[Nottingham] AGM - Candidates and How to Vote (email vote deadline 5pm)

[Duncan John Fyfe]

On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 14:46 +0100, Graeme Fowler wrote:
> On Thu 21 Jul 2005 14:18:27 BST , Duncan John Fyfe <djf at star.le.ac.uk> wrote:
> > It saddens me to see someone who having failed to take the opportunity
> > to contribute to this at all levels from writing the constitution to how
> > the election would be run is going to winge about the considerable work
> > done by others because they didn't quite get it right.
> <snip remainder>
> 
> I'm not 100% sure there was any real need for that, Duncan.

I felt there was.  There is a small core of people (mostly Martin Aatm
who do most of the work to organize the meetings.  None of us has a lot
of time, we try our best.  It is the same group of people that has led
the formation and the constitution and last nights vote.  We did our
best in the time available.  If that wasn't enough then maybe other
members will take more heed in future when we say we need more hands on
deck - whatever form that help might take.

>  Whether or 
> not any member of the list has made a "significant contribution" or not 
> to any particular event, meeting or otherwise, is irrelevant.
>

No it isn't.  It is the contributions people make that decide whether
things happen or not.  We get plenty of "I'd like"s on the mailing list
but many fewer "I'll do"s.  Its a bit shitty when a bunch of people on
the list ask for a talk on something you do the leg work to give the
talk and then none of them turn up.  In fact they don't even complain
that the talk might be on an inconvenient evening.

> As has been acknowledged elsewhere, mistakes have been made and people 
> will want to assert their rights as subscribers to the mailing list in 
> order to make their displeasure known. As long as that displeasure 
> isn't made in a personal manner with respects to other people's 
> contributions or commitments then I think we should collectively accept 
> their comments and move on in a way which learns from the events.
> 

I found the manner in which Godfrey made his complaint offensive.  He
raised a fair point about the voting window but then to start wading in
with 'I was the founder' , 'things would have been different if I had
had the time' nonsense is just an insult to the work that others have
done.

> I have to admit that I am slightly disappointed by what's happened over 
> the last 48 or so hours, as it has shown (in my opinion) what has 
> previously been a fairly happy LUG not to be the case. If you're now 
> beginning to make a distinction between the mailing list and those who 
> have time and live close enough to physically attend events, then this 
> is a sad afternoon indeed.
> 

Whether you like it or not a distinction must be made between the
mailing list and meetings branches of the LUG.  The mailing list does
not require resources (money, projectors, computers etc) which the
meetings branch does.  The people may be the same but the needs are not.

It would have been entirely possible for us to have a constitution,
elections and a bank account for the meetings branch of the LUG with no
reference to the mailing list what so ever. 
Instead we wrote a constitution and tried to arrange elections to make
them inclusive of both branches of the LUG.  If you think these are the
actions of people trying to run a separatist LUG there is something
seriously wrong somewhere.

The driving force behind the constitution and election is the meetings
branch needs a bank account (that is not to say the bank account is for
the exclusive use of the meetings branch). The constitution and
committee are prerequisites of that.  We lost out on more than 500 GBP
in 2004 because we did not have a bank account.  We don't want to do
that again.

Over the past few years we have managed to keep the meetings free and
open to all (not just the LUG).  Thanks to Alex Herington and Michael
Haber we have had free use of very good central Nottingham venues for
our meetings.  Thanks to the generosity of others our financial needs
(eg. awareness day CDs and posters) have been met.  Without these people
we would not have been able to  do what we have done.  But we cannot
plan on Alex or Michael never changing job or others to always foot the
bill so we will need some funds to pay for room hire, equipment etc.

Also with some money in the bank we can start to look at other ways of
enhancing the (entire) LUG. Ideas like a coach for the LUG to get to
from LinuxExpos or LUGRadio live have been floated in the past.  The
problem with all such great (or otherwise) ideas is they need an initial
outlay of money.

> I always thought the LUG was more than just the people who attend 
> events, but maybe I'm wrong.
> 
It is, and we have never tried to make it otherwise.

Have fun,
Duncan