[Linux-aus] Converting Linux Australia's "Committee" to a "Board"

[Jonathan Oxer]

Hi LA,

Sorry about the epic email. You may need to make yourself some of Paul
Wayper's Linux Australia Coffee to get through this, but it's an
important issue as far as the future of the organisation is concerned.
This issue has been raised with the Committee already and I'm sure
they'll have their own comments so this email is speaking for myself
only: I'm not speaking collectively for the Committee, merely seeding
discussion and seeking community input.

Something that I think Linux Australia needs to focus on this year is
opening the way to broadening the base of involvement of people in the
organisation: not just as members, but also giving them the official
stamp of approval to operate in Linux Australia's name on specific
projects and tasks. We've obviously made a big move in this direction
with Sub-Committees already, but I think we need to do more. There are a
lot of people in our community who want to be involved in Linux
Australia in a more tangible way or who really should get the official
thumbs-up for things they are already doing, so let's clear the way for
that to happen. After all, it's a community-driven association and it's
only what we collectively make of it.

That raises an issue of the role of the primary Committee. I believe
that the Committee needs to be re-invented with more of a "Board"
identity so that it won't continue to be seen as the only way for people
to operate officially in the name of Linux Australia.

Our Sub-Committee structure was introduced to help rectify that problem
and it's certainly helped, but the distinction between Committee as
governance and Sub-Committees as execution is still a little blurred.

Linux Australia is now organisationally mature enough and has enough
participation through those Sub-Committees that we can take the next
step: we need to face the whole governance / execution delineation
problem once and for all, placing the role of governance clearly on the
Committee and execution on Sub-Committees. The way to take that logical
step is to amend the constitution to replace the current Committee with
a Board.

Even with no other changes than "s/Committee/Board/" applied to the
constitution this would help the situation somewhat because it would
make the respective roles very obvious and clear the way for "upgrading"
existing Sub-Committees to Committees. Basically the current "Committee"
would become the "Board", and current "Sub-Committees" would become
"Committees".

Something that I want to make very clear at this point though is that I
am acutely aware that Linux Australia is a community-driven
organisation, and that I have absolutely no intention of setting up a
structure which would allow a Board of unaccountable old-boys to sit in
splendour gathering dust for the rest of their days. Unlike in many
other organisations I see the Linux Australia [Committee|Board] as
representatives of the community and so they have to stay accountable to
the community.

This change is about enabling more community involvement, not less.

So just renaming "Committee" to "Board" and making no other changes
would be a good start. However, what I have in mind is to go a bit
further and also remove the Treasurer and Secretary positions as elected
positions, leaving an annually elected 7-seat Board consisting of the
President, Vice-President, and 5 Members. The positions of Treasurer and
Secretary can then be filled by any selected member of the Board rather
than having a specific person voted into that position. This provides
more flexibility to do things like switch roles mid-term if individual
members find that they are unable to adequately fulfil the role, or even
if it just seems logical to do so due to changing interests etc. For
example, there have already been discussions that Terry and AJ as
Treasurer and Secretary would like to role-swap part way through this
year. Under the current constitution where individuals are elected to
those specific positions that may not even be possible.

To remain in keeping with standard practise in other organisations we
could then replace President with Chair[man|woman|person] and either
drop the Vice-President position or replace it with Vice-Chairman. In
fact it's usual in other organisations for even the Chairman not to be
an elected position specifically, but for a member of the Board to be
selected for that position by the other Board members. Even though
that's the usual way things are done, I believe it would be the wrong
thing to do in the context of Linux Australia: keeping as much control
in the hands of members as possible is a good thing, including selecting
who will be the President / Chairperson / Head Cheerleader or whatever
other label people want to attach. It's also fairly usual for Boards to
be self-perpetuating and to decide internally who should be invited to
join them, but that too would be anathema in the context of Linux
Australia. As I said previously, I don't want an old-boys club. What I
*do* want is a structure that enables the organisation to continue to
grow and accommodate the steadily increasing interest in *active*
participation.

So, to summarise: I think we need to reinvent the Committee so that the
labels, the role perception, and the process more accurately reflect
what we're growing into. That means renaming it to "Board", replacing
President (and Vice) with Chairman (and Vice), removing Treasurer and
Secretary as elected positions, and promoting Sub-Committees to
Committees. Both the election process and the level of accountability
would remain unchanged.

That then clears the decks to really ramp up participation in Linux
Australia through Committees and let people feel they are first-class
members of the organisation. We've been growing steadily on a variety of
different metrics for a number of years now but I'd like to see things
really kicked into top gear this year and see how far we can take it.

Obviously this is a big step and will require a constitutional amendment
through an SGM, so I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Public
discussion here is good, but if you'd prefer to keep your comments
private feel free to email either the Committee (committee at linux.org.au)
or myself directly.

Cheers   :-)
-- 
Jonathan Oxer
Ph +61 3 9723 9399
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