When: 30 April 2014 18:30
Where: Cape Town Microsoft offices, Engen building 2nd floor, Golf Park, Mowbray
Where: Johannesburg Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering (45 Juta Street), Braamfontein Map
Where: Online We will be creating a Google Hangout as well
Agenda:
* Introduction and Welcome
* Attendance and Apologies
* Review of the past year
* Review of the Financials
* Plans for the coming year [AMAZE Germany, RAGE and AMAZE JHB]
* Voting for the Committee for 2014
* Open Floor
Where: Cape Town Microsoft offices, Engen building 2nd floor, Golf Park, Mowbray
Where: Johannesburg Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering (45 Juta Street), Braamfontein Map
Where: Online We will be creating a Google Hangout as well
Agenda:
* Introduction and Welcome
* Attendance and Apologies
* Review of the past year
* Review of the Financials
* Plans for the coming year [AMAZE Germany, RAGE and AMAZE JHB]
* Voting for the Committee for 2014
* Open Floor
Comments
Please note the venue for the Johannesburg meeting has changed to Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering (45 Juta Street), Braamfontein.
Unfortunately our normal venue is unavailable due to forces beyond our control. The JCSE is not far from Wits and there is ample street parking with guards from the university patrolling.
A sign will be put up at the Wits venue redirecting anyone missing this message to the new venue.
In case there's anyone nearby for whom it will be easier than getting to the CBD, if you would like to take up one of those spots, please PM rather than crowding this thread. I'll post here if/when all spots are taken.
But at the Cape Town meetup, is there time to show off and get feedback on Ludum Dare games?
Would you guys mind if I dropped in at the Juta offices in Joburg to report on the AGM? I write for htxt.co.za and wouldn't mind putting a story together on it, if that's cool with you.
Cheers
Deon du Plessis
Please do! We'd love to have you :).
Firstly, as someone who has been on a committee before and attending my fair share of AGMs, I know from experience that this is an election procedure. This means that the candidates that are nominated (and accept) need to run for their position. They need to lobby for support from all factions and at the AGM they need to stand up in front of everyone and tell us why we should vote for them. We need to know exactly what they intend running for and what they intend on doing for the society as a whole. We need to hear solid motivation for why - if they have been doing a fine job volunteering currently - they need to be voted into a committee position. How does having that person on the committee serve us? Do they understand the roles and responsibilities that they are taking on.
There should then be a question session where community members can question those running so that we have some better understandings of their intentions as well as their skill set. Even if the person were the only person running for that position, this is still the process to follow because the community is allowed to vote "no confidence" in any particular candidate and have a position held empty until such time as a suitable member is found to be elected.
The voting system used was also highly inappropriate. Voting should at all times be kept private. If we needed to move to a pen and paper ballot which would have taken ages, then we needed to do that. Alternatively, why not google docs? You need to be signed in to complete the forms (if you choose this setting) which would prevent anyone being able to vote on anyone else's behalf. Regardless of the method, a vote by a show of hands is simply not good enough. You might think that people would not be affected by the actions of others, but countless studies have shown the skewing influence of peer pressure (even unintentional peer pressure).
The AGM was poorly marketed and shared on social media (I think a total of 9 people were invited to the cape town meet, 2 of which are at AfrikaBurn) which I think is another unfortunate situation of this AGM. Where cape town usually run out of chairs, tonight there were empty chairs. This means that a large portion of our community's votes were not cast.
Personally, I would like to motion for a revote with the proper process put in place. The committee hold extremely important positions in our community and their roles and responsibilities are large. For this reason, I think the vote and election need to be taken more seriously by all members.
Some responses:
The lobbying came through the member bios which each person on that list was open to asking to be changed, as the following line points out: Obviously there could be something a lot more substantial in terms of lobbying and I think your idea for communicating their plans to the community is a good one, but I think that for a community this size it's reasonably effective for the purposes you put forward.
