I’m looking at dates for the AGM at the end of September at the moment. I see that in the past AGMs were held on Saturday Evenings. In my mind I was imaginging the AGM to be on a weekday evening. Given we tend to have difficulty getting enough members to be quorate at our members meetings (~25 members needed) would people prefer a weekday evening (probably wednesday) say 19:00-21:30 or a saturday evening 18:30-21:00?
Dominque and I have been working on the ‘Board Job Roles’ sheet recently to be published before the AGM so people know what the roles are.
I note our board elections are normally held virtually a couple of weeks after the AGM. Would it not make more sense for them to be held at the AGM itself, giving nominees say 2 minutes to do any talking they wish to do, anyone unable to attend submitting a statement to be read out instead, followed by a secret ballot? Makes the whole thing more personal, speedier and less admin faff. Thoughts?
The speeches and vote being held at once in the meeting won’t work as every member has the right to vote even if they can’t make the meeting. It has to be done asynchronously to some degree for folks who are working during the meeting, for example.
It’s also important to give people time to process each person’s speech. It’s always been written down, and I’d like to keep that as it makes it easier to hold folk to account based on promises they make.
The vote needs to be done officially and have a written record.
I’m for reducing the amount of time elections take, currently I think everyone has a month to vote which feels too long.
@Greg is the returning officer and may have some insight into the constitution.
I’m not in a hurry to completely change how things work but I do think changes can be made steadily.
All those problems can be overcome in an in person setting if hackspace was keen.
I know I found having to summarise my aims for the space in 512 characters was a bit of a piss take, the voting was entirely impersonal and in a space where most people only know each other by face, not name, not having any photo or other personal element made it a bit difficult to know who I was running with.
Agreed the month is way too long as well. I think in all it was 8 weeks from me volunteering to be a director to being voted as one, then another 6 months before I actually had access to all the things I need. Anything to speed that up and make handovers easier would be a blessing!
Totally agree we should try to reduce the period of time between nominations and votes but yeah without a change to the constitution which would require something like 75% (can’t remember the exact figure from memory to agree to a change) we can’t hold the vote at the agm
I would be against this as it does then prevent those who may not be available to attend it to actually vote and your then risk alienating some of the community etc.
Voting should continue as it currently does but I would support reducing the timeframe for the process and actually bring it forward so that the announcement of the new directors is made at the agm rather than using the agm to vote.