Re: IIUG Board of Directors 2006
Not a technical issue: this thread is a dispute about IIUG governance. A poster ('Nimue') claimed the published 2006 Board of Directors list differs from the originally announced election results (one named winner, Mark Scranton, had disappeared from it) and accused the board of ignoring the charter/by-laws, withholding vote counts and not convening the Leadership Council. Board members replied that all directors were elected properly, that details simply hadn't been requested, and that some internal matters stay private. A founding member agreed transparency had eroded and urged openness for the 2007 elections. No resolution is recorded.
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But Paul, this does not reflect the actual results of the election, no? Is the membership at large not entitled to see what machinations the 2005 board has gone thru to subvert the desires of the membership? Perhaps not. The membership has yet to get vocal regarding the boards disregard of the organization charter and by-laws. So perhaps, they are not really interested in whether the IIUG represents the community or simply a few egotists. Nimue
Nimue said: > > But Paul, this does not reflect the actual results of the election, no? > Is the membership at large not entitled to see what machinations the > 2005 board has gone thru to subvert the desires of the membership? > > Perhaps not. The membership has yet to get vocal regarding the boards > disregard of the organization charter and by-laws. So perhaps, they > are not really interested in whether the IIUG represents the community > or simply a few egotists. http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/Obnoxio/GC/buckleupthread.gif -- Bye now, Obnoxio "C'est pas parce qu'on n'a rien ' dire qu'il faut fermer sa gueule" - Coluche did i mention i like nulls? heck, i even go so far as to say that all columns in a table except the primary key could/should be nullable. this has certain advantages, for example, if you need to insert a child record and you don't have a parent row for it, just do an insert into the parent table with the primary key value (everything else null), and voila, relational integrity is preserved. but this is, admittedly, a bit controversial among modellers. --r937, dbforums.com
Nimue wrote: > But Paul, this does not reflect the actual results of the election, no? > Is the membership at large not entitled to see what machinations the > 2005 board has gone thru to subvert the desires of the membership? > > Perhaps not. The membership has yet to get vocal regarding the boards > disregard of the organization charter and by-laws. So perhaps, they > are not really interested in whether the IIUG represents the community > or simply a few egotists. > > Nimue > Nobody has asked for this information, so it is NOT the case that it is hidden, merely a lack of interest. Subvert, I know what it means, but I have no idea what you mean though. Who is not interested? The membership or the board? Ever met a board that didn't have egos on it? Paul Watson Oninit Ltd Tel : +44 1414161772 Cell : +44 7818 003457 Web : www.oninit.com
Nimue, I am annoyed. This list is often a place where people hide behind a certain anonymity to say partial things without really caring about the consequences. Every board member on the 2006 board has been elected democratically, following the rules of the organization. Now you can say that this is not true, but YOU will be a liar. Does the board has its own internal affairs which should remain within the Board? YES. Every organization, from IBM to the State of Texas has its "internals". Should everything be published? Find your answer by yourself, but if you do not bother telling us your name, I guess you are on the side of secrecy :)... Reagrds... jgp > -----Original Message----- > From: informix-list-bounces@iiug.org > [mailto:informix-list-bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of Nimue > Sent: Monday, January 09, 2006 17:34 > To: informix-list@iiug.org > Subject: Re: IIUG Board of Directors 2006 > > But Paul, this does not reflect the actual results of the > election, no? > Is the membership at large not entitled to see what machinations the > 2005 board has gone thru to subvert the desires of the membership? > > Perhaps not. The membership has yet to get vocal regarding > the boards disregard of the organization charter and by-laws. > So perhaps, they are not really interested in whether the > IIUG represents the community or simply a few egotists. > > Nimue > > _______________________________________________ > Informix-list mailing list > Informix-list@iiug.org > http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list > >
Hallo Jean George - There are sins of commission and sins of ommission, no? The original list of the elected 2006 Board that was sent out is different than what is posted. Why? Policies are fine. But this is a user group, with a charter and by-laws. Which by-law permits disregarding the vote of the membership? Not that the board has much regard for the by-laws, no? Where was the committee to review and ADVISE the membership on the candidates? Why has the board not called a Leadership Council in 2 years? Paul suggest the election information is simply not published because no one has expressed interest. I am interested. How many votes did each candidate receive? Maybe we need a "do-over" Nimue
"Nimue" <nimue.Dame_du_Lac@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1136857789.422054.214180@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... > Hallo Jean George - > > There are sins of commission and sins of ommission, no? The original > list of the elected 2006 Board that was sent out is different than what > is posted. That's right! (well, it should be "different from", but...). I hadn't noticed before. But Mark Scranton was on the list of "winners" originally published. Now he isn't. What *is* going on?!
