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Re: Promoting Chapter Activities and boosting SDS outreach
David Lane
Tue, 1 Mar 2011 13:48:05 -0000
Martin,
Thank you for these thoughts. This is an excellent start and I would encourage you to continue thinking through the criteria since you are atuned to the aims that we discussed in Cambridge at Winter PC. Regarding the prospect of there being too many applications: it would be nice to have the problem! Let's wait for it to emerge before worrying too much.
Regards, David D. C. Lane
BSc MSc DPhil FORS London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street, LONDON WC2 2AE,
Britain Tel: (UK)(0)20 - 7955 - 7336 Fax: (UK) (0)20-7955-6885
-----Original Message-----
From: List for System Dynamics Society Policy Council Members on behalf of Martin Schaffernicht
Sent: Sun 27/02/2011 0:14 To:
Subject: Re: Promoting Chapter Activities and boosting SDS outreach
Hi,
some words concerning Motion 103: "The System Dynamics Society will allocate $20,000 in the 2011 budget for the promotion of capacity building activities of Chapters in good standing. Chapters are encouraged to develop and submit proposals to the VP Chapters. Capacity building as used here means workshops and/or training delivered by established system dynamics experts external to the proposing group. Final approval to be agreed upon by the VP Chapters, VP Finance and President." This is a great step. I was trying to imagine a procedure that would assure fair treatment to all proposing chapters and good use of the $20.000 at the same time. I ignore how many capacity building activities can be financed with this amount, but probably there is not enough money for each of the chapters in good standing to be able to participate in one year. No problem, we just have to be clear about the way decisions will be made. I think we should define a deadline for proposals to be turned in and develop an application form where chapters shall describe the planned activity and present their arguments on how it will build capacity. We should also have a transparent (publicly known) set of criteria in order to compare proposals and justify why some get funded and others do not. (Last not least, once per year we ought to ask ourselves if the amount of $20.000 should be revised.) I can develop a draft form once we have the criteria. My first ideas on criteria would be: - It seems to me that a first topic is "who are the people whose capacity will be enhanced?" Are they members of the chapter (already with SD experience) or newcomers? Are they in a teaching position or practitioners (or both)? How many are they? - Then I'd like to know who will be the lecturers or the ones who do the capacity building. - (I'd certainly give an extra point if the sessions are videotaped and made available to the other chapters.) - Also, I'd give importance to the % of total cost that would be financed out of the SDS fund (should there be a limit?). One question on how to proceed: if there are more proposals than can be funded, will we establish a ranking and fund the strongest proposals or is there an alternative procedure?
Best greetings,
Martin Schaffernicht
Re: Promoting Chapter Activities and boosting SDS outreach
Martinez-Moyano, Ignacio
Thu, 3 Mar 2011 17:35:53 -0600
Following up on what Kin mentions, it seems to me that the spirit of motion 111 is precisely to work on the "demand side" of the equation (at least in part). Is there an opportunity for synergy here? Probably using some/all funds identified in Motion 103 for activities that can have an impact on Education, Outreach, and Public Understanding (EOPU) while at the same time building capacity? Just a thought... Nacho
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Re: 109: Form ad hoc committee on Organization of the SDS
Rogelio Oliva
Thu, 3 Mar 2011 09:50:58 -0600
I agree that we do not need to make this a motion. Whether this represents some overlap with the StratCom's responsibilities ... it might be the case. However, as we tried to come up with proposals to improve the structure of the StratCom, we came to realize that we did not have a clear way forward -- we were clear that the current structure did not work, but it was not obvious what the correct structure should be. I see this ad hoc committee addressing only one of the many dimensions that the StratCom should address, and perhaps the chair of the StratCom should be the president elect, but again, this is not obvious yet. However, I think I rather see the two experiments work through simultaneously: recruit professors and students to perform a strategic analysis and let this committee run for a year. Perhaps at the end of these two experiments we will know what to do with the StratCom.
