Brian, I can appreciate that the new NM SM probably has extensive experience with board meetings and agendas but I would respectfully note that along the same lines as Paul Simon's famous song "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" there are also "50 ways to conduct a board meeting". None of them are more right or more wrong than the others, there are just many acceptable ways to conduct business. This is just that our way and it has worked extremely well over the years. The process of using a committee structure to perform the leg work then reporting the results to the general body for action is an age old proven way of efficiently and effectively conducting business and that is why it is utilized by over 90% of businesses and organizations today. 73 Joel W5ZN _____ From: Brian Mileshosky [mailto:n5zgt@swcp.com] Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2008 7:29 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: Board meeting agenda, SM question All - First, does anyone have an agenda for the last board meeting in electronic format? If so, can someone please send it to me? We had a swapfest today and I was talking with New Mexico's newly elected Section Manager. He commented that 'a lot' of Section Managers were angry that they didn't know what was on the agenda for the board meeting in advance so they could provide input. I explained that the agenda is pretty general, and the meeting is predominantly committee and officer reports, which then result in motions depending on the discussion that takes place. I don't know of a single motion (at least in my time on the board) that have been prepared in advance of the meeting, much less specific topics of discussion (outside of committee reports) such as the regulation by bandwidth topic - which was promoted as being a topic of the board meeting in advance. After offering this explanation his comment was to the effect of "that's not a good way to run a board meeting." Now, he's a great guy, brand new to the section manager job, not aware of how board meetings are conducted, and probably getting opinions from other opinionated section managers. As for his "that's not a good way" comment, I don't know any better way to conduct our meetings unless we have a separate pre-meeting to cast things in concrete before we have the real board meeting. Does anybody have a better explanation I can provide him? I'd like to share our agenda with him so he sees how general it is, with nearly nothing on it for advanced discussion other than the scheduled discussion of reports. On a separate note, I think offering the SMs a summary of board decisions was a wise move, and we should consider giving them a heads up of what's to occur at future board meetings - as is appropriate, depending on the topic, and depending on if we ODVers know what's to be put on the table - so they don't feel isolated. Thanks and 73, Brian N5ZGT