Personal Telco Monthly Meeting for June 30th 2004

When and Where

Urban Grind Coffee 2214 NE Oregon St. (take 22nd Ave. 2 blocks North of Sandy Blvd.)

Wednesday, June 30th, 6pm-9pm

Agenda

• 6:00PM - Introduction to Personal Telco for newcomers.
• 6:30PM - New Nodes and other Announcements
• 6:45PM - Election Procedures
• 7:00PM - Moderated Discussion on PTP's Future

Election Procedures

Elections for Secretary and Treasurer will be held at the August Monthly Meeting

PROPOSED TIMELINE:

June 30 Monthly Meeting:

• Announce that elections for Secretary and Treasurer will be held at the August 25 Monthly meeting.
• Announce election timeline.
• Begin Nomination period.

July 28 Monthly Meeting:

• Nomination period ends.
• Deadline for being eligible to vote in the August 25 Monthly meeting. You must be a Personal Telco member by July 28.
• Final list of candidates is announced at the end of the meeting.
• Final list of members eligible to vote is announced at the end of the meeting (or publicly posted shortly thereafter).

Sometime in August:

• Candidates respond to a set of questions on the General mailing list. This was a good idea from last year, and is a good precedent to follow.

August 11:

• Members are mailed notification of the August 25 Monthly meeting and ballots. This means we will need a mailing address for all members. (Our bylaws stipulate that members must be notified of the Annual Meeting at least 7 days before it occurs by first-class mail[1], and that "the record date for determining members entititled to notice" is ten business days.[2]. By sending notices via first-class mail on August 11, we meet both deadlines.)

August 25 Monthly Meeting:

• Nominees speak at the meeting.
• Votes are submitted by members (if a member hasn't already submitted his vote by mail).

PROPOSED NOMINATION PROCESS:

• Candidates must be nominated by a member and seconded by another member. Candidates cannot nominate themselves, or second their own nomination. (These two rules are NOT in the bylaws, but that is how the nominations were done last year, and we felt it was a good precedent to follow.)
• Nominations and Seconds can take place in person at the July 28 meeting, or by email on the General mailing list before the July 28 meeting.
• A candidate must be a member before he is nominated and must be a member before July 28.
• Only members can make a nomination or second a nomination.
• Directors are allowed to serve two terms consecutively, so both Aaron and Eugene are eligible to run again[3].

PROPOSED VOTING PROCESS:

• Votes can be cast in person at the August 25 Monthly meeting, or votes can be cast by mail.
• Votes cast by mail must be postmarked by August 25.
• If a member casts more than one vote (by mail AND at the meeting, for example), that member's vote is disqualified and not counted.
• When we send out the ballots on August 11, we need to spell out number of votes necessary for a quorum, and deadline for receiving the vote to be counted[4].

• Where should votes be mailed? Does Personal Telco have a PO Box? MailingAddress

• Be aware that our bylaws allow for Vote by Proxy[5].

PROPOSED VOTE COUNTING PROCESS:

• Ordinarily, the Secretary would count votes, but since we are voting on the Secretary position, we suggest that the President and two members that he appoints should act as vote counters.

OTHER QUESTIONS:

• Do we have a current, complete member list?
• Do we have a mailing address for all members?
• Are we working off the official (most recent?) copy of the Personal Telco bylaws? My copy came from the download section on personaltelco.net[6].

All questions, concerns, comments welcome.

Thanks, TomOfferman

[1] Bylaws: Article II, Section 7 [2] Bylaws: Article II, Section 13 [3] Bylaws: Article III, Section 3.1 [4] Bylaws: Article II, Section 10 [5] Bylaws: Article II, Section 12 [6] http://personaltelco.net/download/nonprofit/

Discussion

We'll begin by breaking the assembly into groups based on interest:

Technology - Hardware, Programming

Awareness - Community Outreach, Media, Propaganda

Finance - Fundraising, Grants, Budgeting

Education - Node building, network use, WiFi tutoring

Each group will select a spokesperson and discuss their focus for about 45 minutes, working towards a brief (3-5 minutes) presentation on their topic. (Focus on where we are, where we should be headed, what the challenges are and how we should overcome them.)

We will then reconvene to hear each group's thoughts. After everyone has presented, we'll have an open forum for questions between groups.