[Foundation-l] Volunteer Council - A shot for a resolution

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 3:33 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I'm not sure 500-700 is practical in the middle to far future either.
>  There would need to be an additional tier if we were going to get that
>  large - a council of 30-60 (say) and a general assembly of 500-700
>  which only meets (virtually) once of twice a year.

I personally think that we are going to hit a logistical ceiling long
before we even reach 100 members on such a council. Even convening a
"meeting" (whatever that entails) would be entirely unfeasible for
groups that size, much less larger then that. With 100 active
participating members, ways of communicating that we've been using,
like mailinglists or wikis are not going to be usable, because it's
going to be impossible for everybody to follow along with the
conversations (especially if they are spread out in various email or
discussion threads). IRC wouldn't be any better for discussion, not if
we have 100 people trying to chat at once.

The bigger such a council gets, the less useful it will be. I think
the 30-60 range should be the long-term target size of such a group.
We couldn't accomodate speakers of every language, but we could try to
get members that are spread-out, and we could try to ensure that there
is overlapping between many members of the projects. We're not going
to acheive perfect representation here, I think we'd be much better
suited by trying to keep that are diverse in terms of language,
geography, and project, and then instituting term-limits so that there
is rapid turnover (1 year terms or less).

--Andrew Whitworth