On Mar 18, 8:19 pm, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/3/18 Tom Holden thomas.hol...@gmail.com:
To clarify (if it needed it), this was discussed at the board meeting this week and we decided non-members are perfectly welcome to attend.
Ok, a general invitation is fine (I've found the discussion in the IRC log, but I can't see it in the minutes - all decisions need to be minuted),
Good point - I've revised the minutes to add this in.
but you'll need to give some thought to how you are going to conduct the meeting. I can see two options - separate seating areas for members and non-members, or voting cards. (If we have a very small turnout we can just rely on the chair knowing who is and isn't a member, but hopefully we'll get more people than that!)
Yes, we do. As will come clear when the notice is sent out (hopefully Friday) most of the meeting will be informal talks, discussions and presentations. The distinction between member and non-members will not be an issue here. This also applies to the hustings. The formal part where the distinction matetrs will probably only last about 30 minutes.
Voting for the Board will probably be entirely in paper form. I imagine members who haven't already voted electronically will be given a paper ballot paper to fill in and they will be counted by hand.
Voting for the resolutions will probably be a mixture of a show of hands plus the electronic votes. In this case, the chair needs to make sure he can distinguish between members and non-members. If the result is at all close, the tellers will have to organise a paper vote. Obviously we won't know till we get there, but I could see this happening with your resolution but all the others will probably be clear majorities.
I know some people think I am being overly formal and strict about this kind of stuff, but the AGM of a limited company, particularly a charitable one, is a serious event and needs to be handled properly. This isn't just a bunch of people from the internet getting together for a pint and a chat about what we're going to do, it's an official meeting of the membership if a charitable company.
Indeed! No harm in doing things correctly.
Andrew