I agree that the voting was dubious at best, though. I think that this was largely a result of the last minute news that we couldn't do online voting, which was a shame. I think this also affected the numbers at the event. I perceive that most people only really see the AGM as an opportunity to vote for new a committee, so if the online voting was to be a thing, then they wouldn't have had to attend. Thus, the last minute mix up probably meant it was too late for a lot of people, which means votes weren't counted. :)
The poor marketing falls down mostly to me frankly, and I accept that. :) Although, I'd like to point out that my usual process for MGSA events is to invite every Cape Town person I have on FB and let them invite people from there. This usually results in around 70 people being invited to the event with an average of 30 saying they will attend, that this didn't happen indicates to me at least that a smaller percentage of our usual meetup attendees care for an event like the AGM. You point out that "a large portion of our community's votes were not cast", but I think this is really quite difficult to measure. It's quite dangerous to assume that everyone who comes to the meetups is interested in the actual happenings of the association, or care which committee members get voted in. We had about 50% attendance of registered members from what I can tell. That is a large portion missing, but some people literally don't care for this type of thing. I had a regular Joburg community meetup attendee tell me today: "I would totally consider the meet ups more important than the AGM". This is a sentiment that seems quite consistent elsewhere. Where were the Durban/Howick people in the Google Hangout? I just find it strange to have a problem with the size of the votes cast, when in my personal experience it appears very few people care at all about the AGM. Again, though - this does come back to the online voting, perhaps attending a physical location is a few steps too far for some people . :) :P
Having said this, I think your points are completely valid and if there's enough similar grievances I think a motion to revote is quite justifiable :).
I agree that not everyone is interested. Again, I've seen that from experience that those who are interested will attend - but they do need to know about it and know what the agenda is. That wasn't clear in any communication that went out.
1. The voting was meh. It really should have been private. I was gonna suggest at least having the people being voted on be out of the room at least. But that's still not good enough.
2. The introduction and campaigning of each nominee was less than satisfactory. Some people didn't know some other people.
BUT.
I daresay that each and every nominee, if they so wished, could have very easily campaigned for themselves - heck they could have just introduced themselves anywhere on the forums. There were two threads directly referencing the vote and AGM. Plus all the dailing involvement that they could have INVOLVED themselves in. I think each member who DID involve themselves in the community was showing their value to the community with each interaction. I certainly, personally, don't need an election campaign to see who was active and doing things for the community. And I don't think it's fair to say that someone who doesn't interact with the community on a regular basis would be a great committee member and bring incredible value that we never saw before they became members. I simply don't think "being a committee member" is a magical magic that changes everything. People who WILL be involved WILL be involved, with or without that title.
That said, I do agree that each member could have been introduced better. But then they should could have taken it upon themselves. The last thing we all need are people who don't take the initiative. Despite everyone being really damn busy, every single person who I felt contributed the most to the community STILL took time to be on the forum and help and input where they can. Yes, the communication could have been a lot better, we all heard as much tonight, but then I don't know how it would be bettered by people who aren't making themselves known in the existing structures already.
3. Do we need a revote? We can see. But then this comes with the question: Do we need to re-campaign for each and every nominee? How should the campaign work? Do we have rules? How long do we have to spare for this? We need a timeline. We need action right now, AMAZE, RAGE, all kinds of things are right around the corner, we had a few events which we didn't have time to pull off last year... We need more action and less inaction, in my humble opinion.
4. Did people really not know about it? Is this your opinion or is it fact? And if they didn't know about it... Are these the people who are involved in the community? Again I refer to the community as a community, and that includes having a look at the forum *at least* once in a while. I don't mean to say you're wrong and everyone knew about it, but I'd like to ascertain the facts before laying the claim that "no-one attended because no-one knew". If we can get the numbers on people who didn't know and would have came, we could put that towards a consideration for a re-vote too.
