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Values

Oct. 19, 2003

As part of our incorporation procedure for our new co-op, we were required to write up a set of bylaws to govern the organization. As such, I had to think a lot about the values I wanted our organizational structure to represent. I decided my primary concerns were openness, effectiveness, democracy and cooperation.


For openness, the bylaws require that all meetings be open with published minutes, that all officers be accountable for their actions, and for regular reports to the general assembly.

For effectiveness, we specify exactly what duties each officer is responsible for, and attempt to grant him or her exactly those powers necessary to perform the required duties. For example, there are three main officer positions. One officer is the technical director. His duty is to maintain the facilities of the organization, primarily the server. As such, he has the necessary powers to perform this duty, including sole access to the root password. The finance director is responsible for the bookkeeping, and as such is the only officer with the power to write checks and grant expenditures. Finally, there is an adminstrative director that oversees meetings and tries to keep everyone from killing each other. This job really doesn't have any powers, except to appoint new directors if the current ones quit. Of course, this is because the administrative director doesn't have any very important duties. The only real duty of the admin is to keep the meetings running smoothly, and no power granted by the bylaws can help him do this. This power comes from the respect of the members only.


To encourage cooperation, no one officer can do anything by himself. If the technical director wants to upgrade the server, he has to ask get the finance director to pay for it. Both the finance and technical directors need the administrative director to handle the voting procedures during meetings to get their initiatives approved.


Finally, we encourage democracy by electing the officers using approval voting, a much more democratic voting method wherein each voter can vote for as many candidates as he chooses. Also, the general assembly can veto any action the officers take with a 2/3 vote.

I think the document turned out pretty well, but like all things, it is an experiment, so we won't see the real results for a while. We haven't even had our first meeting or election. I'm looking forward to seeing how things work out.