RE: [office] Coordination Call Attendance

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Rob,

I hadn't been thinking about the conditions on what minutes are for.  I
don't think I've ever heard that laid out in that way.  Thank you.

From a protocol point of view, I do recall their being standing items to
report on the membership and attendance and perhaps that is how things got
into the minutes (although people may have just been doing it as inherited
craft, without knowing the principle).

I believe that would work in this instance, although I guess technically it
is a report and reports have a funny status.

I see in Robert's Rules that Minutes are expected to be quite spare and
account for actions and not much else.  However, the two-tiered membership
makes that a little trickier, and it would be weirder to put such a report
anywhere else.  Interesting.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: robert_weir@us.ibm.com [mailto:robert_weir@us.ibm.com] 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200810/msg00010.html
Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2008 17:54
To: 'OpenDocument Mailing List'
Subject: RE: [office] Coordination Call Attendance

Dennis,

I'm not concerned so much with the burden.  My greater concern is that we 
do not stray from what minutes are.  Minutes of a meeting record the time 
the meeting started, the attendance, a description of items discussed and 
actions taken, and the time the meeting was adjourned.  It should not 
contain random facts, even useful facts, that were not part of the 
meeting.  If we start recording other information and then approving 
minutes that contain such information, which was never presented in the 
meeting and thus the TC never had the opportunity to discuss, challenge or 
correct the information, then we have a different kind of problem. 

Now I have seen other bodies have a set part of the agenda where they 
review who has voting rights.  For example INCITS V1, the US JTC1/SC34 
shadow committee does this after attendance is taken in each meeting. 
Since the voting membership list was presented in the meeting, it can 
legitimately be recorded in the minutes.

Is there interest in doing something similar, i.e., having a short segment 
at the start of each TC call, where we list which members present have 
voting rights?  This would then trickle into the minutes.

-Rob

"Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org> wrote on 10/02/2008 
10:11:24 AM:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200810/msg00006.html

> Rob,
> 
> That is interesting about recording votes and such.  That was not 
anything
> that figured in my request, even though I did cast a nay vote on the 
last
> call (and I must remind Michael to identify me in the minutes).
> 
> My interest was in accounting for the voting membership and attendance 
over
> time, since the current state on the TC page is not helpful with regard 
to
> knowing what the voting participation was at a prior time.  I have no 
axe to
> grind about this.  I was simply taken aback that it wasn't done already 
and
> easily available.  (My experience in the matter is quite dated; I had
> thought that this kind of tracking was the usual practice in standards
> development and other membership-based committee efforts.)
[ ... ]