Rogelio
Rogelio Oliva
Associate Professor Ford Faculty Fellow Mays Business School
Wehner 301C - 4217 Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4217
Ph 979-862-3744 | Fx 979-845-5653 | http://iops.tamu.edu/faculty/roliva/
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Re: Motion 106: Disband Organization and Bylaws Committee
Rogelio Oliva
Thu, 3 Mar 2011 18:59:41 -0600
Bob,
According to the Policies, "The Secretary ... shall have custody of the Society's Articles of Organization, Bylaws, Policies of the Council and all amendments thereto." During the face-to-face PC meeting we interpreted "having custody" as precisely the responsibilities that were defined for the O&B committee (the ones you listed). In our conversation we figured that this oversight is what the secretary should be doing during the meeting and thus we saw a significant overlap -- it should be noted that the secretary was not at the meeting at the time. It seems like you see very different roles to these two positions. How has this worked in the past? Is the O&B comm supposed to review everything that is agreed during the PC meetings and approve it afterwards? Do we really need that extra check? if so, should it be by design that the chair of the O&B com should be someone different from the secretary?
Rogelio
Rogelio Oliva Associate Professor Ford Faculty Fellow Mays Business School
Wehner 301C - 4217 Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4217
Ph 979-862-3744 | Fx 979-845-5653 | http://iops.tamu.edu/faculty/roliva/
Re: Motion 106: Disband Organization and Bylaws Committee
Bob Eberlein
Fri, 4 Mar 2011 13:09:49 -0500
Hi Rogelio,
Thanks for the response on this. The Secretary holds the Bylaws and Policies, making them available to anyone wishing to examine them. In practice, this is now done by posting the Bylaws and Policies to our web site, where anyone can view them. The role of the Organization and Bylaws committee is to review decisions made by the Policy Council and the General Membership and amend the Bylaws and Policies of the Society to reflect these changes. This could be done either by presenting the originals, followed by the amendments, or by editing the documents themselves. We have chosen the latter, as it makes it much easier to figure out what the Bylaws and Policies really are. As I understand it, and Brad can clarify this, adjustments to the wording of the Bylaws have been successfully incorporated. It remains a somewhat daunting task to do this for the Policies, since these can (and frequently have been) changed by votes of the Policy Council. By my reading, the Organization and Bylaws Committee also has an added duty of interpreting the rules they maintain. So yes, very different roles. As to what has happened historically. We have been haphazard in updating these documents, and have been trying for about six years to bring them to conformance. I would really like to invigorate the committee to complete that task, and do have a suggestion as to how they should proceed.
Bob Eberlein
Re: Motion 106: Disband Organization and Bylaws Committee
Rogelio Oliva
Sat, 5 Mar 2011 10:04:29 -0600
If the responsibilities are indeed seen to be different, we should retain the committee. We need, however, to figure out how to make it work, and it should probably start with the committee formation. My sense is that having the secretary in charge is part of the problem. The issue is similar to the issue of having the president being chair of the strategy committee -- the secretary (president) is too busy with the day-to-day operation of the society that is unfair to ask him to do the long term oversight of policies (development of strategy).
Rogelio
Rogelio Oliva Associate Professor Ford Faculty Fellow Mays Business School
Wehner 301C - 4217 Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4217
Ph 979-862-3744 | Fx 979-845-5653 | http://iops.tamu.edu/faculty/roliva/
Re: Motion 106: Disband Organization and Bylaws Committee
Bob Eberlein
Sun, 6 Mar 2011 18:23:09 -0500
Hi Rogelio,
I think the difficulties in completing the historic reconciliation has more to do with the perceived size of the backlog than the formation of the committee. I believe if the charge was not to painstakingly go through past minutes to look for changes to Policies, but instead to bring forth for approval by the Policy Council the best understanding of Policies as they have been adjusted historically, it would could be done for the summer meeting. Since the Policy Council has the authority to set the Policies, they could then simply adopt what was submitted. Incremental changes could then be tracked after each PC meeting going forward.
Bob Eberlein
Re: Motion 106: Disband Organization and Bylaws Committee
George Richardson
Sat, 5 Mar 2011 11:27:21 -0500
As I listen to these emails, I think I realize I violated one of my own principles for suggesting changes to long established operating structures in an organization: I think we should not have put this to a motion until we had thought about it between the meeting in which it was proposed and the next meeting of the Policy Council. Big changes deserve big reflections. Whether or not you like that principle, I think I have to say I think I was in error to try to summarize the discussion in the meeting with the motion to disband the committee. I don't think I understand all the implications of the motion, and it does look like it contradicts motion 109. Procedurally, I suppose I could try to "withdraw the motion if the seconder agrees," but maybe we don't want to get embroiled in parliamentary moves. In any case, I think I would vote against my own motion 106.
