Sustaining an Online Community

Thanks, Leah, for this interesting article about sustaining online communities: How to Manage a Sustainable Online Community . Food for thought, certainly, and makes me feel better about not feeling too worried when grumblers complain that we only seem to have ~100 active posters. Triva note: the author is the founder of the company that makes the software AML is using for its online Community.

This Year's 'WeeM Shirt

Minds Like Concrete

Matt pointed me to this interesting article a few days ago: How Facts Backfire. 

Seems that despite we geniuses saying we want facts and transparency, research shows that adding facts and logic strengthens one’s resolve to believe what he or she already believes, even when wrong.

The article says:

“...We often base our opinions on our beliefs, which can have an uneasy relationship with facts. And rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions. Worst of all, they can lead us to uncritically accept bad information just because it reinforces our beliefs. This reinforcement makes us more confident we’re right, and even less likely to listen to any new information.”

In an NPR interview In Politics, Sometimes The Facts Don't Matter ,  Researcher Brendan Nyhan, University of Michigan, explains that this strengthening of beliefs when confronted with accurate but conflicting information is a natural defense mechanism to avoid cognitive dissonance.

(Here’s his paper, When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions )

As an avid reader of arguments and discussions on the Forums and on the various Yahoo elists, I certainly see this phenomenon over and over. I think that is one reason Rick Magnus’ proposed amendment failed at the ABM… no matter how much documentation and information TPTB makes available, if it doesn’t corroborate the theories already held by the ones demanding transparency, they will just insist that TPTB is still hiding something.

Are even we thoughtful, educated Mensans really that shallow that we can’t swallow our pride and change our views when we have corrected information? And if we do change our minds as a result of new information and contemplation, are we going to be seen as just flip-flopping for political gain? 

Crawling out of the Hole Part 5

April 30, 2010:

    Assets: $4,743,340.90

    Liabilities: $6,449,221.35

    Net Assets: ($1,705,880.45)

May 31, 2010:

    Assets: $4,548,011.44

    Liabilities: $6,216,502.72

    Net Assets: ($1,668,491.28)

Ok, so this is interesting and backs up what I was told about having to pay some hefty once-a-year expenses early in our fiscal year and having to kind re-set the monthly accounting transfer of multi-years' dues from liabilities to assets before returning back to the healthy trend of improving the Net Assets line. You’ll notice that in a month, our Assets went down significantly, but our Liabilities also went down—further. And now we’re back on the crawling-out-of-the-hole trend to the tune of ~$37K.

Crawling out of the Hole? Part 4

When I think to, I’ve been posting the snapshot financial statements here, and I’ve been all rah-rah because our negative bottom line has been improving.

Before the AG, I was looking at the financial numbers for February and comparing them to April. And whoa, April showed a reversal of that trend! Bummer. So I asked the financial folks for an explanation.

Turns out there are some hefty expenses that occur once a year, and are recorded in a one-time lump (yeah, I’m not using formal accounting terminology) rather than amortized over twelve months. In April and sometimes May, AML pays renewing insurance policies. Additionally, the recording of member revenue is lowest early in the fiscal year and it increases over the subsequent eleven months as membership rises. The third factor in the “calm down, Robin” explanation is that multi-year dues revenue is shifted incrementally from a deferred liability to recorded income during the course of the year.

I’ll keep an eye on the trend, but I’m certainly understanding that to assess the financial health of the organization, one has to look deeper and wider than just the red or black color of the bottom line on a monthly statement.

Shameless RG Promotion

HalloweeM 2010 is October 28-31.

New hotel. Same awesome programming and hospitality.

Registration until 10/14/10 is $70 for Friday through Sunday.

See Chicago's Web site for details.

AMC Meeting July 2010

Presentation of bid for 2014 AG in Boston (July 20­- July 6)

March 25-27, 2011 AMC meeting will be in Atlanta.

…………………………..

Good & Welfare

Comments: Thanks. We did well. Welcome to Region 3. SEMM is awesome. GenX rocks.

Audience—Jared: Thanks to AG committee and thanks to the AMC for all the discussion on the issues- nice to see that there is so much thought and discussion that goes on.

