Ralph's Motions Part 3

Ralph Rudolph, RVC 6, has proposed several motions to the AMC for inclusion on the November meeting agenda. As some members wish to read AMC members’ pre-meeting thoughts and in the spirit of transparency, I am placing them here on my blog (with permission) and making my comments on them open to the public. Please note that the motions are drafts meant for discussion at this time and not necessarily the version that may or may not be voted on.

Motion about letting members read AMC pre-meeting discussions

3. Moved, R. Rudolph, seconded ____________, that a second AMC forum be established similar to AMC-lists, and this forum be open to the membership on a read-only basis. This second forum would be for discussion of routine items. The introducer of any discussion item or proposed motion shall choose which forum he wishes his item to appear on. The Executive Committee would have the power to overrule the forum selection but this would be noted on the read-only forum.

Explanation: This would help allay comments that AMC is too opaque and would educate interested members in the workings of AMC.

Financial impact: A tad of staff time to set up the second forum.

Further Explanation: Like it or not, given the concept of Mensa as a round table of the intelligent, we should not hide behind a veil of secrecy in ALL of our deliberations. There are members who do keenly read our agendas and they have little or no clue about what takes place in our deliberations at the current time. This would provide a window into the inner workings of AMC and allow our members to better judge us, for better or worse. As AMC members, we are currently forced to tell our members, "This is being worked on but we cannot discuss it." If members have a more open, realistic and positive image of AMC, they will be more likely to positively assist in all ways and there will be less grumbling.

You must have leadership that positively acts in the sunshine.

Robin’s thoughts:
I am all for letting members know more about our pre-meeting discussions of motions. Really, I am. Why look, I’m even doing exactly that right here and now!

Currently, the process is that an AMC member proposes a motion via the confidential AMC elist before the agenda deadline, and then the AMC discusses that motion on the list. Sometimes it gets hashed out enough that by the time the meeting takes place, we’re nearly all in agreement on it and there is little public discussion. Usually, however, there is still some on-the-record, for-the-audience commentary during the meeting before the votes are cast.

Ralph’s motion would increase the visibility of the thoughts and arguments and edits that lead up to the on-the-table motions. I think this would be a fine thing for members to read.

BUT… the sad facts are:

A) Out of 21 AMC members, only a handful—the same ones each time—post comments about anything, even when they disagree about an issue (see my blog post about an AMC member voting against the budget last spring without having ever once expressed his views on why he was opposed to it).

B) We already have several vehicles, and more each year, for the AMC to use to communicate better with the membership. But again, only a small handful of us bother to use them. Adding another elist will not make additional AMC members comment publicly on motions. It will be one more shining example of how the AMC as a whole declines to share its deliberative processes with the membership.

These sets of motions and commentaries I’m putting on my blog are an experiment to see if anyone will read them; to see if any AMC members will add their thoughts publicly.

I do not support this motion as written, but I would like to see upcoming motions put before the membership via the AML Online Community and then discussed openly by the AMC members (more than just Leah, Elissa, and me) with participation by non-AMC members.

But… some deride the AML Online Community as having only a handful of members participating. Well duh. In each of the hundreds of elist/forums/social networking groups, there are only a handful of members who actively participate. Sure, there are hundreds or even thousands who are subscribed, but we all know that that most lurk or simply signed up once to check it out then forgot to unsubscribe when they grew bored by the low signal-to-noise ratio. Adding another elist will not change that, but using what we already have, and spreading the word that it is being used…that might increase participation.

In short, I support the need for the members of the AMC to share their views with members more than via the minutes of three or four meetings a year. But we don’t need this motion—we need to resolve to use the tools we already have.