On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 5:43 PM Max via foundation-list <
foundation-list@gnome.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Thanks for running for the board.
>
> Thanks everyone who want take times to make GNOME better.
> Just a simple question about Minutes of the board meeting.
>
> Data and information might be different.
> For me - a GNOME foundation member
>
> Data - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" after 1 month or 2 weeks after.
> ---- Because maybe the event is already close or over.
>
> Information - Get "Minutes of the board meeting" in 1 week or 10 days.
> ---- Because something might be happening and everyone could discuss with
> board and reply.
>
> ====  Here is the question ====
>
> Could you promise to think a way --- Everyone get "Minutes of the board
> meeting" in a very close time?
>
> Here is my suggestion.
> Maybe there will be a table to record the "Minutes of the board meeting"
> announcement time and does it announce in short time?
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> | board meeting  |  Minutes            |   in 10 days ?
>   |
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> | 2019/4/29          |   2019/5/22        |      No
>         |
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> | 2019/4/8           |   2019/5/15        |      No
>          |
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> | 2019/3/13           |   2019/5/15        |      No
>          |
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Maybe it could be a record in GNOME annual report?
> ---- There are  ? % for Minutes of the board meeting on time to announce.
>
> I want to say --- It not just secretary task, It's the information we want
> to get from all GNOME Board member.
>
> Thanks again for all who take time to running the board
>

Hi Max,

This question seems quite relevant and timely, and as I'm sure you know
publishing the minutes has been my responsibility over the last year. You
may have noticed that I just replied on another foundation-list thread that
I am proposing a guideline to the board for best practices around minutes
[1].

I can speak about my experience publishing the minutes. Looking back over
the 2018-2019 board term that I've served, sometimes it's been easy for me
to get the minutes done by the time of the next board meeting, and
sometimes, as you have noticed, it takes longer. As being a director is a
volunteer position I don't think it's feasible to always require it to be
done in 7 or 10 days. Sometimes it is delayed waiting for information that
needs to be included in the minutes or because another director needs to
carry out an action item first. It seems to have been inevitable in
practice every year that there are sometimes delays despite each
secretary's best intentions. My personal opinion in a situation like this
where a short schedule has not proved sustainable, is that there's no point
in saying "I'll just do the same thing, but faster next time" as that is
likely to fail.

We could require the responsibility of writing the minutes to rotate
through all 7 directors so that everyone only has to do it once in a few
months, but I believe that it's actually important to have the same person
continue to write the minutes, so that they are written with a consistent
voice and level of detail as much as possible.

Part of my proposal linked above, the section named "Delays" [2], is that
the secretary should have the draft minutes ready to be approved after 13
days, to give board members 24 hours to read them before the start of the
meeting two weeks later. I hope that by putting the minutes as the first
item on the agenda for every board meeting, that will provide a consistent
motivation for the secretary to generally have them ready to publish after
14 days, and also normalize that the secretary should ask another director
to prepare the minutes when their schedule is busy. I don't think this will
eliminate all delays, but I do think it will help share the work among the
directors and also make more visible to the membership when delays occur
and when to expect the delay to be solved.

I would also like to ask you: what do you think would help encourage the
kind of discussion you are looking for, other than minutes published after
7 or 10 days?

[1] https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/Guidelines
[2]
https://wiki.gnome.org/FoundationBoard/Minutes/Guidelines#Appendix:_Delays

Regards,
-- 
Philip
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