Exec Minutes - Planning Meeting 14th March 2007

Wed 14 Mar Meeting Minutes

Present All except Bruce who is in London, Candle who had no apologies and Morlark who’s location is unknown.

Agenda

Previous Minutes

All accept previous minutes without problem. General agreement that minutes will be accepted unless anyone objects before hand.

Commercial Websites on Tov

Tim told the exec that there was one commercial website being hosted out of Tov that he knew about. He asked whether this was firstly sensible and secondly whether this broke any terms of service either we or the user had to agree to. General exec opinion was that this was a difficult topic, potential problems included legal action for downtime which could be a large amount if there was a significant problem. This was even a problem despite terms of service not guaranteeing any service level.

Action Si is to email Union with regards this issue and obtain a legal clarification

Exec/TechTeam Policy Guidelines

Si presented this point stating that under Equal Ops and he felt obligations to members, there were certain areas which the Exec needed to produce a guidelines or ‘policy’ for the TechTeam to ensure that problems were minimised. Several issues were given for instance the recent tech team decision on hardware needed to go through the Exec since it was a finance decision and not an entirely Tech Team area, secondly the potential for Equal Ops problems with regards IRC administration needed to be clarified and finally, as part of membership drive we present the services we offer as a reason to join, therefore there needed to be some cohesion to how we provide those and how we communicate to members if they are not going to be available. For instance, a warning on IRC 5 minutes before is not enough if this can be helped in some way.

There seemed to much unease about this particularly from Exec members who were also on the Tech Team. Dan, Polar Bucko both stated that Si was trying to remove the fun from the Tech Team’s role and effectively move into a situation where TechTeam was a boring entity. Si and Mullet both stated that they didn’t want this to be the outcome, Si explicitly stating he didn’t really care precisely about how tech problems were sorted but that there was no ramifications of unelected tech team members making a decision which affects membership or Union rules. The central problem is that unelected members are interpreting situations and making policy how they see fit rather than enforcing an enacting an agreed set of rules. Bucko suggested that we develop an ad-hoc arrangement to policy making whereby we react to a problem rather than attempt to develop policy for it beforehand. Most members felt this was sensible. More conversation followed.

Following more heated discussion, Bucko took the constructive step of leaving to read Sanctuary in his paper.

The end result is ultimately that the status quo will continue without any change since all Tech Team members on the Exec seemed to state that they felt there was no need for any development of policy.

Planning Meeting

This went on for a number of hours and raised various issues/plans the Exec want to look into. These are currently being actioned and where necessary will be discussed at future meetings or through email conversations with members.

A.O.B.

Bucko has not been paid for equipment he bought.

Action Bucko to speak to Bruce about payment.