[Vanhackspace] Incorporation questions

[Jeff Davis]

I'm working on the incorporation paperwork, and I've got a few questions
that we need to answer.

Bylaws
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(1) Do we want to have officers (president, vice president, etc.)?  My
preference is to have a board with no defined officers.  AFAICT there's
nothing in the Society Act that prevents this.

(2) Do we want to allow corporations to be members?  I think we should
restrict it to individuals.

(3) Members lose their membership when they haven't been in good
standing for a number of months.  How many months?  The standard bylaws
default to 12 months, but they also assume annual rather than monthly
membership fees.  I think something shorter, like 6 or even 3 months, is
more appropriate for us.

(4) We operate by consensus.  How do we want to write this into our
bylaws?  One option is to specify that decisions are reached by
"consensus or an 80% supermajority," implying that we try to reach a
consensus first, but failing that, we resort to a vote with a high
threshold.  (That's what SFPIRG does.)  Or we can specify that decisions
require the unanimous consent of everyone who votes.  Or we can come up
with something else.


Constitution
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We also need a constitution that defines our name and purpose.  Here's
what I've got for our purpose, based on what's on the wiki:

The purposes of the society are:
    - to provide a physical space where hackers, computer geeks,
engineers, circuit benders, crafters, and other creative types can
gather to share ideas, knowledge, equipment, and opinions in a friendly
and collaborative atmosphere.
    - to provide related services and tools for fostering playful
cleverness, as determined by the membership.

Thoughts?


Directors
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Finally, turns out we need five directors after all.  Four folks have
volunteered already (Joe, David C, Ryan, and me).  If you're interested
in being the fifth, let me know.

Jeff