Night of the Living Dead Letter Office
Sep. 18th, 2005 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeYesterday, after the SFSFC meeting and a walk around Quarry Lakes to burn off some of the carbs ingested at El Patio restaurant across the street from the Centerville train station where we met, I walked back home and there was my SFSFC meeting notice. This was one of the things trapped in the out-of-service mailbox, so at least I know they did rescue the mail and that my bill payment will eventually arrive. I usually mail a copy of meeting notices back to myself to make sure they've dispatched properly, which is how I detected the problem with the mailbox in the first place.
On Monday, I'm going to check and see if they've sealed off that dead mailbox or at least put new signs on it to warn people that it's not in use.
It bothers me that the meeting notices will all arrive after the meeting for which they were intended, but fortunately all eleven directors knew the meeting was happening and had received the notice and agenda electronically. It's only that our bylaws still require paper notices be mailed at least four days before the meeting date for special meetings. I don't think any of the directors (some of whom are reading this journal) are inclined to challenge the legality of the meeting on technical grounds. We haven't changed our bylaws to include e-mail as a valid form of delivery, and a ruling dating back to the early days of the corporation explicitly rules it out as a legally valid form unless we change our rules. We might do that someday.
Later on Saturday afternoon, I buckled down and wrote up the minutes for the SFSFC Board Meeting. As is typical with these things, it took me longer to write the minutes than the meeting itself took. (80 minutes, which is not a record by any means -- we've had pro forma meetings that lasted only a few minutes, and even substantive ones that went quickly -- but our meetings tend to expand the amount of time we'll spend on any given subject when there are few items on the agenda. Or, as I've observed before, Meetings tend to expand to fill available time. (I don't think the observation is original to me.) Had we more things to discuss, we would have spent less time on chit-chat. OTOH, we are meeting in a train station, and about once every 30 minutes or so we have to stop for a minute or two as a mile-long freight train thunders by; otherwise, nobody can hear anything.
I was remiss with the July meeting and forgot to write up and send out the minutes quickly as I usually do. (I plead overwork in that period between Westercon and Worldcon.) It's always best to get the minutes distributed immediately, not only because it's a record of decisions taken, but also because it includes action items that need to be accomplished; besides, the directors who didn't attend want to know what happened.
On Monday, I'm going to check and see if they've sealed off that dead mailbox or at least put new signs on it to warn people that it's not in use.
It bothers me that the meeting notices will all arrive after the meeting for which they were intended, but fortunately all eleven directors knew the meeting was happening and had received the notice and agenda electronically. It's only that our bylaws still require paper notices be mailed at least four days before the meeting date for special meetings. I don't think any of the directors (some of whom are reading this journal) are inclined to challenge the legality of the meeting on technical grounds. We haven't changed our bylaws to include e-mail as a valid form of delivery, and a ruling dating back to the early days of the corporation explicitly rules it out as a legally valid form unless we change our rules. We might do that someday.
Later on Saturday afternoon, I buckled down and wrote up the minutes for the SFSFC Board Meeting. As is typical with these things, it took me longer to write the minutes than the meeting itself took. (80 minutes, which is not a record by any means -- we've had pro forma meetings that lasted only a few minutes, and even substantive ones that went quickly -- but our meetings tend to expand the amount of time we'll spend on any given subject when there are few items on the agenda. Or, as I've observed before, Meetings tend to expand to fill available time. (I don't think the observation is original to me.) Had we more things to discuss, we would have spent less time on chit-chat. OTOH, we are meeting in a train station, and about once every 30 minutes or so we have to stop for a minute or two as a mile-long freight train thunders by; otherwise, nobody can hear anything.
I was remiss with the July meeting and forgot to write up and send out the minutes quickly as I usually do. (I plead overwork in that period between Westercon and Worldcon.) It's always best to get the minutes distributed immediately, not only because it's a record of decisions taken, but also because it includes action items that need to be accomplished; besides, the directors who didn't attend want to know what happened.
