Meeting tonight at 8 PM - sudo-discuss

3 Jan 2024

Hey! Do we have a meeting tonight? I'm planning to come at 8 PM since this
was when we've done them in the past. Is anyone else planning to be there?

I'm going to repost a proposal I introduced in a separate email:

"
*I would like to submit a proposal: I think Sudo Room should hold elections
for a "board of responsibility and limited power" in late February.*

Our meetings are frequently long, disorganized, and acrimonious. We have no
meaningful systems of accountability. We experience the same challenges
with effectively organizing ourselves and finding consensus again and again
and again. And I think in this context, we should go back to basics.

Most organizations use variations on the same structures: a few people are
selected by the collective to assume the primary responsibility for key
functions like running meetings, maintaining infrastructure, providing a
key contact for member concerns and arbitrating disputes and allegations of
violations of a code of conduct. I think it's somewhat quixotic that we as
a group persist in using unconventional tools that have consistently failed
us (catastrophically, imo) in our attempts to execute Sudo Room's statement
of purpose.

I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm not
proposing that we discard our ideals of horizontal power distribution. I
think the elephant in the room is that we don't have a horizontal power
structure. A few people hold the power to assert their will unilaterally,
and most people only have enough power to derail a meeting, but not enough
to bring it back on track. Perhaps if we rebuild trust and teach more
people how to make themselves heard, a board will become unnecessary and we
can effectively execute the vision that we're unsuccessfully trying to
execute now. But I think it is long, long past time to actually make
substantive changes to how we operate, and agreeing to have a consistent
meeting chair and a membership coordinator, etc. selected by the collective
sounds to me like simple common sense.

*This proposal is now open for discussion at tomorrow's meeting (Weds. 1/3)
and ongoing discussion and revision. If there is no block, it becomes
eligible to be accepted at our February meeting on Weds. Feb. 7.*

*"*

*Andrew R Gross, (he/him)*
412.657.5332    -   shrad.org <http://www.shrad.org>