If we don't have people get together and make an agenda then how to we put things to a vote?? With 20 different options?? NO it won't work that way. I DO believe that we need to have a vote on things, I DO only want to have this work as a democracy, and I DO believe that there needs to be a board to gather information - create necessary options - then and only then propose those options to the membership. I am not going to get petty about this, but a democracy with out organization is just anarchy.
All I was worried about is that Dave takes too much of his own time and then we all go a different route. Again I like what he did but I was worried about the horse being put before the cart. Thank you again Dave for looking into it and working on a working model of a site. My point is when we met, we said that there needed to be another meet to discuss a list of things further. THAT was only to be done after John got the effects (minutes) of the last meeting typed up and posted for all to see and feedback was attained.
I am not looking to pick a fight with anyone but that was my understanding from before we even met together.
Yes I agree with you Ryan. The difference in what I'm hearing is that you stated the group will get together to create an agenda and provide a list of options to vote on. The impression that I'm getting from some posts is that decisions will continue to be made at face to face meetings and there won't be as much say given to those who can't attend. I may very well be reading into things too much, but this concept worries me greatly and I want to be sure that everyone has equal say in what occurs.
As much as people may initially disagree, there can be very good dialogue, information sharing, as well as decision making through the internet without a formal face to face meeting. Let me give an example:
There is a nationwide shortage of intensive care doctors. To remedy this situation various hospitals have utilized off site intensivists. This means that the doctors manage a critically ill patient, place orders, prescribe treatments, consult with other doctors, and entirely manage the care of a critically ill patient who could be well over 1,000 miles away. This has been an extremely effective means of resource management and more and more hosptitals are utilizing these means of critical care patient management. If a doctor can treat a patient from a thousand miles away, it's rediculous to think we can't make decisions like voting on a name, website, members dues etc... through a common forum until we get our own common ground established.
Now, I may very well be jumping the gun, but I'm strongly afraid of too much power being given to only those who can attend meetings. Some will say that if you wanted to speak up you would make more of an effort to attend the meetings. That's not true at all. Many of us very much wanted to attend this last meeting but simply couldn't. I couldn't even get out of bed that day because I was having such severe back spasms.
Hopefully things will get cleared up when John gets a chance to post the minutes.
There was a thread up for almost a week about the meeting and asking if anyone had something they would like to discuss to speak up.
Prior to the previous meeting, those who couldn't attend were offered a chance to give their input. Many did but that wasn't, by any means, a vote nor can it even come close to the same level of importance. Their is no indication of what importance our input was given. That means we have only a personal trust factor to rely on that our input was taken into consideration. I do trust the people at that meeting, but I'm making the point that providing my "input" is a far cry from actually having a vote.
At this point I'm going to entirely drop the subject and won't say another word until I see Johns minutes or until I'm acutally given a chance to vote on the decisions being made. It sounds like there are intentions of first creating a paid member list then allowing some voting. I hope this is the direction things are going.
Just to clarify. My adament intention on having an independant website vs hosting the "formal club" forum on R2R is becuase there are some people on RC who won't participate if the club is only on R2R. I know this seems silly, but when a lot of people moved from RC to R2R there was a divide created and a bit of animosity created between those loyal to RC and those loyal to R2R. If we have a neutral independant web site we can hopefully negate that animosity and recruit more members. Not trying to skew any decisions that have been made, just clarifying my previous indication as to why I felt we shouldn't host on the R2R forum.
Jeremy
