Council Orientation

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Revision as of 09:57, 1 July 2006 by Kelandris (talk | contribs) (added a word)
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This is a draft of a new or in-progress document, and is likely to have a few people specifically working on it. You may wish to check in on the discussion page to see what the purpose of the document is and who's working on it; then feel free to give this article love and attention if have extra of those things.

The purpose of Council

From the Bylaws:

The Free Geek Community Council (the "Council") shall be organized from members of the Free Geek community. The function of the Council is to provide general guidance and vision to Free Geek. This includes both short term and long term vision and goals. The Council normally meets on a monthly basis and shall meet to elect members to the Board at least once per year. The Council shall not have the authority to act for or on behalf of the Board.
  • Do we want to include the whole thing or make it a little more friendly? Yes, we should include the Bylaws passage, but we might want to start with a 'So you're interested in Council...' section first. --Kel
  • Make this section more of a "welcome" and "here's how to know you're in the right place"?

Its relation to staff and board

Some of the things that a nonprofit board generally does, like come up with long-term vision and policy for an organization, at Free Geek are done by the Council. So what does the board do, and what doesn't the council do?


Decision making

* Putting in this section how decisions are made, a brief definition of the consensus process, and what the Council powers (versus staff powers or Board powers) are might be helpful. --Kel

Resources

Because council only meets once a month and we often have a lot to discuss, we use email a lot to share information and continue discussion. The email list is open to anyone interested, and you can sign up or just read the archives at the URL below.

Other email lists are often mentioned in Council meetings, such as the staff list, the core list (for volunteers who are around all the time; if you think you should be on it, you probably should), and the email lists of various working groups and programs. There are too many to list here, but if you're curious about one or more of them (or if you're told to send your concerns to one!), please ask a fellow council member.

The minutes from council meetings, as well as discussion, documentation, and other collaboration, can be found on Free Geek's wiki. If you've never used a wiki before, please feel free to ask someone to help you out. Here are a couple of key points:

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