Folks,
My initial reaction to today's
kickoff:
We ran into some issues (some
business but mostly protocol, I think), but to me, these seem like mostly
normal issues for the birth-pains of a new group with this kind of mission and
industry interest. The benefit to running into these kinds of issues in our
kickoff meeting is that we can solidify some ground rules and practices early
in our life that will help things go more smoothly the rest of the way, before
we get to the really gnarly issues. BTW, thanks to all who spearheaded,
attended, and supported this, but especially to Diane and John for their
patient leadership.
Some points of order that I might
offer:
A few folks complained about
having a conference call meeting conducted mostly in "listen-only" mode and
needing to resort to speaker queues. I presume they felt that this somehow
would constrain or limit (negatively) the opportunities for contribution
and/or interaction.
In fact, if we were to strictly
follow Robert's Rules of Order, these constraints would be barely noticed by
anyone participating (with maybe a minor exception, see my suggested revisions
below). [In fact, following Robert's Rules on a conf call with speaker-queuing
is better than following Robert's Rules in person in at least one way: the
fairness of the queuing is managed for us by the call system; when in person,
the sequence of hand-raising is somewhat subject to the memory of the
chair.]
John, I think you mentioned
getting a FAQ for Robert's Rules posted to the BPEL site - this is crucial,
and everyone needs to get some basic familiarity with operating in a group
bound by Robert's Rules. They are intended (and crafted over many years) to
help ensure fair and orderly conduct of decision making by
groups.
To be clear, for BPEL conf call TC
meetings, I am strongly in favor of conducting them roughly as was proposed
for today's call, with listen-mode most of the time (to minimize line noise),
plus the following guidelines:
-
allow folks to get in the speaker
queue at any time (this is simply analogous to raising your hand to be heard
at an in-person meeting)
-
ask that the meeting chair simply
call on those in the queue in a FIFO manner, as appropriate to the point at
hand
-
note that getting into the queue
doesn't mean you can speak at will; you will get your turn as called upon by
the chair
-
again, participants should think
of getting in the speaker queue simply as equivalent to raising your hand. If
you 'drop your hand' then re-raise it, you first fall out of the queue and
then get back on at the end of the queue. This is fair.
-
until we get the hang of it, we
maybe need to be a bit more heavy-handed on enforcing some of the rules of
order, e.g., when the item on the floor is whether or not you object to the
current motion, do not use your moment on the floor to suggest another
amendment - that only creates confusion. There are certain times open for
amendments, etc. Read Robert's Rules to get some understanding of how this
works.
[...]