[rfu-membership] RFU Meeting, Tuesday, Dec. 4 at 8pm, & Membership Meeting Notes

[Mike Lehman]

Hi Everyone,
The only RFU station meeting of December will be this Tuesday, Dec. 4 at 
8pm. We will skip the Tuesday, Jan. 1 meeting date and meet for the 
first time in 2008 on Jan. 15.

On the agenda are a proposal from Andrew to set-up a chance for Bill 
Taylor to discuss the progress of our sister station, Radio Lenca, which 
he has been helping et on the air in the remote mountains of eastern 
Honduras.

Then we have the time slot reallocation for any existing show that wants 
one of the open time slots. New shows may apply for any open time slots 
not taken after 8pm on Friday, Dec. 7.

The RFU-Membership meeting notes, taken by Lavana and slightly edited by 
me, are included here, because they cover the procedure that will be 
used to reallocate the open slots. If your programming group is 
considering taking on of the open slots, please review this procedure so 
that you can develop your own strategy to pursue your favored time slot 
at Tuesday's meeting.

Membership Group Meeting Notes Dec 2, 2007

Renewing Membership
The list is looking good, almost all shows shows have completely 
renewed, with a handful finalizing parts of the renewal of a second 
member, which we will follow-up on at Tuesday's meeting

Next year there will be a _firm_ deadline for ALL membership renewals of 
Sept 30, 2008. Any programming groups that do not have two renewed 
members by Sept 30, 2008 will have their shows canceled and the time 
slots made available to the group at the first general meeting in 
October, just as we will be doing Tuesday at this month's station meeting.

Reallocating Show Slots at the Dec 4 meeting

   1. Open slots will be announced in order, starting with Monday and 
continuing by hour and day through the week to Sunday. Any programming 
group may speak up for a slot and will be penciled into that slot. You 
may pick ONE time slot on the first read-through of the open slot list.
   2. If two or more groups request the same time slot they will be 
given a brief opportunity to discuss to reach an agreement. Either group 
can withdraw their vote, take a still open slot from an earlier day of 
the week, or let the other group have the slot and continue on to take a 
chance on an open slot later in the week.
   3. Any remaining conflicts, i.e. two or more groups still want the 
same time slot, will be awarded based on seniority. If seniority is 
obscure, then a method of chance will be used, such as drawing straws, 
flip a coin, or rock-paper-scissors (if three groups want a slot).
   4. After the first read through of the list, we will go through it 
again if there is still a need from any programming group for another 
slot. After all slots have been read, it will be determined if any group 
now wants to speak up for any slots that may remain open, or if there is 
any further discussion. Then all decisions will be made final.
   5. Any remaining open slots will be made available in an e-mail to 
currently active programming groups not at Tuesday's meeting. They will 
be available for 72 hours, then those that are left will be made 
available for any new shows.

Here is a list of the open time slots that will be available in Tuesday 
for your group to choose from:

> > > Monday
> > > 12-4am
> > > 4-5pm
> > >
> > > Tuesday
> > > 1-4am
> > > 10am-2pm
> > > 6-8pm
> > > 9-10pm
> > >
> > > Wednesday
> > > 1-4am
> > > 8am-12pm
> > > 6-7pm
> > > 10pm-12am
> > >
> > > Thursday
> > > 12-4am
> > > 9-11am
> > > 12-2pm
> > > 7-8pm
> > >
> > > Friday
> > > 12-4am
> > > 11am-12pm
> > > 6-8pm
> > >
> > > Saturday
> > > 2-4am
> > > 7-9am
> > > 12-6pm
> > >
> > > Sunday
> > > 12-4am
> > > 7-8am
> > >


 >>>The EAS binder is missing from the studio, if you know where it is, 
please let Noel know.<<<

Training
A group, including Noel, is working on three goals.
* Creating a training manual -- Randy is recreating an electronic copy 
of the existing Airshifter Handbook and the Training Packet. These will 
then be updated and posted to the website for easy reference and 
printing in the future.
* Training the trainers
* Conducting a mass retraining of all members. It was decided that this 
will be a required part of the membership renewal for Sept 2008. All 
members will be asked to attend a retraining session before Sept 30 as a 
part of their renewal.

The group creating the training manual will need to have it done by the 
summer so that retraining can begin then. We will use the summer to 
train as many existing groups as possible, then train all returning 
groups and new members in late August and into September. _Every member_ 
of each programming group MUST participate in retraining before Sept. 
30, 2008 or their time slot will not be renewed. Membership will 
announce when the retraining becomes available, probably starting in 
June 2008.

A possibility of having two tiers of training was discussed. There is a 
need for a more advanced training for some of the features of the 
studio, which would be optional for those who want to learn more 
advanced procedures, like remote broadcasting, etc. It was decided to 
use the WIKI for this for now.

A possibility of having a yearly retraining after this initial 
retraining was discussed. It was suggested that this be an online 
refresher with a quiz that can be turned in.

New forms have been created to keep track of who is in what programming 
group, training, and scheduling. These forms will begin being used for 
all new members. Membership Group still needs to discuss how to 
implement these forms for existing programming groups.

It's been noted that some shows with multiple members are canceling 
shows regularly. Currently the policy is that as long as a show gives 
notice that their show will not be on the air, then they are in 
compliance and their show is secure. However, some shows are canceling 
very often and giving late notice, therefore the time slot is not being 
used. All programming groups must have two members so that hopefully if 
one is not able to host the show, then the other is. Shows are requested 
to check with other members of their programming group before canceling 
the show, or explore other options. You have that time slot in the 
belief that you will be regularly hosting a show. The Membership group 
is actively tracking logging so that we can monitor this situation.

A short discussion of the meeting attendance requirement.
The previous policy was that a programming group must attend 50% of all 
General Meetings, but this has been changing in the last few months as 
we try to have more flexible options available to meet this requirement 
of all programming groups. We are trying to make it easier for more 
people to be active at meetings. Several possibilities of a change to 
this have been discussed. Some possibilities are, a required number of 
work hours, a required number of meetings, a required number of months 
that a meeting was attended in, or some combination of this. This will 
be discussed further at the next Membership Group Meeting, Jan. 13, and 
a proposal will be submitted to the General Meeting. Any who would like 
to help in the early discussion of this proposal are encouraged to 
attend this meeting.
 
There are many new members of the Membership group who were added to the 
mail list recently. If there is a better time to meet than at noon on 
the Sunday before station meetings, please let us know.