All,
We need to support our board in this monumental task. There are some things that can be comfortably in the "hacker ethic" mashed together with tape and glue and mad skilzz and that's fine. Mission critical systems, life safety and governance are areas where the "hacker ethic" is not acceptable. As a board the members are responsible and actually liable for failures - in the most serious situation it could result in criminal prosecution on the above listed items. It's true that board insurance provides some sense of relief should things go sideways, that's why insurance is in place. Egregious conduct, negligence and incompetence can not be insured against. Long before anything like that happens, governance needs to be in place, organizational accountability has to be established. These are areas where SkullSpace is vulnerable. I applaud and support the boards efforts to ensure accountability and address issues of life safety and governance. Agendas and Minutes are a small step in the right direction and it upsets me that the discussion has been about the format and location rather than content. Please allow the board both flexibility and your support to address the serious issues of the day. Ian ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Brittany Postnikoff <[email protected]> Sent: March 11, 2014 13:33 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [SkullSpace-Discuss] Document storage Good points, I am trying to introduce some officialness because we do have some serious problems popping up that could effect our interactions with the outside world. Yes, our community, support, etcetera is great, but a lot of other business end things aren't. Hopefully with some training and understanding of a how a business operates, no matter what type it it, will help things flow better and make it less work to run SkullSpace. Minutes and agendas are the easiest way to organize what we are doing, and other processes can be added from there. Really, minutes are important supportive documents and should really say all we have done. Right now they are quite sparse and, I feel, uninformative. Also, now that we have the by-laws to read the minutes out at the beginning of every meeting, it just makes sense to do the quick vote after bringing them in. So, why make the effort of posting until the minutes are accurate? Yes, there is a week delay on the wiki, but that's why we are sending out via discuss as soon as they are done. You are right, this doesn't pass the sudden death test, this will be added to the board meeting tonight to make sure we have a backup plan, thank you! I wasn't talking about looks when it comes to the wiki. Although, when we are trying to show off our mad skills, and we do it with an outdated wiki, it doesn't really give the image of a super awesome place to be. For example, what are these pages and how old are they? Have any been updated? http://wiki.skullspace.ca/Wishlist http://wiki.skullspace.ca/Parts_Database http://wiki.skullspace.ca/Category:Projects http://wiki.skullspace.ca/Chat http://wiki.skullspace.ca/Community_Events (Broken link/editing at top?) Also, how many junk pages do we have that can be trimmed? I just find it a bit disappointing. While I am on vacation the next couple weeks I am going to throw a bunch of time into updating the wiki, there just hasn't been time. If anyone wants to go ahead and get rid of the junk, I would be really grateful. I do want to put an emphasis on processes. Why do things ourselves when we can make some things to do other things for us? On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Ron <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > 3) Minutes really should be approved before posting them to our archives. > The quick posting through discuss is being done this way so people can > review before approving at the meeting. The wiki/archives can be changed, if needed. I don't know how 'official' people want to be, I've never really held with officialness, obviously :) > 4) I am keeping the most recent version. That is why I am trying to add > the statement to contact me to add any changes. The moat recent version > really only needs to benin possession of the person chairing that week's > meeting. That kind of thing doesn't pass the "hit by a bus" test. > The wiki looks terrible, is outdated, and needs serious TLC. It is on the > boards list of things to do, but is much less pressing than a lot of other > tasks we are facing. Looks don't really matter, though we can theme it differently if that's an actual problem. The software isn't seriously outdated, and I spend a lot of time keeping the information up to date. It should be reasonably up to date. It definitely needs some serious TLC. :) > We have very few processes in place in the organization right now. We need > a bit of an overhaul and these are first steps. Yes it is rocky, and the > comments are appreciated! Hopefully next week all is fixed. Yeah, processes have always been a pain point for us. We have some documented on the wiki, but nobody follows them (or knows about them). :) > > --BP > > I agree the wiki is a probably the best place for our documents. > Especially if they require collaboration. However, I would like to see us > going back to having the agenda and meeting minutes pasted into the body > of emails. > Brian Kulyk > 204.887.6988 > > On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 11:40 AM, Ron > <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Hey folks, > > There has been a lot of complaining on the lists lately about document > formats and such, so I thought I'd make a new thread for it. > > In the past week, me and Nathan updated the various wiki pages related > to the election. Me and Mak used to do this, but neither of us are on > the board now so I'd appreciate it if the current board could take over > responsibility for tracking our history on the wiki. It's our only real > historical record. > > More importantly, I've noticed Word docs going around lately. I don't > know where that came from, but unless we're also installing Sharepoint > or something similar, I think this is a bad, bad idea. Word offers no > way to collaborate, version, share, and link other than attaching to > emails and arguing about who has the most recent version. > > Plus, using commercial products is very non-hackery. I'd even call it > mildly embarrassing. *MY* SkullSpace using .docx? OMGZ!? :) > > Anyway, I *highly* recommend using the wiki for this sort of thing. If > there's some reason we stopped using the wiki, then let's tackle that (I > can install new plugins or whatever if that's the issue) or let's look > for a different solution. If we need professional looking documents, we > can copy stuff from the wiki into a .docx when needed. > > Much to the chagrin of others, I brought up Google Docs in the other > thread. Yes, it's the company I work for. I think the wiki is a much > better solution, but Docs has the collaboration/sharing/etc that Word > lacks, and is also open to all (with a Google account). We also use > Google Calendar, so if somebody is willing to take the time to set > everything up, we can use the full ecosystem. But I still think the Wiki > is the way to go. > > So yeah, please use this thread to discuss this sorta thing. And if you > *do* decide that .docx is the most hackery format, then be prepared for > me to complain every time I see it on the list. :P > Ron > _______________________________________________ > SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List > Help: http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss > Archive: https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/ > > _______________________________________________ > SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List > Help: http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss > Archive: https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/ > _______________________________________________ > SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List > Help: http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss > Archive: https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/ _______________________________________________ SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List Help: http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss Archive: https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/
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