Regular Member Meeting 2008 10 21

Time & Location

October 21, 2008
Members Present: Nick Farr, Matt, Elliott, Jonathan, Katie, David Lott, Martin, Derek, Rodney, Member 29, Peter, Richard, Timball, Ben
Others Present: Anonymous Attendee, Jess, Alli
Quorum:
19:50ish to
HacDC, 1525 Newton St NW, Washington, DC. (Space)
Presiding: Nick Farr

The Consent Agenda

Nick proposes making the 1st Tues. of the month the "important one" for transacting business / voting.

Member 29 suggests an overhaul of the bylaws with an eye toward quorum "gotchas".

Approved: New Member (Anonymous Attendee)

There are more prospective members. Elliott volunteers to sponsor Lorne as a new member. Approved: Lorne as new member.

Andrew is resigning as President. He will continue to serve until a replacement is elected. We'll target the Nov. 11 meeting for an election for a replacement. Nick suggests Elliott as a replacement, an Elliott is willing.

Nick proposes discretion for the board to add prospective members to the members mailing list (provided they've paid dues) prior to their official approval as a new member. This seems to be approved by consent.

Nick proposes dividing the members mailing list into announcement (to be newly created, required) and blabber (based on the current members list, optional) lists. (reword that!) Derek expresses concern that people have different ideas about what constitutes an issue important enough to be discussed on the announcement list. Where do we draw the line? Nick suggests that at the point where an issue becomes a motion that can be voted on, it goes to the announcement list. Rodney suggests that as the quorum is decreased, policy discussions over e-mail will become more important. Derek proposes using a forum to allow members to easily ignore "blabbery" discussions. Nick says people have been clamoring for a noisy, jabber list. He proposes creation of a HacDC public anything-goes list; it could be tied in to a forum system. And a public announcement list. There was some discussion of potential names for the public names.

Derek suggests many new issues have been brought up at this meeting and that they should preferentially be brought up on the members mailing list first, for discussion and thought.

The overwhelming majority of members approve of the mailing list proposal.

The Door: Nick suggests it has become a problem. He proposes creating a night to get together and work on IT infrastructure relating to the space and the church. The idea would be unify the entry system so that one card lets you into the church and into the space. Nick says the church wants this.

Pete points out that the lease is up in January and this may be a good time to be researching other potential spaces. Nick encourages members to look for potential spaces and share on the members list. He inquired with the church coordinator about leasing additional space from the church. Pete questions whether we need more space.

Nick says the lynchpin of getting expeditiously approved as a 501(c)3 organization is to establish that we're doing public good. The Columbia Heights Wireless Project would be a good effort toward that end. Each org in the church now pays for its own bandwidth. The goal would be for the church to get bandwidth itself and provide wireless access to its tenants. This would give us good standing as a 501(c) and provide us the flexibility to move out while leaving the wireless infrastructure. It's possible that one of the other church tenants may want to buy all of the space for lease in the church. Nick will try to get the church coordinator to a meeting at the November 11 meeting.

Minister Reports

Coordinator in Chief

We're now at 30 members.