[Foundation-l] Expert board members - a suggestion

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/8/27 Ting Chen <wing.philopp at gmx.de>:
> There are a lot of differences between a board member and an advisory
> board member. The most important difference is the dedication. As a
> board member you MUST attend board meeting, you MUST take part in
> discussion. As an advisory board member you are not obliged to do that.

That's only because we don't specify such an obligation. There is
nothing stopping us having such an obligation included in the rules
for the advisory board.

> The best examples you can see are Stu West and Jan-Bard de
> Vreede. Stu with his technical and financial expertise is simply there,
> in every meeting, in the board mailing list, we don't have to go out and
> ask someone from the outside, especially because these expertise are
> really direly needed in every meeting and most of our topics.

Brion and Véronique have that expertise and could easily be brought in
to whatever meetings they are needed for.

>The same
> is it with the organizational expertise that Jan-Bard brings into the
> board both in how an ordinary procedure should look like as well as how
> discipline must be excercised in the board.

Sue seems to be pretty good at that kind of thing.

The only time I can see that using staff expertise wouldn't work is
when you are fulfilling the oversight role of the board and need to
check up on those staff members. In those situations, an expert on the
advisory board could be consulted. Does that kind of checking up
happen in every board meeting?