[Imc-radio] Steering Meeting, Thursday, Sept. 15

[Mike Lehman]

The next IMC Steering group meeting is this Thursday, September 15 at 
8pm. Your participation and that of your working group is needed.

I'll note here that I am sending this Steering meeting notice to all 
active or potentially active working groups. Typically, to avoid the 
multiple meeting notices that will be generated by doing so in this 
case, these Steering meeting notices are only sent to the main IMC list, 
imc at ucimc.org.

It is supposed to be the duty of working group spokes to subscribe to 
this list, but given the sparse attendance at recent Steering meetings, 
it is clear that many groups do not have their spokes subscribed and are 
perhaps missing Steering meeting notices. If you are a working group 
spoke and are not already subscribed, please take a moment and do so at:
http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/imc

There is a 5th Thursday this month on Sept. 29. Given the upcoming 
membership meeting falls on the day that is typically the first Thursday 
in October, normally reserved for Steering meetings, I would propose 
that another Steering meeting be scheduled for Sept. 29.

Chief among the agenda items for this Steering meeting is planning for 
the upcoming membership meeting on October 6. While it has been usual 
practice to send notices via snailmail to the membership for this 
meeting, this requires a bit of work to accomplish -- production of a 
postcard and mailing it to the membership list. Unless someone steps 
forward to do this at this meeting, it is likely we will stick to email 
and website notices this time around.

This membership meeting will review and approve final plans for first 
floor space separation project so that we can begin using this space, 
hopefully in time for the WRFU barnraising, tentatively scheduled for 
mid-November. Construction needs to begin ASAP, both to enable the 
barnraising, as well as to provide an on-site performance space and a 
much more visible and useful IMC space.

This Steering meeting is also a good opportunity to submit any proposals 
that need action at the membership meeting. Frequently in the past, 
proposals have been submitted at membership meetings without any prior 
attempt to build consensus through discussion among the relavant 
constituencies in the IMC. This tends to both handicap the possibility 
of a proposal being adopted and results in lengthy discussion just to 
get everyone up to speed on why a proposal is needed, let alone decide 
on it. In the past, this practice has tended to discourage members from 
attending such lengthy meetings by privileging such unproductive 
discussions.

On the agenda for the membership meeting so far is a proposal I made at 
the last Steering meeting that directly addresses this question. It 
continues to allow unlimited discussion time for proposals submitted for 
at least some discussion in Steering prior to the membership meeting, 
but limits discussion of previously unvetted proposals submitted at 
membership meetings themselves to just enough time to determine whether 
consensus on them can be achieved without an extended and potentially 
unproductive discussion.

The proposal does provide for extending discussion time in such cases in 
case of a real emergency. Past experience with such unvetted proposals 
has been that they typically have NOT been emergencies and would have 
greatly benefited from prior discussion to establish at least the 
beginnings of consensus -- or to determine that they are unlikely to 
achieve consensus in unmodified form and will simply take up extensive 
discussion time without result and to the discouragement of their 
authors and the members in attendance without more explanation, 
footwork, or modification prior to the membership meeting.

Another proposal that may be submitted for discussion at the membership 
meeting has to do with working groups that fail to have spokes regularly 
attend Steering meetings without notifying Steering that they have gone 
on hiatus. This has been a continuing problem that also undermines the 
ability of the IMC as a whole to build consensus. This is a problem that 
needs your input, particularly if you are a member of a working group 
that has failed to regularly send a spoke to Steering meetings.

Finally, while we do not have a working formal procedure to establish 
whose responsibility it is to send out meeting notices, in the past it 
was suggested that someone, on a rotating basis, take responsibility for 
calling for agenda items and sending meeting notices. In fact, this task 
has regularly fallen to me of late due to lack of initiative on the part 
of others. Unfortunately, my studies now have to take precedence for the 
time being and I will no longer be in a position to do this regularly in 
the future. It would be great if someone was willing to step forward to 
take on this low time commitment, but very important task, as I will no 
longer be sending Steering notices. Of course, Steering meetings will 
still happen on the first and third (and occasionally, the fifth) 
Thursdays of the month, regardless whether or not email notices are sent.
Regards,
Mike Lehman