As one of the original founders of IIUG I would like to try and explain what has happened to the democratic nature of the IIUG. As many of you will know we set up IIUG to be a democratic organisation where the board of directors had rights and responsibilities, and so did the local user groups, and so did the membership at large. However, over the past few years this seems to have become diluted. I don't know when this started but it is in the last 5 years. Which seems to coincide quite nicely with the takeover of Informix by IBM. In the early days the board - a group of volunteers - were very careful to make sure that all of our dealings were as open and honest as they could be. We didn't just make announcements on the web-site and expect people to read them. In fact I was personally responsible for making sure that we didn't become a web-only organisation as I was well aware of the communications difficulties experienced in the third-world. For that reason we set up a system whereby all members could be contacted by email. We wanted to do snail mail as well but costs were prohibitive for a volunteer organisation. This would then be used for all important communications between the Board and the membership. In fact it is that mechanism that is in use today. We also made sure that the nominations procedure was as open and transparent as it could be, and that the results were similarly open. Even to the extent of sending individual emails to each member inviting nominations, emails to each member on the dates for voting, and emails to each member with the results. We even tried very hard to get people to vote. I have seen this procedure slowly erode over the past few years to the point where there are now concerns about the whole procedure. I have seen complaints from people who have self-nominated but heard no more, I have seen results published on the web-site only, and no details of the total of votes cast etc. Personally I didn't vote, not because I didn't want to, but because even though I have the IIUG email facility at both work and home I didn't see any overwhelming publicity about the election. Having said that we must accept that the board of directors is a volunteer body, and they do their best within the time they have available. However I think that they should think very carefully about their external appearance to the membership. In particular they need to find a way to reconstitute the Leadership Council (possibly thorugh a web-cast?), the advocacy program, the advisory council, and they really need to consider how to make the procedures for election of the board and the president more publicly accountable. On the subject of the President I have seen a number of remarks aimed at our esteemed leader. I would say that there are very few of us who would want to take on such a role. There is a lot of work involved and the post has become much bigger than any of us realised when we set up IIUG. I think that if we had seen the way things would develop we would probably have made the role of President more of an honorary position than the "executive" position it seems to have become and restricted the tenure in some way. I don't think it is helping the appearance of democracy that the President of IIUG has been the same person for so many years. So, my challenge to the IIUG board is to think on these issues, discuss them with the membership, and make sure that the elections for 2007 are much more openly honest. Regards Malcolm Weallans -----Original Message----- From: informix-list-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:informix-list-bounces@iiug.org] On Behalf Of Captain Pedantic Sent: 10 January 2006 09:43 To: informix-list@iiug.org Subject: Re: IIUG Board of Directors 2006 "Nimue" <nimue.Dame_du_Lac@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:1136857789.422054.214180@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com... > Hallo Jean George - > > There are sins of commission and sins of ommission, no? The original > list of the elected 2006 Board that was sent out is different than > what is posted. That's right! (well, it should be "different from", but...). I hadn't noticed before. But Mark Scranton was on the list of "winners" originally published. Now he isn't. What *is* going on?! _______________________________________________ Informix-list mailing list Informix-list@iiug.org http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list