[ typo in initial send, didn't get to foundation-list, resending ]
On Mon, 2004-11-29 at 17:56 -0500, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> My proposal to have a president is to better utilize the time of the
> members of the board. Does the whole board need to be involved in every
> decision? No.
>
> That is why boards elect presidents in real life, and that is why every
> other organization (profit and non-profit) has these kinds of
> structures: to be more efficient.
>
> The every-two-weeks meeting is a drag to most people: only a couple
> really participate in a discussion, because the topics are not of the
> interest to everyone.
If the board meetings consisted of hour long sessions of going through
lots of $50 expense requests or similar, I might agree that they could
be more efficiently dealt by appointing one person.
But that's not my experience, really. Most of the time on the
conference calls are:
- Looking for volunteers to handle issues, discussing progress
- "policy" issues,
- irrelevant technical digression (what do you expect when you put a
group of hackers on a phone call...)
There's certainly nothing sacred about a full 11-person call every
two weeks. There could be delegated sub-committees, and only
occasional full meetings. Or full authority for particular issues
could be delegated to particular people. (A "marketing czar"
e.g., who handles press releases.)
But I'm skeptical about appointing a president to handle the bulk of the
board business, because any way you slice it, that person is going
to have a time commitment that is much greater than any board member
in the current system. And if experience shows anything, it's that
the board member with tons of time one month is the board member
without any the next.
Regards,
Owen
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