Pam: ~1,875 at the AG. The Governor of Michigan is likely to show up to our luncheon tomorrow. Detroit has really rolled it out for us and been fabulous.

Next AMC meeting is November 11-14, 2010 Worthington Hotel in Fort Worth.

Adjourn. 2:35pm

AMC Meeting July 2010

Some appointments

I didn’t take notes. No controversies.

……………….

Leadership Development amendments

Long, long set of guidelines. Some discussion among the RVC about the details.

Vote: passed (I abstained)

AMC Meeting July 2010

Ombudsman Election results

Dave Cahn

AMC Meeting July 2010

Adjustments to Publications Policy

Gathering several ASIEs together, adding a section about Handbooks, defining InterLink.

Dan questions InterLink process. His biggest concern is no named head editor. I explained that there is a staff who is production manager, a team of content providers and columnists, and the ComComm will develop guidelines and policies.

Vote: Passed, Becker opposed(she wants handbooks to stay with Leadership Development), Burg abstained.

Rescinding all the ASIEs which are subsumed by the more comprehensive Pubs policy.

Dan offered friendly amendment to keep the ASIE about bigotry and prejudice being antithetical.

Passed unaninmously.

Rescinding InterLoc guidelines.

Passed unanimously.

aMC Meeting July 2010

Finance Committee stuff

Two boring housekeeping motions about the Finance Committee’s make up and responsibilities and updating reimbursement policies. Betsy wanted to amend so in-room Internet IS reimbursement.

Vote to amend passes; Burg, Bakke, Timmers, Kuyer abstain.

Passed and Passed.

AMC Meeting July 2010

Amending the new Ombudsman process

Now only 80 or so people form the running pool as well as who make the decision, and no one knows how and why those people were chosen by their LGs. This motion would widen the number of people who are qualified to serve and widen the number of members making the choice.

OTOH, we should give the new system a chance to work.

OTOOH, this is the only opportunity to discuss and vote on this without it being a reflection on whoever is serving as Ombudsman.

And this does not implement the changes, but merely sends it to the members to vote on.

Bob spoke to how thoroughly the voting ombudsman in this current process understood the issues and platforms of the candidates. Ken and Art concurred.

Greg said that only 40 ballots for Ombudsman were received. On the other hand, 17 AMC members make the decision about who serves as voting appointing officers.

Once again, I’m really torn on this one.  I like the concept of the new process, but I think it should be improved. I also think we should give the new process a chance before amending it.

Vote: Dan, Heather, and Russ in favor. Everyone else opposed.

AMC Meeting July 2010

Bylaws amendment regarding getting rid of past and past-past chair.

Lori (mover) was going to withdraw pending GTF results, but decided to not withdraw it.  Some good discussion, mostly about referring it to the GTF. Marc says we should vote on it since the GTF won’t get this done by Nov and we should not wait. I urged us to not just focus on who to kick off. Guy moves to refer to GTF.

Vote to refer: opposed: Lori and Marc

AMC Meeting July 2010

More on Hearings

John Sheehan spoke about hearings. He is an on a New Hamp state hearings panel. There is a wall between the people deciding whether to bring charges, and those deciding the merits of the case.  Jean agrees they should be separate, but points out if the AMC appoints the pool of people to both the review panel and the hearings panel… the separation is negated. Dan’s edits get us closer to this desired separation.

This is difficult. Both sides have really really good points. Wish I had better a feel for how the membership at large feels about this. Oh duh… sending this to the membership to decide… like making it a bylaws referendum…that seems wiser than us deciding here and now to kill this valiant attempt at process improvements. I’m inclined to vote yes, send it to the members to decide. BUT I think I am NOT in favor of everything in this motion as written. Which makes me inclined to vote no.

Vote: 9 yes 11 no. I voted no.

AMC Meeting July 2010

Hearings

Russ & Dan had long motion about Hearings revisions. Dahl & Norris amendment is long and complex about appeals. Lots of discussion. Jean and Guy made some really good points against the amendment. Too hard to listen, ponder, and transcribe, so I opted to listen and ponder. Sorry. Vote on amendment Marc. Mel, Lori for. Amendment fails.

