[Foundation-l] Chapter-selected Board seats - brainstorming

[Ray Saintonge]

Florence Devouard wrote:
> The way I understood it when we drafted the text is this:
> We felt that various people considered that the board was not supportive 
> of the creation of a USA chapter;
>  From the moment when the chapters have a say in the board membership, 
> it seemed likely that part of the community could have complained that 
> American citizens would not be able to have a voice about these reserved 
> chapters given that the board did not allow US chapters.
> As such, what our sentence primarily meant was that the board would not 
> oppose the creation of a USA chapter.
>
> It does not mean that we know or have a clear opinion on how to deal 
> with state level - city level - library level etc...,
> It does not mean that we yet know what these chapters would do
> it simply means that on the principle, we'll be happy to approve a USA 
> chapter ... or USA chapters, or USA chocolate cake, or something, that 
> will make it possible for USA citizens to get involved at board 
> membership level.

As the chapter representation discussion develops the impression that I 
get is that the whole thing was poorly thought out.

I have no problem with the general idea of chapter representation on the 
Board, but American representation is the kind of problem that the Board 
should have foreseen before it went ahead and resolved that there would 
be chapter representatives by a certain date.  The Board seems to have 
forgotten the lesson of the first election when one elected person would 
represent the editors in general, and the other would depend on some 
notion of membership.  The idea didn't work, and we ended up with two 
trustees who essentially represented the first of these groups.

Perhaps the Board should have sought a working paper from the Chapters 
Committee before embarking on this path, by asking the simple question, 
"We are considering chapter representation on the Board, please advise 
us how this might best be done."

Ec