[Foundation-l] Provisional Volunteer Council - proposal sent to theBoard

[Domas Mituzas]

Hi!

> It would be very valuable for all the board members, and not just
> Florence Devouard, to speak up now, and express where they
> stand at the moment, in relation to the creation of a Council
> (if any), and how and what it should be assigned as its tasks.


First of all, I feel that it is a bit early yet to speak up - thats  
why we will be spending quite some time discussing how it may or may  
not work, how to make community involvement valuable, productive and  
efficient.

My 'previous' background in WMF organization was being part of the  
'tech committee' - there we could come up with decisions, that were  
easy to approve by foundation at any level, let it be board, ED, etc.  
There were other successful committees that have volunteers working  
on various issues. Some committees probably didn't function, some  
were lacking.

Now the reason committees could work was that they were glued  
together by work done together, so coming up with constructive  
decisions was easy. Let it be technologies, language, chapters or  
communications - it is possible to build groups of people interested  
in certain policy making, and providing valuable feedback,  
suggestions and solutions eventually.

Board itself has wide umbrella of topics, but has ability to allocate  
quite a lot of face-to-face communication hours ( multiple meetings a  
year, multiple days for each event, long hours too). Besides,  
there're online activities where fast-track topics can be resolved.

So, the question arises, where in between does VC fit, and if it can  
take over work from committees or board, will it have enough of  
bandwidth for that.
Sure, there will be lots of people, who are committed, but still, for  
decent decision making one has to make it regular, managed,  
structured, and even better - attended.

Is that possible? Will that provide value for community, foundation  
staff, board, and our users? Allow to come back at these questions in  
few weeks.
As for legal oversight above the board, - it ends up being yet  
another layer of Trustees over other Trustees. I'd better keep it  
clear and simple :)

-- 
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]