Original motion—Dan proposed tweaking the composition of the review panel to comprise hearings chair and two people drawn at random from the pool of potential hearings committee members. Bob spoke against including the hearings chair on the review panel. Dan was cool with that. Nick: Why put something already turned down by the membership again? Dan: It’s a good proposal and it failed because there was a competing proposal at the time. This time there won’t be a competing proposal and we tweaked it to improve it since then. Jean spoke against the motion and made good points, primarily about needing to simplify the process and the fewer members involved better. Straw poll before Dan does a bit of editing: 11 in favor. 8 opposed. Guy pointed out that for a bylaws proposal it needs to pass by 2/3.

Break time!

AMC Meeting July 2010

Finances

Treasurer’s report--She talked fast and tossed out lots of numbers. Hard to take notes.

Investments down. Membership and Dues income up. Event and pubs income up. Testing income down. Licensing income up. Legal was largest expense. Net assets ugly on paper, but when you understand how the GAAP are applied, we are plenty comfortable and Mensa will be fine. Biggest concern is continued sinking testing income.

Dues motion- basically saying that we’ll have a motion in November to increase dues. Cyndi: We’re doing this because of the timing of the AMC meetings Marc: I feel foolish voting on a motion that says there will be a motion next meeting.  Lori: can we have 1^st vote in Nov, and 2^nd vote in March? Pam: It has to be approved by Nov to get it applied to the budget for 2011-12. We can put it in the Bulletin or we can do a teleconf in Oct. But we want to have the members have a proper amount of time to comment on it, and squeezing it in the other way would not be in the right spirit, although it would be legal. Debra is cool with it. Nick wants a teleconf in Oct to be the first notice and the vote in Nov. Heather: We used to have a motion about the dues increase on every agenda. Nick: Wants to consider increasing dues in order to significantly support the Foundation to improve the world. Set the dues we want now, then set a constant rate of increase for every year so members know and predict and we get fewer people quitting in reaction to raises. Guy: Something supportive of Nick’s idea about regular predictable increases. Cyndi: The committee discussed this and decided already that every other year is a wiser pace for dues adjustments. Also, data shows that dues increases do not hurt membership levels. Pam talked about using the Strategic Plan to guide our decisions regarding how much the dues need to go up. Peggy: Kiwanis is ~$200 a year. Why did we get rid of the permanent rolling motion about dues increases? Elissa this is a bylaws compliance motion. 

Someone suggested changing this to a sense motion. Dan suggested postponing and voting on it in Nov when we have an actual dollar amount. John moved to amend to strike “place on the agenda to.”

Cyndi moved to postpone, Dan seconded. Vote to postpone: opposed Art. Nick & Guy abstain.

AMC Meeting July 2010

9am. First cup of coffee.

So the appointed officers were reappointed. Phew.

Governance Task Force

Recht gave a report as liaison to Gov Task Force, which does not have a formal written report. So far Eldon found people to serve. Several discussions have taken place between Eldon, John R., Jean B. Mike Eager, Nancy Heller, Frank Parth, and myself about how to proceed, identifying problems to be solved, and research and distillation of background material. Recht talked about how big this project is and how important it is to prepare and research how all the pieces interlock before any recommendations are considered.

Jean spoke about the GFT: There are concerns about the AMC told us what to Do, but not what we are supposed to ACCOMPLISH.

Robin: I’m reading and learning and reaching some surprising preliminary conclusions. I am confident that we will come up with ways to improve Mensa and guide it forward.

Recht asked the AMC and audience to feel free to give input.

(My unvoiced note: I have an interview template I’ll be using to formally gather and organize such input after the AG.. might find a moment to pull it together tomorrow so I can do interviews while I have so many people around this weekend.)

Marc: What is the chance that we’ll have recommendations in time to get them on the agenda for November. Answer: zero.

And so it begins

I had planned on waiting until after the AG to announce this, but somewhere along the line, information I sent to the Nominating Committee leaked out and has already been splattered on some elists, so I may as well say it here...
Yes, I will be a candidate for First Vice Chair in the next election.


Over the next few weeks, I'll put together more information, background, and reasons why I'm best suited for this role. I will set up a separate campaign Web site. As always, I welcome feedback from members regarding your priorities and visions for Mensa in the coming years.