I think that Sven has a point that we don't want to put the cart before the horse, but the reasoning behind Kevin's proposal has some merit. I don't think we should a elect a "Board" as such, when there is no real entity to govern or process by which to be elected yet.

However, it makes a lot of sense to have a self-selected core advisory group or steering committee. I would recommend that at the meeting you come up with some tasks that advisory group members might commit to (like "meet once a month for an IRC/in-person strategy session and report back on progress to the mailing list" or something) and then allow people volunteer to join. The purpose of the group would simply be to maintain the forward momentum from the meeting, and continue to hash out the challenges Sven mentions ("...decide where we want to go as an organization, then we build a policy framework").

It's easier to do the cat-herding required to create a chapter if a core group has already worked on articulating a sensible vision that can be discussed, rather than expecting a larger, leaderless group to create that from scratch successfully.

Dominic

On 15 July 2013 17:50, Kevin Rutherford <Ktr101@hotmail.com> wrote:
The thing is, we need organization, as that is what the user group has indicated. At the rate we’re going, we cannot wait another year to figure out who is going to do what, and if we have a basic structure, we’re better off than if we had none at all. I left the elections to the end so that we could ensure that we had a framework down before we elected anyone else. We cannot afford to just be a name any longer, and if we have the support, I see no reason why we can’t elect people to formal positions so that we can look like we’re serious to the Affiliations Committee.
 
Kevin
 
Sent: Monday, July 15, 2013 5:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-boston] Ideas for agenda for Saturday
 

Elect board? This is way too soon for that. First we decide where we want to go as an organization, then we build a policy framework around that, and finally when both of those things are done, then we can elect a board.

The meeting on Saturday will be an excellent platform  for resolving the question of where we want to go as an organization, and from there we can probably build a set of Google Docs and flush out some framework documents. Hopefully that will be done by the end of the summer and we can hold some sort of event once the non-local based students are back in, to ratify the framework and elect a board.

S

On Jul 15, 2013 5:18 PM, "Kevin Rutherford" <Ktr101@hotmail.com> wrote:
Hey everyone,
 
I’ve gone ahead and created a preliminary agenda here, so feel free to add to it: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_New_England/20_July_2013&action=edit&redlink=1 See you on Saturday!
 
Kevin

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