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.
[...]