LEAP Director Howto

Copyright (C) 2002 by Linux Enthusiasts and Professionals, Inc., all rights reserved.
Document started by Steve Litt

Contents

Introduction

According to its bylaws, a LEAP (Linux Enthusiasts and Professionals) president has one duty:
  1. Voting members of the Executive Committee
That's very accurate. Your main duty is to vote thoughtfully, and to contribute to discussions leading to intelligent guidance of LEAP. The best Directors understand that voting and Exec discussion are substantial and important responsibilities. This is not to say such responsibilities are time consuming. They're not. But they're absolutely essential to a healthy LEAP.

Although it's not required, most LEAP Directors volunteer for various tasks. The Executive Committee membership is an important source of volunteers. If you see a task that seems to have your name written on it -- in other words, the skills and knowledge required are skills and knowledge you possess, and if you have the time to do a good job, by all means volunteer. If your time is limited you might be able to volunteer anyway if there are other volunteers to whom you can delegate most of the work.

The other important aspect of LEAP Directorship is that LEAP's directors are a vital source of future officers (President, Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer). A year as Director enables you to understand how Exec meetings are best conducted, and the nuances of the issues surrounding LEAP. With certain issues, you may see a side to the issue that a non-Exec LEAPster just wouldn't be exposed to. This is absolutely vital experience before running for President and Vice President, and to a lesser extent Treasurer or Secretary.

Factors in voting

There are many factors in voting, including these:

The LEAP bylaws

Every Director should read the LEAP bylaws before his or her first Exec meeting. Obviously you should never vote for anything that's against the bylaws. But beyond that, it's a good idea to read between the lines. What did the bylaw framers have in mind when they worded various parts of the bylaws. As an example, Article VII, paragraph 2 states "Any vote by the general membership requires the presence of 10 or more members in good standing, of whom less than half are executive committee members." This wording was inserted to prevent a clique from taking over LEAP to the detriment of its membership. Other bylaw provisions to limit takeovers by cliques include: Article IV-Section 1-paragraph 5 (reinstatement of a removed member), Article III-Section 1-paragraph 3 (one office per person), Article III-Section 2-paragraph 4 (vote of no confidence), Article III-Section 3-paragraph 2 (term limits), and Article V-Section 1-paragraph 1 (72 hours for Exec Meetings), Article V-Section 2-paragraph 2 (60 day notice for election meetings). Get to know the bylaws. The document is only 1722 words long, and it's written in plain English. It's available at http://www.leap-cf.org/article.php3?article=bylaws.

Your beliefs

Presumably all Exec members strongly believe in LEAP and in a bylaws based representative corporate government. Beyond this, beliefs vary among LEAP Exec members. Former Director David Billsbrough believed strongly in LEAP as an educational tool, and thus sponsored and supported many educational initiatives. Former Director Steve Litt believed strongly in fiscal conservatism, and voted against most initiatives that cost money.

The constituency you serve

Some Directors have constituencies. Former Director Steve Litt promised to promote hacking at all LEAP meetings, and was elected by those wanting to preserve the hacking philosophy of LEAP. As a result, throughout his tenure in the Exec Committee, Steve opposed every meeting venue that wouldn't allow members to bring in desktop computers. When the opportunity for Installfests came, he refused to support them without assurance that the existence of Installfests wouldn't lead to boxless Thursday night meetings.

Valid points brought up by others

You'll come to see the Exec Committee as a group of very smart people. The whole is much smarter than the sum of the parts. Every member, including brand new Directors, will often bring up a new and vital point or idea. For instance, former and current (as of 7/2002) Director Max Lang was probably the first to voice the reality that the Exec Committee was too controlling and thus was impeding volunteerism. As a Director it's important that you listen to the others and weigh their arguments. Be flexible enough to change your vote if they're right. And sometimes you'll be the member who is right, and when you're sure that's the case, work to influence the others to your idea.

Practicality

No matter how great your idea or how compelling your stand, sometimes it's just not practical. Former Director David Billsbrough championed the idea of a window manager "shootout" as a way to spur both knowledge and enthusiasm. Unfortunately, LEAP lacked committed volunteers to pull it off, so it never (as of 7/2002) happened.

Sometimes the practical issue is the votes of the other 6 Exec members. No matter how great your plan, if you're outvoted, you're outvoted. Discussion is always welcome at LEAP Exec meetings, but owing to our volunteer nature and the limited 1.75 hour Exec Meeting per month, filibusters and excessive debate on virtually decided issues are counterproductive.

