes a special someone that’s going to cough up $50/$60 a month to get into the door, take a spiraling series of safety courses in order to use the equipment they want to use and put in the additional effort to keep the place running.
My recollection of tours is that they move to an area, give an overview, mention specific tools, mention SIGS and projects, and often include some humorous anecdotes or stories.
But my sense is that it’s the tools that set the hook while the culture induces those favorably inclined to get involved.
If you want to sell culture on similar or better footing than tools, I suspect what you really want is an organization that does advocacy or provides services.
So open house more than once annually? Or something like the Hackaday conference? Or the International Women’s Day conference?
An actual specific suggestion if so.
3 Likes
sigh … never mind it would take too much time to explain in more detail at this current point. I’m sorry you do not understand or see what I see. Also, I don’t need to be the one to give all of the ideas of how to make these changes in culture.
If your dream is for people to join strictly for the social aspects, it will be just a dream.
Our dues are simply too high for most unless they have a need to use our tools.
We do not offer fancy parties and networking with VIPs in industry, education or politics. The kinds of things “high society” values.
What we should strive to create is an obvious reality that we are more than just tools. To do that, we need to have more space for just hanging around. That did not appear to be a priority with the expansion. We do seem to be getting away from the “come to work on your project, then go home” mentality and that is good.
2 Likes
It is a combo of tools and culture Many libraries are offering some of the same tools
But they cant offer the culture and innovative ways to use them that we can
1 Like
Sometimes we must look for change in ourselves before asking others to do so.
2 Likes