Agenda item for February SPI board meeting

[Gregers Petersen]

Hi

On 05/02/12 19:05, Jonathan McDowell wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 05, 2012 at 11:56:09AM +1000, Robert Brockway wrote:
>> Jonathan, please add the item "Discussion of back office support" to
>> the February meeting agenda.  I believe this should fall within
>> general business but don't mind if you put it in another category.
>>
>> My intention here is for the board to discuss this topic, not to
>> make any firm decisions during this board meeting.
> 
> I have added this, but the previous approach has been that such
> discussion should take place on the lists beforehand, rather than a new,
> free ranging discussion being begun at the meeting itself.
> 
> My main concern is that we lack definition of "back office support".
> What tasks do we expect this new resource to carry out? You say:
> 
>> I envision that this office assistant would report to the Secretary and
>> principally provide support for the Secretary and Treasurer.
> 
> but I haven't seen anything from Michael stating areas he would like
> help with, nor have I encountered any areas myself that I think would be
> greatly aided by another pair of hands.
> 
> I'm not saying this because I'm against the idea, I just think that we'd
> need to have at least a rough set of defined tasks that we think are
> pain points now (or will become so as we grow) that help would be useful
> with.
> 

Personally I have been thinking in a different direction - as an
approach towards handling the current quick growth of SPI. Like Noodles
I'm not against the idea of 'back office support', but I believe that
some slight organizational changes could fill some of the possible gaps.
One such change could be that each of the member project would get a
"contact-director". This would be a more pro-active approach in which
the individual SPI member project would be in an ongoing dialogue with
one identified director/member-of-board. This would hopefully make it
easier to maintain the connection between SPI and project, and on an
ongoing basis offer advice (and suggestions for development).
SPI member project a very different in terms of size, organizational
form and maturity - and I believe there is room for more direct
interaction between project liasons and SPI directors.

This does likewise relate to the more general question about; in what
directions SPI itself shall grow? SPI been a structure which partly came
alive due to Debian needs (and this is not placed in any negative
connotation), but I think it would be positive to look at the current
situation and see if things are in sync?

Chz



> 
> _______________________________________________
> Spi-general mailing list
> Spi-general at lists.spi-inc.org
> http://lists.spi-inc.org/listinfo/spi-general


-- 
Gregers Petersen
Relationship manager, layer 8 and anthropology
glp on irc

   _______                     ________        __
  |       |.-----.-----.-----.|  |  |  |.----.|  |_
  |   -   ||  _  |  -__|     ||  |  |  ||   _||   _|
  |_______||   __|_____|__|__||________||__|  |____|
           |__| W I R E L E S S   F R E E D O M
   ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT (bleeding edge) ----------------
   * 1/4 oz Vodka      Pour all ingredents into mixing
   * 1/4 oz Gin        tin with ice, strain into glass.
   * 1/4 oz Amaretto
   * 1/4 oz Triple sec
   * 1/4 oz Peach schnapps
   * 1/4 oz Sour mix
   * 1 splash Cranberry juice
  -------------------------------------------------