That being said, in 1999 former Director Steve Litt was the sole member of the 10 member formative Exec Committee opposing the addition of a civility clause to the LEAP bylaws (on free speech principles). Through protracted discussion and persuasion, Litt managed to recruit enough votes to kill the civility clause. So the definition of "excessive debate" is a fluid one, depending on many things, especially the importance of the issue at hand. The bottom line is if you're always the one to continue debate past the point where everyone else wants to vote, you should probably give in sooner on all but the most crucial issues.

A better way

As a Director, you'll often have a fresh point of view that the longer term Exec members might not have. Your greatest value is pointing out better alternatives.

This frequently occurs when discussion centers around a debate between two alternatives with unpleasant consequences. The lesser of two evils, so to speak. In such cases, always try to find a third (or fourth or fifth) alternative that's not evil at all. There's a long history of coming up with a better way at LEAP.

Becoming a LEAP Officer

Some Directors are content to vote throughout their tenure in the Executive Committee. Others aspire to higher office, such as President, Vice President, Secretary or Treasurer. As you learn more about LEAP and the Exec Committee, you'll become more qualified for these offices, if you so desire. Also be aware that our bylaws' term limit provisions prohibit your being a director for more than 2 consecutive terms, so you must either move up to an Officer, or not run for a third term.

If you aspire to LEAP presidency or vice presidency, it's best for you to formulate your main ideas for how you will change, or not change, the way things are done. Then discuss it with others, and refine these ideas.

Disaster Prevention

A disaster could severely impact LEAP's ability to grow, or possibly destroy LEAP. It's happened to other LUGs. Our committee and bylaw driven corporate government reduces the likelihood of some disasters, such as departure of a leader wrecking the LUG. But we have some potential disasters that must be anticipated and headed off long before they get serious:

Preventing Bankruptcy

Any initiative that requires significant amounts of money should be closely scrutinized. Our memberships just don't provide enough revenue to spend money. Some initiatives, such as Hamcation, can be turned into profitable events, or at least low-loss events. CTS is a money losing event with advocacy and membership advantages so good as to justify its expenditures. But for the most part, until such time as we have significant revenue from sources other than membership, if something can't be done substantially free or at a profit, it probably shouldn't be done.

There are many sources of revenue, and all should be at least looked at:

Preventing loss of meeting space

Many a LUG has dissolved after losing its meeting space. Buying meeting space isn't an answer for an organization with our budget.
To prevent untimely loss of meeting spaces, the Executive Committee must institute procedures to consistently find meeting places, BEFORE they're needed, and then fill those meeting spaces with LEAP SIGs or some other type of meeting. This kills 2 birds with one stone:
  1. Scales LEAP through SIGs.
  2. Ensures that if we lose our main meeting place, we can quickly move into another.

Preventing government paperwork bungle

If you volunteer to do some government paperwork, make sure you know when it's due and get it in long before that. Keep an awareness of others' submission of government paperwork, and reopen the issue if it looks like we're falling behind.

Preventing flame war

The first public LEAP meeting was June 18, 1999. The Lockheed Martin meeting room was filled to capacity. Then a vicious 7 day long flame war erupted around June 27, causing a split between LEAP and ELUG, and making the sum membership of those 2 organizations  substantially smaller than that of LEAP on 6/18/2002. It would be 2 years before LEAP would be restored to the power of the former ELUG, or the LEAP that existed on 6/18/1999. ELUG died during those 2 years. LEAP spent 2 years of licking our wounds instead of reaching out to Central Florida Linux users. The June/July 1999 flame war was started and continued by five people. Old records indicate there were in excess of 250 on the mailing list. Five flamers set Central Florida Linux back 2 years.

The Executive Committee must prevent flame wars at all costs. This was easy in the days when LEAP was governed by its founders, who remembered first hand the dreadful cost of the five flamers. As time goes on, with less people remembering the June firestorm, there may be a feeling that nipping a flame war in the bud is somehow a restriction on "free speech". It's your job to convince your fellow Exec members that left untended, flame wars carry the potential to break up a LUG.

It's simple enough. Profanity is banned because it offends a large section of our mailing list, and is likely to trigger further flames. A personal insult is banned, because it is very likely to trigger several negative and insulting responses, and also because it intimidates many would be list users. Racist content is banned because it's against our bylaws, and also for the same reasons as personal insults.

As a Director, it's your job to balance a civil list against the possibility of unnecessary repression. But remember, this is NOT a free speech issue. We're not telling the flamer not to post personal insults on other lists or in Haymarket Square -- we're just telling them not to do it on our list. Our list, our rules.