If I wasn't a committee member, I wouldn't have been able to promise things on the MGSA's behalf during meetings at GDC, for instance. Yes, I could still *talk* about the MGSA, but it would mean that organising anything further would entail more emails and introductions and less immediate opportunities.
If Nick wasn't a committee member, he wouldn't be able to respond to things like the FPB and the Copyright Act with the weight of an industry institution behind him - it would just be his lone voice protesting instead of a representative laying out the grievances of an organisation. He wouldn't be able to commit the MGSA to activities during meetings with the DTI or City of Cape Town, etc.
Yes, all of these things require that the committee member involved come back to the community and brief us all on what's going on - as well as raising things in advance at committee meetings so that strategies and goals can be debated and set out. But being empowered by the community to speak for it and bind it to paths of action is a powerful thing that shouldn't be taken lightly. Many of these initiatives take a lot of time, or come from seeds sown many months ago - often talking things prematurely isn't useful because it raises expectations (I can tell you right now that, for each cool thing Nick announces, he goes to 10 times as many meetings) and sometimes can even scuttle processes before they have a chance to bear fruit. This necessitates that committee members have the trust of the community. As such, I think it's perfectly legitimate that @Dammit ask what committee members plan to do and how they hope to serve MGSA with the responsibilities that they're given.
All of the current and past committee members could stand to be more open about what they're doing and why they're doing it on behalf of MGSA, myself included.
Also, the state of the voting is squarely our fault for not managing it better - as designers, it was a pretty terrible system in the end.
Do I need to get a certain number of people in MGSA to second my motion here for this to happen?
We've used a show of hands in our last 2 AGM's though, and that's why we revered to it after we found the online voting system wasn't secure enough.
FYI, here are the numbers:
Attendance:
JHB - 24
Luma - 9
CT - 25
Online - 1
Vote counts:
- Hanli - JHB 22, CT 22, Luma 9, Online 1, Total 54
- Ben - JHB 22, CT 15, Luma 4, Total 41
- Danny - JHB 12, CT 21, Luma 5, Total 38
- Travis - JHB 22, CT 1, Luma 9, Total 32
- Ruan - JHB 8, CT 16, Luma 3, Online 1, Total 28
- Ryan - JHB 0, CT 11, Luma 0, Total 11
- Nicholas - JHB 5, CT 0, Luma 3, Total 8
- Kim - JHB 2, CT 0, Luma 0, Total 2
Inaccuracies:JHB - 3.125%
Luma - 8.3%
CT - 14%
Online - 50%
To put it another way, JHB used 95% of their votes, CT used 86% of their votes
Vote by percentage in region:
While I agree the process of voting was in and of itself flawed: calling for a revote without due procedure could be worse. Since that could set a precedence for others times people might be trying to call for a re-vote for malevolent means.
Also as a second point to this have we established what a fair and auditable voting system would be? I think it best that we figure that out before we even think of trying a revote.
1) secret ballot: yes. I agree that this would be a good thing, it was however not feasible for this year as we experienced unforeseen trouble with the anticipated online voting system.
2) more clear information on each candidate: yes. This is why I updated some of the Bio information on my profile, but I would still have wanted an opportunity to speak more comprehensively about my goals on the committee. I did however put some of this up in the original nomination thread, where all candidates also had an opportunity to do so.
3) there is an implicit assumption, on this thread as well as in others, that vocal involvement in the community makes a good committee member. While involvement in the community is really important, it is not all that is involved. @dislekcia addresses this really well in his post. Members of the committee do a lot of negotiating and liaison work on behalf of MGSA. Yes, this should be communicated back to the organisation more thoroughly, but each and every conversation cannot be relayed, specifically if it is in preliminary stages. This is where Danny's point is so relevant: for us to do this, we need to have the faith of the organisation.
4) community = MGSA. This is not true. Community is a MASSIVE part of what MGSA is, but it is also an organisation, that has legal standing and needs a lot of management. In numbers registered it is unfortunately far smaller than the associated community, but in scope it is far bigger. For the community to be adequately involved, there needs to be a far greater interest in the organisation. This needs to manifest in a) signing up, b) attending the AGM even though it is less exciting than a 'normal' meetup. @dammit 's point that this is not a 'boy-scout-club' is extremely valid, this is something that the standing committee members are keenly aware of.
The call for a re-vote is deeply disturbing, as it is a clear 'no confidence'. I think that @LexAquillia needs to weigh in on this before it gets taken any further.
That said, we have an anomaly in Kim who got only JHB votes :/ and who's Nicholas, as in @LexAquillia? With 24% votes only, what? Nevermind it's Nic Bischoff, right XD
I noted some dissatisfaction after the AGM at the CT community about process of the voting. I echo what Danny says, that is a failure on the Committees part to not adequately prepare.
In terms for the request for a re-vote, currently this how things stand:
While the voting procedure is was not optimal, it is legal in terms of the constitution, and therefore the committee as nominated is valid.
In order for a there to be revote the following currently has to happen:
1) The Chair can call a special meeting and force the re-vote, OR
2) Two of the committee members can call a special meeting and force the re-vote.
There is no current way for the members to directly force the committee to dissolve or get the re-vote done, which was an oversight on my part when I drafted it. To this end I'd like to propose we amend the constitution to put in a "revolution" clause allowing the members to compel a reconstitution of the committee. I'll create another thread to deal with proposal in full. The key issue is going to be how many "votes" will you need in order to force the re-vote. To my mind it needs to sit between 66% and 75% to prevent abuse.
I think we need focus on how the voting procedure *should* work.
I'd like to propose the following system, and look at amending the constitution to give effect to it as well.
About 2 months prior to the AGM, nominations for the committee begin and run for about 2 weeks (very similar to how this year went). These are not for specific positions, but just to sit on the committee. People nominated need to be seconded and accept it in order for it to be valid.
Once the nomination process has been followed, we have a period for campaigning; where Bio's are written, people 'campaign' what they want to do on the committee etc.
A month before the AGM voting for the committee begins. Members have 6 votes for the six positions. The people with the most votes are elected. This voting process is open for two weeks.
After the two week period the new committee is announced, and a second round of voting for Treasurer and Chair begin from the pool of six. This is open also for 2 weeks.
The new Chair and Treasurer are announced at the AGM and the old Committee can effectively hand over to the new one. Ideally voting should be done securely and online.
What are peoples thoughts on this?
There are many great points listed above about campaigning and about taking some personal initiative on the forums as a potential candidate. Without a doubt I would have liked to know more about the candidates from Cape Town since its easy to know more about the ones here in JHB as we see each other more often. I am sure the reverse is also true. That said I expect the balance of voting been more location friendly will remain as people are simply more comfortable with people they know and see regularly. Also hopefully at the next AGM Durban will feature.
I am all for private voting. But I also feel that moving everything online means we get together less often. Whilst the forums are great and perform a really critical function I am not in favor of moving everything online. The committee members have spent a great deal of there personal time meeting the needs of the organization. Some of the comments about the turnout for voting imply that we saw fewer people because they thought they could vote online. So if online voting worked would we have seen even fewer people still. It can't be too much to ask people actually bother to attend an AGM to vote. The number of members attending the AGM was disappointing, considering the growth that we have seen. This may not be simply a case of apathy or indifference. I don't know enough details on the process regarding other locations and transportation.
Regardless of the changes to voting I hope we can expect see a higher turnout at future AGM's.
I didn't think much of it at the time, but in retrospect it's pretty terrifying. If we've got a community that, for whatever reason, doesn't think it's important for them to vote, it seems that it'd possible for someone who wanted to "take over" the the committee to encourage 100 people (which, honestly, isn't difficult given how few votes were cast) to join the organisation as sleeper members and just vote on the night. While I don't like the idea of people having to jump through loops to be able to vote or anything, I also don't like the idea of the system being so open to manipulation. I imagine it'd be less and less of an issue as more people become involved and more voters get cast, but right now a mere 4 votes (or only 2 changed votes!) makes the difference between being on the committee or not...
I don't think our current constitution is very suitable for us (section 5, Membership) and I feel it should be reviewed. Personally, we should have a window period where anybody can register as a voting member; say open for 1 month in a 6 month period. During that time the membership page is available to add new people or update your details.
As for the takeover, this is why I strongly support the "Revolution Clause" @Lexaquillia is suggesting; so that we don't have something like MSSA where someone can dominate or "own" the association.
Our membership is, as it stands, lifetime. And it is likely that eventually people will move one. We are in an industry where the average person only works in for 5-8 years.
So 15 or 30 years from now it is possible that there might be a need for a revolution in MGSA. But with a member base that can only grow harder for a revolution to occur. This is doubled by the fact that forum member does not imply MGSA member. And the list of MGSA members would be guarded by the people the the try and avert the revolution from happening. And while I don't think that we would need a revolution: it would be naïve to simply assume that bad things won't happen.
So while this doesn't affect what needs to be in the constitution. I think the systems that surrounds the membership and voting system need to be looked at and perhaps be given safety in the constitution. Since as @Elyaradine said it is possible to just walk into the AGM with a bunch of hired people and take over the organization. And lets face it world domination is on the todo list of quite a few of our members ;) so I wouldn't put it past them.
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General addressal of the AGM stuff.
Also I think we need to do more to structure the AGM so that it actually encourages people to come. Personally I had completely forgotten about the AGM until the day beforehand. And if there wasn't the Luma offices I probably wouldn't have come in person since driving the 30kms to Wits seemed like more of a pain in the ass than something I would have had a tangible gain from. And I think the voting split shows this. It was also really interesting to note from a JHB perspective the difference in the composition of people at the AGM vs the monthly meetup. And I would actually wonder if the AGM had happened during the JHB monthly meetup as opposed to the CT monthly meetup how that would have affected the overall voting. Which again just points to the need for the online system.
Although I sat down for a while and looked at the data (I compiled a spreadsheet of forum activity against the voting which I'll make public once I have it looking presentable) and with the outstanding votes (most notably the 14 uncast in CT) it is reasonable to assume if people were better informed or if the voting was done online the results would have been different.
As was noted in the AGM we are growing too fast, and I do find the indicators from the data to be rather irksome. This is only our third AGM and there is a lot of growing that has been done and needs to be done, and I have yet to feel that the faith I have in the committee has been misplaced and I am looking forward to the work that this committee will do :)
One question: What do you mean by this? What do you hope it will show? Are you looking at regional activity, activity numbers vs numbers voting, activity of committee members?
I'm not sure I follow? Actually, I'm sure I don't follow...
I started the spreadsheet because of the % data that @Fengol posted, and having lurked the forums for quite some time I have a general idea of how much each person posts. So I just went into their profile and grabbed the data of the number of threads posts and hearts they have received.
I wanted to see if there was a correlation between forum activity and the votes that each person had received. I haven't really found a neat way to graph it, yet! The best to far seems to be graphing hearts/posts against overall voting %, but I wouldn't really attribute too much to that. But I like playing with numbers in excel >.>
But it's pretty evident that those who were elected are quite a bit more active on the forums that those who were nominated, but not elected.
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So with my first goal of does forum activity influence who receives more votes in the elections answered. I might start looking at why candidates (who are rather active on the forums) are still mainly drawing their votes from a regional basis.
[Edit] @Fengol any chance you have the number of votes for @LexAquillia and yourself? I would be interested in seeing how the general committee's vote's stacked against the big two's!
Just be careful of correlations:
B. I believe everyone has been nothing but encouraging regarding the Durban guys starting up their own meetups, or them joining the forums, or them showing their work.
C. Multiple times and over and over :)
So I really don't see any real examples of JHB & CT guys leaving out or looking down on Durban guys. At all :)
And if you really perceive that there's anti-durban vibes at all, I believe I speak for everyone that we want nothing more than for you to join in everything that everyone does! All you need to do is do it. That is all. Every single activity's invitation is extended to every single one who knows about it. And everyone knows about them through this forum and its various social media channels. It is not for this association to go and hunt down every individual individually, as the logistics involved would be absolutely bonkers, right?
Both of trends are obvious and perfectly logical. My question would be - why would it be preferable if these trends were false, and would countering these trends provide an improvement to the the wellbeing of the community?
Would it be preferable if we all voted against our own region's nominees? Would it be preferable if we voted for people who aren't active on the forum? How else do we know that member X and Y and Z are/will be members capable of contributing regularly and meaningfully to the community and association? By campaigning? I know that we are actively separating the community from the association, but we live in an online world, and this concentration of communication through the most visible and accessible mean to all of us - ie the forum - in inevitable and valuable. It would be terrible if we didn't focus our communication this way.
Also, trying to remove the focus from the forum would only result in further segregation and separation of members by region.
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So what I'm trying to ask is, what is the benefit of examining those trends? Personally, I think we should focus on the immediately meaningful, like determining whether a revote is needed, what system the voting should be under (well, should and could, understanding that we don't have all the time and resources to dedicate to this. If it were to come down to it, I'll say we should prioritize organizing rage and amaze and trade mission and improve on our homepage and and and, than building some super cool voting engine, every time. Our time is limited. I'm not saying don't build the proper voting engine, I'm saying not at the expense of what we need to do first and foremost.), and how we should handle campaigning (I say just let everyone who wants to run do whatever they want to campaign. Post threads. Make videos. Meetings. Whatever). Membership criteria I dare say can be sorted out after that. We can and probably should redraft the constitution, but after more due consideration than we can do right now, seeing as NOBODY picked up anything wrong after it being up for public perusal for MONTHS. Now all of a sudden everyone has problems with it. It's just the nature of implementation and PROTOTYPING (for gods sake we should know about this) and we should be expected to make mistakes during playtesting. So I think as far as that goes, we need to let it run for a while and pick up where the problems are then redraft en masse instead of this trickle approach, because inevitably someone will disagree and everything starts from the beginning again.
While I would prefer to have some kind of data and possibly draw an inference from it. I think the common denominator comes back to, what I believe, was the core of the issue that @dammit raised: the election process, system, and result have a variety of flaws in them.
Now I am not trying to criticize any individuals involved in the process, and like I said before I am happy with the outcome of the elections and have faith the the committee will work to do a tonne of cool stuff: including fixing a rather broken system, we're designers we really have no excuses.
But to answer your questions since it is a rather interesting line of questions (though it is just my opinion and not something I'm inferring from the data) I think you'll find I actually agree with quite a lot of the stuff you are asking, and my asking "Why is the data trending like this?" is just a curiosity and not some accusation that data trending like this is a some sort of bad thing.
Would it be preferable if we all voted against our own region's nominees?
We should be voting for whomever is best able to serve as a members of the community. It shouldn't really matter if they are from the same city as us. [1]
Would it be preferable if we voted for people who aren't active on the forum?
Nope, and in all honesty I found it odd that some of the nominations were members who are so inactive on the forums.
Forums are at the core of MGSA. MGSA was a direct result of us trying to change SAGD, a forum, and it shutting down. Despite everything that the committee and all the members of MGSA have done if you take away the forums MGSA would pretty much die.
How else do we know that member X and Y and Z are/will be members capable of contributing regularly and meaningfully to the community and association? By campaigning?
I see campaigning being a huge part of the next election. But where are people going to campaign? The forums are the first place. Twitter and facebook likely being seconds. But campaigning should never be a focus. We all have more productive things to do!
How can we know if members will be capable. Well like I already inferred from the data forum activity is a large factor. Committee members were active and doing stuff for the goals of MGSA before they were elected. Hanli: AMAZE, Danny: Game.Dev, Ben: Twitter are just a small sample of stuff people do. And I think the only person who posts more on the forums than Danny is you ;)
But in the end there will definitely be more campaigning. But that's mostly just going to be about letting people know what you have done, I think.
I know that we are actively separating the community from the association, but we live in an online world, and this concentration of communication through the most visible and accessible mean to all of us - ie the forum - in inevitable and valuable. It would be terrible if we didn't focus our communication this way.
Oh I totally agree with this. I've already kinda gone on about how important I think the forums are. And actually I found the statement of MGSA != the community extremely alarming! Well if MGSA isn't the community then what is it? It was founded by a community of game devs to make game development easier. That's not to say that I don't think the committee don't do important and great work; they do! They're the janitors: unsung, working behind the scenes to make work well. But that all boils back to making the community a better place to make games.
Maybe there is some definition of MGSA and community that I am missing?
Also, trying to remove the focus from the forum would only result in further segregation and separation of members by region.
And segregation is bad! Totally agree with that. My favourite thing about events like AMAZE it brings JHB and CT (and this year hopefully DBN too!) devs together in one place. I mean fuck! I am on the video from AMAZE last year saying exactly that!
The forums are great they're non-geographical. We have people on here from Potch and George. People who REALLY can't make it to a meet up. And they're an important part of the community too.
I'm actually asking: despite the forums, why is geography an issue in the voting!? My thought would be that having people on such a non geographic place would lead to less geographic decisions.
[1]Currently the data shows that location is a key influence in deciding if a candidate is elected. Ideally the community as a whole should have confidence in an elected member of the committee not just the city with the most people at the meeting.
I think that this was due to a lack of online systems to allow people from remote locations vote. This is compounded by the requirement of physical voting for the AGM. Since it lead to members who aren't really active on the forums, and thus might lack the knowledge of who people were, voting without proper information (yes I realize I have likely answered my own question).
I suppose this boils down to the core issues:
1. What does it mean and require to be a member of MGSA.
2. How are we going to handle the separation of the association and forum without alienating people.
3. How can we motivate members to get active in helping the association. We have people who don't feel qualified to vote, and others who feel the monthly meet-up is more important than the AGM. Surely this indicates a substantial flaw with the system and is causing alienation that was raised in point 2?
4. How does the separation of the association and community serve to better the community?
P.S. I live in Nelspruit
Yet the only solution to this geographic problem lies in both the nominees and the voters. The solution is perfect information. The solution are that the nominees let everyone know who they are and what they do (or what they can and will do, even though I place much less value in promises than action). And the solution is that voters avail themselves to all the information that the nominees will give.
Anyway I feel like this is just dead horse beating so I'll leave it at this: more participation (whet here here or in other means, and I don't know what other means are preferable) is the way of people to both know and be known.
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And a short point on location: ct members will find it difficult to arrange amaze and rage in JHB, and JHB members will be hard pressed to arrange super friendship arcade and... Ok my lack of knowledge of ct events are showing, I do apologise. So ultimately I personally factor this heavily into my locational preferences. Even though we may argue that non-committee members may be enlisted to assist, we all know that when it comes down to it, those with the duty are (and must be) more reliable than "volunteers"
Oh apologies, I misread that. But my sentiment remains the same: why do you think we are leaving you out? The information for all happenings are there, they aren't regionally specific at all. And if anyone didn't know how hangouts worked and wanted to join...... Why didn't anyone ask??
