If we do agree to incorporate, such a report from all active committees and
OCREWs would be required in the "minutes" of the annual meeting anyway, so we
would have an official count of active groups at least once per year. But
the coordinating ring would probably want to post such a report to
"waoe-news" more often than that to keep everyone unified and informed. I
think requiring a report each week is excessive (considering my busy
schedule), but monthly or quarterly summaries seems reasonable. Still, I'm
reluctant to write into the Constitution an actual time interval for reports
other than the annual report because the needs and activities of these groups
are difficult to predict from here. Each group may report at different
intervals in practice.
The only action we need to take with inactive OCREWS and committees, it seems
to me, is to move them from the list of active committees on the online
membership form to a list of proposed groups until enough interest in them is
developed among new and returning members to send a representative to the
coordinating ring. When less than four people are interested in a committee
or OCREW, there would be no active listserve. But a bulletin board topic for
a developing group would be enough to create an early record of their
activities for WAOE members who might have an interest in their discussions.
It seems to me that a natural "midnight clause" is already built into our
mechanism for activating groups.
Jenna Seehafer
California State University, Sacramento
> Joe Beckmann wrote:
>
> Not to be a bureaucrat, but there is a real value in regularity in
> reports which goes beyond a "report for a report's sake." It builds
> process. And it need not be more than a Friday afternoon memo on how
> the servers have been down. There is still enough "noise" on this list
> - and on the websites and other lists - to make this less critical
> right now, but I'd like to strongly second Elaina's expression of a
> need for some kind of progress report at pretty regular intervals.
> Otherwise, nobody knows that the noise produces. Beyond the argument
> about a tree in the forest, there's a better argument about keeping
> everybody up to date and respecting everybody's (a) interest and (b)
> resources. You do this anyway, so do it regularly and make it count
> twice.