On 16 November 2016 at 19:03, Josh berkus <j...@postgresql.org> wrote: > Board: > > One chronic problem we have had with the SPI Board is failure to attend > meetings causing board meetings to be recessed due to lack of quorum. > As such, I would like to see some reference to a Board Attendence Policy > in the new bylaws, e.g.: > > "The Board shall adopt a Board Meeting attendence policy which will > require sitting board members to attend the majority of Board meetings > in each year. Violation of this policy will cause the immediate removal > of the board member with replacement per Section 7." > > Discussion?
I do not believe that lack of quorum has been stalling the progress, or the day to day work of the SPI. Also, have we had meetings with no actions? E.g. just vote meeting minutes & confirm the next meeting date? A lot of man-hours are spent on treasury activities. Whilst we are constantly accepting donations. Accounting / crediting donations to the projects & paying expenses is I think by far most time demanding thing for the board. I think I do have it easy, as I am not an officer nor sysadmin. Nonetheless, over the past month I have spend about 14-16 hours reviewing / auditing accounting, generating reports (which are now published), and responding to email queries. I myself missed the Monday meeting, due to volleyball match. I play in the London Volleyball League. Scheduling interactive meetings is a hard task for the board. We are globally distributed timezone wise. All have more than full-time engagements. And many of us travel a lot for work & leisure. The board & officers are volunteers and we are not compensated for our work. Which I think is a good thing. Conceptually, demanding fixed hours or expelling board members over meeting attendance feels odd to me. As it's not holding the meetings that matters, but the outcome of the work SPi achieves. We have achieved transitioning to an accounting system which follows Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) with multiple directors on the board fully understanding how to keep our accounts up to date. It took longer than originally anticipated, but it has increased bus factor and paves the way for sharing the treasury workload. If members and/or board think there are people who can dedicate more time, with more/betters results, than I currently achieve on the board, I'm happy to step down effective immediately. On the other hand, I do agree that being an SPI director is not an honorary role. The board tries to meet monthly. But imho, if the board manages to meet and have quorum 8 times a year, it is more than sufficient for the current churn of operation. The most limiting thing at the moment for the board, is the disconnect between how the board operates and what our bylaws say we must do. However, our current bylaws require 2/3rds of membership of approval to pass the new ones. Hence the most urgent action for the SPI is the need from all of our membership to review, help to draft, and complete the bylaws update. -- Regards, Dimitri. _______________________________________________ Spi-general mailing list Spi-general@lists.spi-inc.org http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general
