[Bylaws] Goalposts

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 02:32:12PM +0200, Amr Elsadr (aelsadr at egyptig.org) wrote:

> If we don't determine what the scope of the work we're going to be
> doing is early in the process and have everyone on the same page in
> that regard, I'm concerned we will be wasting a lot of time when
> holding discussions about the substantive contents of the by-laws in
> the future. I also agree with you in that we should attempt an
> aggressive schedule, hopefully with iterative deliverables.

Yes. A year+ timetable will not work without some intermediate
goalposts with deadlines to strive for. In particular, we should
have *some* concrete goal for Buenos Aires.

> What I believe might be a constructive approach would be to see a
> list of topics listed (as suggested by Tim), which need to be
> addressed in the new set of by-laws, hopefully by mid-October or the
> end of third week of the month at the latest.

Sounds good. I've made start of my list in etherpad (and someone
seems to have added to it already), Tim posted some; we should
be able to collect a pretty comprehensive set of issues fairly soon.

> I think a list of problems under each topic at this point would also
> be helpful. We don't need to debate them in detail right now, but at
> least identifying and listing issues and possible solutions would be
> a good thing.

Agreed.

> If we can take a draft of these back to the main NCUC list in a
> timely manner for feedback from the constituency membership asking
> for comments/opinions/what's missing, we should have what we can
> consider to be a charter for this WG to be prepped and presented by
> constituency day in Buenos Aires.

Sounds good. And if it turns out we'll be left with only a small
set of contentious issues we can't agree on, we could have
members vote on them in December.

That would make it easy to go on - once the substantive changes have
been resolved, writing the text so it's unambiguous, consistent and
complete should be relatively easy. Lot of work to be sure, but still
it should be doable in the schedule you suggest:

> Then maybe we can have our discussions and a preliminary draft of
> the new set of by-laws ready by the end of February, followed by a
> round of feedback from the constituency membership, and amendments
> as needed all ready for a final draft to be prepared before the
> Singapore meeting in March.

Yes. That should be perfectly possible.

> Staff feedback along every stage will be important to be taken into
> consideration to avoid delays in the process, and I am in favour of
> the suggestion to have Rob participate on this list if he is willing
> and able.

Agreed.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen