On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 2:36 PM, Tom Holden thomas.holden@gmail.com wrote:
Mostly reasonable enough. My point on positions was that since this board was only going to be around for three months it might be more efficient to assign tasks on a task by task basis rather than a role by role one, particularly as assignments of tasks should require much less discussion than assignment of roles. This certainly does not mean that we'd be in an "everyone thought someone else would do it" situation, as those task assignments would be a matter of public record. A task based approach also keeps at least some collective responsibility for things getting done for the whole board, which to me seems right, since if we fail, we fail as an ensemble. It also means that when the job of one "role" can be parallelized, it will be.
I don't see the task and role based approaches as necessarily exclusive. There are some roles which we are legally required, or strongly advised, to create. Beyond that, there are tasks we are aware will be required and will be ongoing (such as membership and communications). If one or more board members wants to take responsibility for an overview of these, and probably doing the main share of the work on them, then it seems sensible to formalise it as a role; this doesn't preclude the board in future mandating someone else to take on part of the task, or the person taking on the role from asking other members to assist as needed.
Meanwhile, there are many specific tasks which will not be ongoing concerns, and even if we wanted to avoid a task-based approach, it would be difficult to avoid it for all of these.