In 2001 LEAP adopted a moderator policy in which the email administrator(s) have full authority to instantly unsubscribe a poster they believe to be flaming. The email administrator then asks the advice of the Exec Committee, who might ask him to resubscribe the person. We've done it this way so that flame wars can be stopped when they're little one-post affairs, and yet the banished poster has recourse to more than a single email administrator.

Ensuring ability to recruit a treasurer

Treasurer is the hardest job on the Exec Committee. Recognizing that, the Exec Committee recently (mid 2002) commissioned the writing of a Treasurer's FAQ, which to a great degree makes the Treasurer's job a simple checklist. As Director, you should tailor your votes to make the Treasurer's job easier, never harder. This can be done by continuing to refine Treasurer's documentation, oversee clean handoffs between incoming and outgoing treasurers, and offloading tasks from the already burdened treasurer.

Announce elections early, and announce the Treasurer's FAQ and any other Treasurer's documentation, discussing how it makes the Treasurer's job fairly easy. Do what you can to obtain an early candidacy from someone the Exec Committee considers competent, so LEAP never has to go without a Treasurer.

Remind the outgoing Secretary that he/she must take minutes of the election meeting. Failure to do so could delay for several months the new Treasurer's ability to sign checks, and would cost LEAP an extra $61.50 for a new UBR.

Ensuring ability to elect a complete Exec Committee

Reflect enthusiasm on the coming election, and make sure everyone knows how to nominate, and how to run. Make sure to make it well known that to vote, run or nominate, one must be a paid member.

Since its inception, LEAP has always worked with a trade off of when to collect dues relative to the election. The original requirement that the new membership year start just before the election was designed to encourage people to become members. Ability to vote, nominate and run for office are the major benefits of paid LEAP membership.

But this also creates problems. What if a nominee unexpectedly fails to pay dues, and we're left with an unfilled office? As a director it's your job to struggle with this dilemma, and come up with a solution that preserves the incentive, but with less confusion.

Strategy

Overall strategy is primarily the duty of the LEAP President. But as a director, you must know the strategy to vote intelligently. Make sure the President has communicated the strategy in a way you understand. You can't really walk a mile in the President's shoes (until you yourself are elected President), but you can get an idea by reading the LEAP President Howto. After reading that document you'll understand how difficult the office of President is, and you might feel the need to offload some work or projects from the President.

Last but not least, as a director you can often influence LEAP strategy. Director Max Lang profoundly influenced LEAP's direction with a few well-placed discussions with receptive people.

Volunteering

There's a long tradition of Exec Committee members volunteering for LEAP tasks. This probably happens because Exec members are in the best position to see what needs to be done, and how to do it. If you have the time, you should carry on this tradition.

That being said, instilling a spirit of volunteerism in rank and file LEAPsters might be even more important.

Volunteerism

The formative Executive Committee and the first three elected Exec Committees did most of LEAP's work themselves. It worked, but only through very hard work on the part of the Exec members. And how much more could have been accomplished had rank and file LEAPsters shouldered more of the load.

With the passing of time, LEAP becomes more of a going concern and less of a revolutionary crusade. Under such conditions, it becomes harder to find a few individuals willing to do huge amounts of work. Going forward, the only practical alternative is to encourage rank and file LEAPsters to volunteer. As of 7/2002 we don't know what works, but we know what doesn't work -- micromanagement of volunteers. In the 6/2002 Exec Committee meeting, the Exec Committee boiled down our new strategy toward volunteerism as "get out of their way". This assumes, of course, that the volunteer's ideas don't cost significant money and don't violate our bylaws. As long as those two things are true, why not let the volunteer(s) do what they want, and let them know that if and only if they need and want the Exec Committee's help, they'll get it.

Summary

As a Director, your main job is to vote intelligently, and to thoughtfully contribute to pre-vote discussions. That sounds easy, and in fact it's never time consuming. But if done right, it requires substantial though, and yields substantial benefit for LEAP and for yourself.

As a Director, you'll probably volunteer for some LEAP tasks. Directors are often in the best position to quickly and easily finish such tasks. But it's vital that you help foster a culture of rewarding volunteerism throughout LEAP, not just in the Exec Committee.

All Exec members, including directors, must carefully watch to proactively prevent disasters such as bankruptcy, loss of meeting space, government paperwork bungles, flame wars, inability to recruit a treasurer or inability to elect a complete Exec Committee.

As time goes on, you'll see some of your recommendations become part of the LEAP culture. It's impossible to describe how rewarding that is.