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@linux.org.au) or myself directly. Cheers :-) -- Jonathan Oxer Ph +61 3 9723 9399
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