I agree with Greg’s first paragraph. That is, I like paper, but I would support making reports and motions received prior to the Board meeting deadline available online, instead of on paper. And I echo Fred’s comments about revision control. Any cost analysis needs to be done very carefully. There will still be a need for an on-site printer and secretarial support. Greg’s third paragraph touches on something I was going to write in response to concerns raised earlier by Rick about the time consumed in creating or revising motions in “real time” during the Board meeting itself. We meet in person in large measure to “deliberate”. We are a “deliberative” body. It is more than reasonable to assume that those deliberations will result in revised or new motions during the course of our deliberations. If we don’t accept that basic premise; if we go to the Board meeting with our minds already made up; if we are not open to the possibility of modifying our pre-meeting opinions in response to comments from other ODV members who may be better informed on specific topics than we; there really is no reason for us to meet in person at all. So there is always going to be time consumed during the two days of the Board meeting with motion revision, creation, and word-smithing. Word-smithing is extremely important because: 1. Sometimes a phrase or sentence or paragraph may mean different things to different participants in the meeting; that needs to be tested and cleared up prior to voting on any motion. I saw that numerous times during the July meeting. 2. Our motions are later read by thousands of members and non-members who do not have the benefit of hearing or seeing in print all the clarifying remarks that lead up to the specific words in any given motion. That means we must be doubly — nay, triply — careful about what our final published words are. 3. I’m a dinosaur, I realize, but I still think it is important for our published written record to be literate. Some of the literacy “clean-up” can be done after the fact, of course, but at some point the more difficult clean-up tasks may start to cross the line into “What was the author’s intent here?” In other words, at some point the post-meeting mechanical clean-up (such as by the Secretary in conjunction with the motion’s author) may lead to words that could have raised new questions by other Board members if those words had been spoken during the reading of the motion. Better to take care of it up front, while we’re all present. IMO, our two-day Board meeting format does not currently allow enough time for small group discourse leading to revision or creation of well-thought-out motions following the introduction of the related agenda topic. Break times on Friday and Saturday are kept extremely short unless a special break is called for an off-line “caucus” on a single very important topic. Thursday and Friday evenings are consumed with social hour, formal dinner, and often a formal presentation following dinner — after all of which, many of us are in no position to produce our best work. Regrettably, with a packed schedule like that, discussions of — and motions created for — those "very important topics" tend to get dealt with hurriedly and as they individually arise, leading to a series of individual breaks (or to hurried stand-up gatherings at the rear of, or just outside, the Boardroom). Having parallel official breaks would be a whole lot more efficient. To wit: I would be in favor of modifying the Board meeting format to include (for instance) longer lunch breaks on both Friday and Saturday. This would allow multiple small groups to meet in parallel during and immediately following lunch each day to resolve “hanging” topics and motions; the EmComm Manager ad hoc committee, for instance, might meet in parallel with the Legal Affairs Committee or an informal subset of ODV members present who are concerned about wording of "automated QSOs” motions. The results of these various small-group meetings, including any motions revised or newly created, would then be brought up later when the Board formally reconvenes. (As an alternative to the longer lunch break on Friday, consider recessing an hour earlier on Friday, thus providing an hour of small-group meeting time prior to the social hour.) Perhaps we could ask the trial attorneys among us how long the usual lunch break during a trial is, and what is going on behind the scenes during that lengthy break while the jurors are cooling their heels. Bud, W2RU
On Aug 6, 2019, at 12:37 PM, Greg Sarratt <gsarratt@att.net> wrote:
I like paper but would try a hybrid on the right platform. For configuration control and ease of use, electronic would need to be online. There are lots of online sites, but the problem is security.
I use MS SharePoint for file sharing and collaboration. We may already have this software. It would be hosted on our servers.
It would be nice to get motions adequate time before the meeting so the Board members can review, ask questions and reduce the on-the-fly editing.
Thanks, Greg, W4OZK