[Vanhackspace] Incorporation questions

[Joe Bowser]

Here's my two cents, while I wait for my system to finish searching:

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Jeff Davis <jeff at textsfornothing.com>wrote:

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

I don't think we need President.  That's so East Coast!  Seriously.


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

I think that we should do that.  No Corporation does something for nothing,
especially not in this economy.


>
> (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.
>

I'm down with Three Months!


>
> (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.
>

I'm fine with the Supermajority of the people at a meeting with Quorum.  If
it's that contentious that we have to bring it to vote, I think it's obvious
that the people who aren't there just don't care.  People come out in droves
if the issue is REALLY contentious if the organization is healthy.

I also think that we should have a time stipulation for consensus.
Something like two meetings within the period of two weeks.  If people can't
go away from a meeting, come back and come to consensus after that, then
consensus has clearly failed, and we should use voting as a backup.


> Constitution
> ------------
>
> 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.
>

Sounds awesome!

Joe
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