Fellow Convention USA delegates, it is my privilege to serve you as the Internet Committee Chairman.
I look forward to hearing your ideas about how we can use the internet more effectively to communicate and become an effective deliberative body. I will shortly be posting an idea I am advocating to significantly improve our internal communication tools.
With improved communications we will be better able to determine where our common visions overlap, better identify what needs our organization has, and allow delegates to be able to find a place where they can be actively involved at whatever commitment level they are able to make.
With this post, however, I am primarily interested in hearing your ideas. If you post as an anonymous user, please include your delegate ID, so I can identify who you are. For example, I am FL012.
I also welcome those who may be able to contribute time and skills to this effort. As we grow, we will need people to serve as moderators of various discussion media, developers to expand our capabilities and graphic designers skilled at making our tools aesthetically pleasing. In particular, I am very weak in the later category.
Thank you for your time and input!
Ben Prather
Internet Committee Chairman
internet@ConventionUSA.org
The following post was sent to me, via E-mail.
ReplyDeleteFrom: Richard Micahel CA024
This is an objection.
What are the rules that the Internet Committee operates under? What authority does it have? Who granted it that authority? And who is on it?
While it may be knowledgeable technically to create the sites, a sub-committee, under Robert's Rules, does not have the authority to take independent action, only to report its recommendations to the main body.
There's also another site set up by the Chair Pro Tem that has its own set of rules, which won't let people in unless it follows some kind of formulaic user id stuff.
Is that now part of Convention USA?
My objection is that individual people, no doubt well-meaning, are creating little silos of information. What happens if one of those people becomes unavailable or meets some misfortune? Is the convention then put into turmoil by such an event.
Relating to these silos, how many are there, what are they called, and who is currently in control of each?
So, to start, I'd like all the committees to be identified and who is on them. And even how people got on them.
I recognize that being accountable will tend to slow things down, but we've waited a long time where nothing was happening, so I'm not sure why waiting a little longer is not acceptable.
You expressed a strong preference for phpBB. I don't claim to know anything about that, except it needs to be hosted somewhere and the hosting is controlled by individuals who pay for the service. I'd like explained, for instance, what happens if there is a dispute between the donee and the convention and the account and perhaps a domain is not given up.
I'd also like to know that my contributions are not being screened or moderated or, if moderated, by who and under what rules. Many questions.
In my opinion, the whole technology issue should be planned and not cobbled together in an ad hoc manner and that there be safeguards in place to prevent disgruntled people with throwing the convention into confusion.
Convention USA formally approved the published rules on Day one, the minutes of which are available on the home page. The rules are also published.
Deletehttps://www.conventionusa.org/rules.php
Regarding the Internet Committee:
1) There shall be the following standing committees:
b) INTERNET, shall maintain the Convention web site.
2) The Chairman of the Convention shall solicit volunteers from among the Delegates for committee appointments and shall appoint the members and Chairmen of the Committees.
I view the discussion of a forum as part of maintaining the Convention web site. A demonstration forum will be constructed, and presented to the Convention for a vote on its formal adoption.
The Wisdom Caucus Forum is an independent entity. It has no formal connection to Convention USA, except its self imposed rule that its members be delegates of Convention USA.
The Tennessee Caucus has independently voted to move their proceedings from our website to this forum. To my knowledge, no other state caucus has attempted to form their own independent forum.
All authoritative repositories of information are linked to from the home page. This includes the standing committees and the minutes from our sessions.
All members of the committees have been appointed by the Chairman, per convention rules. He presented his appointments for committee Chairmen on Day 3, allowing delegates more than a week to review the candidates. No objections were raised to any of the candidates.
The remaining committee members are listed as contributors in the respective committee.
Presently, the convention is funded at the personal expense of the Chairman. This includes the hosting costs at BlueHost. The domain is owned by Convention USA Inc., a shell company the Chairman created to manage the convention.
It is a fundamental personal goal to promote technologies to help facilitate open and transparent contributions and communication between all delegates.
It is the purpose of this committee to produce and implement a plan for the convention's use of technology.
While I have been entrusted with much access, the only person with the ability to truly throw the convention into the confusion you describe is our Chairman, our founder and sole benefactor.
While I share your concern for the need of internal procedures to ensure that no one individual is irreplaceable, this is not the responsibility of the Internet Committee.