[Linux-aus] Proposal: two year overlapping terms, more council members

[James Polley]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 4:12 AM, Paul Wayper <paulway at mabula.net> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> What I observe from Hugh and Kathy's statements about what Linux Australia
> has
> achieved in the last year, and the ensuing discussion, is that LA council
> positions require a fair bit of work, and it's very difficult to find
> people
> that have simple enough lives that they can dedicate that much time to
> doing
> the work without real life intruding.
>
> This is no surprise - everyone's busy these days :-)  And while we all
> want to
> see Linux Australia continue to be a forum for FOSS advocacy, an umbrella
> group for several successful FOSS conferences, and a variety of other
> things,
> we also don't expect the people that volunteer to be its elected council to
> pause the rest of their lives while serving.
>
> So I'd like to put forward the proposal that each position have effectively
> two people on it; one being the role leader, the other being an understudy.
> The understudy is there to learn the job and to step in should the role
> leader
> be required for whatever reason to step down or take a break.
>
> ::::
>
> Option A: each election elects the understudy for the position.  The terms
> for
> each position are therefore twice as long, with each understudy stepping
> up to
> be the next role leader at the next election.
>

This seems to remove the possibility for any person to serve two
consecutive terms. For Hugh to be president next term, he'd have to have
been elected as both president and understudy-president at the last
election; which really means there is no understudy.

Actually - there is a VP already, so the president is probably the one role
that already has an "understudy" already.


>
> Option B: each election elects both role leader and understudy, with terms
> operating as normal.
>
> Option C: each general member be also delegated (in some way) to be the
> understudy for a particular role, expanding the number of general council
> members if necessary.
>
> Option D: expand the number of general council members to add an understudy
> for each role plus all the current council members.  The understudies do
> not
> hold an official position in the same way that the role leader.
>
> I'm sure the creative minds on the Linux Australia list can find a couple
> more
> variants.  I suspect that we currently unofficially run with option C
> above.
>
> ::::
>
> The main disadvantage of this proposal is that it (generally) requires more
> council members.  In some cases it also requires more people to put
> themselves
> forward for the council and to be voted on.  This may involve extra expense
> for LA (?), the need to find more people to actually put themselves
> forward,
> and the extra complications of planning and organising that having a larger
> council would involve.
>
> The main advantage I hope for this proposal is that the business of Linux
> Australia can continue to progress if one or more elected officials need to
> step down.  This seems to have happened a number of times, and as Hugh has
> said this sees LA move into more of a holding pattern and stall on
> achieving
> its goals.
>
> Let the discussion begin!
>
> Have fun,
>
> Paul
> _______________________________________________
> linux-aus mailing list
> linux-aus at lists.linux.org.au
> http://lists.linux.org.au/mailman/listinfo/linux-aus
>

In general, I like the idea of having interested parties standing by ready
to take over if the elected person steps down.

However, I don't think we need to change anything in order for this idea to
go live. The constitution imposes duties on the office-bearers, but it
doesn't restrict them from getting support for fulfilling those duties. As
far as I can see, all we need is for people to reach out to the secretary
or treasurer and offer to help.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linux.org.au/pipermail/linux-aus/attachments/20161212/c667682f/attachment.html>