The sentiment is, again, the same. Anyone is welcome. You have simply to ask if you are having problems :)
(On that, I do agree about the membership being too open and that people could just walk in and take over thing, but we're not there yet, we are relatively tightly knit in terms of people knowing each other, so whatever proviso we make, we should do so for the future, what I mean is to not worry about it too much at the expense of what needs to happen now)
a) The vast majority of people who are part of the community are not actively taking part in the organisation: look at the membership sign up. This worries me. We need everyone who is a part of the community to take more interest in the organisation.
b) The organisation deals with the concerns of an industry as a whole, as well as those of the group of people who are active on the forums/attend meetings.
c) An over emphasis on community involvement (forums and meetings?) has the danger of turning the committee into a popularity contest, and not a reflection of who is best placed to guide and promote the goals of the organisation. (note - some emphasis is absolutely necessary, just not an over emphasis)
d) Forums and community are slippery, people argue, fragment and fall away - the organisation needs to live beyond this if it is going to be taken seriously outside of just these forum walls.
e) The committee does not equal the organisation. They only administer and govern the organisation. It is useful to think of organisations as separate organisms. They have a different kind of standing in the world. They are made up of parts (crudely: members body, committee head) but they are things on their own - more than the sum of the parts.
so:
The community is the body of like minded people who make it happen, the reason for us to be here at all.
The organisation is the legal entity that represents those people - but also an entire industry outside of just those people.
The purpose of the community is to create a friendly welcoming helpful space for game development, thus driving the industry.
The purpose of the organisation is to protect and promote the industry in spheres where a community can not reach.
Is this making more sense?
So how does the organisation distinguish itself from the community? By this process of nominating, campaigning and voting?
This thread has been sidetracked to Alpha Centauri and beyond. We need to simplify and get to the heart of dissatisfactions, if any. Is it:
1. The voting process was a bungle and it was unfair. I agree with this, and the next time/for the revote the system should be redressed.
2. The voting process caused vote results to biased unfairly. I'm not sure I agree with this. I personally wouldn't have voted differently with or without other people's hands in the air. We can try and gauge how many people voted differently without asking who they voted for to see whether this is a factor. Or we can just do a revote in a secret system and see what the differentials are. But I believe we need to have a proper process before a revote is called, as outlined by @LexAquillia above. The lack of response to his proposal, especially from people who were asking for a revote, worries me. Where are you when your opinions are being asked?
3. The campaigning was done unfairly. This I don't agree with as anyone could have simply spoke up on their own volition. Why didn't they/you? Was it because A) Noone asked them to, B ) They were busy C) They thought they couldn't?
@Tuism - I have taken my time to respond to Nick's post about the update because these things should be carefully considered and I am personally mulling over my own thoughts in this regard.
On your third point - while they certainly could have campaign, no one really did. And this is what bothers me. It seems there was either a mis-communication in where/when they would do this, or there was the idea that it simply wasn't necessary. Having someone else write your "bio" (which I understand to be "who or what I am not what I plan to do or bring to the table") is not good enough.
Clearly there is a general misunderstanding of the committee's purpose and the link between the forums and organisation. It's also clear that there is a general misunderstand of what the committee do and why it's important to vote. With enough lead time, myself and @Bensonance could have done a better job of sharing this information and getting higher attendance numbers. Marketing isn't just about selling, it's about informing. Having a better number of people who are well-informed would only lead to people making better choices and not going by who they know best, or like most.
I still stand by the comment that this is not a boy-scout club (thanks for supporting my point here @Hanli) and it certainly is not a popularity contest.
The only way for a revote to happen would be if the committee now decides it's necessary. It's up to them to look at the evidence to decide for themselves.
What I'm saying is that "hearts" != number of helpful posts
To ask the opposite, while noble, isn't really going to happen. The committee represents certain ideals that everyone in the organisation agrees with and works together towards. I wouldn't even know how to vote in people who does not represent what I like and don't like. For example, I disagree with @dislekcia on a great many issues, but I also agree with him on a great many issues. He has my vote. Doesn't mean I'm a lackey nor does it mean he's a lackey.
Oh and on that point, have we voted in class clowns or yes men? I'm not saying that we have or have not, I'm asking, based on your observations.
Personally, I don't think so.
What I'm saying is that "hearts" could = funny and "hearts" could = agreeance, but hearts != only funny and only agreeance.