RE: IIUG Board of Directors 2006

As one of the original founders of IIUG I would like to try and explain what
has happened to the democratic nature of the IIUG. As many of you will know
we set up IIUG to be a democratic organisation where the board of directors
had rights and responsibilities, and so did the local user groups, and so
did the membership at large.

However, over the past few years this seems to have become diluted. I don't
know when this started but it is in the last 5 years. Which seems to
coincide quite nicely with the takeover of Informix by IBM.

In the early days the board - a group of volunteers - were very careful to
make sure that all of our dealings were as open and honest as they could be.
We didn't just make announcements on the web-site and expect people to read
them. In fact I was personally responsible for making sure that we didn't
become a web-only organisation as I was well aware of the communications
difficulties experienced in the third-world. For that reason we set up a
system whereby all members could be contacted by email. We wanted to do
snail mail as well but costs were prohibitive for a volunteer organisation.
This would then be used for all important communications between the Board
and the membership. In fact it is that mechanism that is in use today.

We also made sure that the nominations procedure was as open and transparent
as it could be, and that the results were similarly open. Even to the
extent of sending individual emails to each member inviting nominations,
emails to each member on the dates for voting, and emails to each member
with the results. We even tried very hard to get people to vote.

I have seen this procedure slowly erode over the past few years to the point
where there are now concerns about the whole procedure. I have seen
complaints from people who have self-nominated but heard no more, I have
seen results published on the web-site only, and no details of the total of
votes cast etc. Personally I didn't vote, not because I didn't want to, but
because even though I have the IIUG email facility at both work and home I
didn't see any overwhelming publicity about the election.

Having said that we must accept that the board of directors is a volunteer
body, and they do their best within the time they have available. However I
think that they should think very carefully about their external appearance
to the membership. In particular they need to find a way to reconstitute
the Leadership Council (possibly thorugh a web-cast?), the advocacy program,
the advisory council, and they really need to consider how to make the
procedures for election of the board and the president more publicly
accountable.

On the subject of the President I have seen a number of remarks aimed at our
esteemed leader. I would say that there are very few of us who would want
to take on such a role. There is a lot of work involved and the post has
become much bigger than any of us realised when we set up IIUG. I think
that if we had seen the way things would develop we would probably have made
the role of President more of an honorary position than the "executive"
position it seems to have become and restricted the tenure in some way. I
don't think it is helping the appearance of democracy that the President of
IIUG has been the same person for so many years.

So, my challenge to the IIUG board is to think on these issues, discuss them
with the membership, and make sure that the elections for 2007 are much more
openly honest.

Regards

Malcolm Weallans



-----Original Message-----
From: informix-list-bounces@iiug.org [mailto:informix-list-bounces@iiug.org]
On Behalf Of Captain Pedantic
Sent: 10 January 2006 09:43
To: informix-list@iiug.org
Subject: Re: IIUG Board of Directors 2006


"Nimue" <nimue.Dame_du_Lac@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1136857789.422054.214180@g14g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> Hallo Jean George -
>
> There are sins of commission and sins of ommission, no? The original
> list of the elected 2006 Board that was sent out is different than
> what is posted.


That's right! (well, it should be "different from", but...). I hadn't
noticed before. But Mark Scranton was on the list of "winners" originally
published. Now he isn't. What *is* going on?!


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