George
George P. Richardson
O'Leary Professor of Public Administration and Policy, and Informatics
Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy University at Albany, SUNY
518-442-3859 http://www.albany.edu/~gpr/
Re: Motion 106: Disband Organization and Bylaws Committee
David Lane
Mon, 7 Mar 2011 21:09:48 -0000
Another option is now emerging. Leave it with me.
David D. C. Lane
BSc MSc DPhil FORS London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street, LONDON WC2 2AE,
Britain Tel: (UK)(0)20 - 7955 - 7336 Fax: (UK) (0)20-7955-6885
Re: Motion 106: Disband Organization and Bylaws Committee
J Bradley Morrison
Thu, 10 Mar 2011 18:25:40 -0500
Hello PC Members,
I have had several useful conversations with Bob Eberlein and Roberta, and we would like to make a proposal about how to move forward. First the proposal, then I'll comment on how we see this working. The proposal is that Bob Eberlein, Roberta Spencer and I (Brad Morrison) as chair become the Organization and By-Laws Committee (OBC). To implement this proposal, before our hybrid in-person/virtual meeting goes to the formal motion phase tomorrow, we need to do two things: 1) withdraw Motion 106, which I think is best done by George Richardson (and in a previous posting he has already volunteered to do so) and 2) modify Addendum 2 referenced in Motion 110 to include the new membership of the OBC, with staggered 3-year terms (Roberta has agreed to specify those. George was also the maker of that motion.). I think it's useful in this discussion to separate three "buckets" of work that are related to this topic. In Bucket #1, I put the role of OBC specified in our Policy Document, emphasizing the first sentence: "The OBC shall observe the management of the Society form (sic) the point of view of compliance with the Bylaws and Policies of the Society." I think of this as a kind of check and balance (to borrow a term from US Constitutional scholarship), and as such I think it is prudent governance to build this function into the structure. If an Officer, PC Member, or the PC were to try to do something in violation of the By-Laws or Policies, the OBC would speak up and say "You can't do that," or better, "To do that, here's what you must do." I think in practice, Bob, Roberta, and I have been doing just that during our meetings. We don't have a designated parliamentarian, but we should hold ourselves accountable for proper procedure. And, I don't see this as a particularly demanding task. In Bucket #2, I put the need to update our Bylaws and Policies documents on-line each time the PC acts to change the Bylaws or Policies. This is a largely clerical task, although it is necessary to make sure the exact language inserted as part of these updates is appropriate. Sometimes, the language of a motion as passed by the PC needs some revision. (Although it is clearly preferable to get it right the first time, i.e, at the meeting and in the motion itself, that doesn't always happen). It makes sense for the Secretary to trigger this process, in parallel with the creation of the meeting minutes. The Secretary would send an email to the OBC and to Headquarters, requesting a change to the on-line documentation. The OBC would review the specific language to make sure the update is appropriate. This task is also not particularly demanding, if the on-line documentation is up-to-date. In Bucket #3, there is a one-time project to generate a currently up-to-date version of the Bylaws and Policies. I think it is this bucket of work that initiated the current discussion. It's not essential that this job is done by OBC, but it does need to get done. We three (Bob, Roberta, and I) have agreed to do this and have a plan for how to accomplish it somewhat expeditiously. Most of the tracking of changes in the Bylaws and Policies has already been done at Headquarters in the form of a historical record. We expect to have a new Policies document ready for the PC to approve at the July meeting in Washington. Once this task is done, the OBC has only Buckets 1 and 2 as ongoing responsibilities.
Regards, Brad
Re: Motion 106: Disband Organization and Bylaws Committee
George Richardson
Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:31:00 -0600
If the seconder agrees, I formally withdraw motion 106.
George
George P. Richardson O'Leary Professor of Public Administration and Policy, and Informatics
Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy University at Albany, SUNY
518-442-3859 http://www.albany.edu/~gpr/
Re: Motion 106: Disband Organization and Bylaws Committee
David Lane
Fri, 11 Mar 2011 11:18:13 -0000
This seems a very sensible way forward.
David C. Lane
Re: Motion 106: Disband Organization and Bylaws Committee
Rogelio Oliva
Fri, 11 Mar 2011 09:58:26 -0600
I, the seconder, agree that this motion should be withdrawn.
Thanks,
Rogelio
Rogelio Oliva Associate Professor Ford Faculty Fellow Mays Business School
Wehner 301C - 4217 Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4217
Ph 979-862-3744 | Fx 979-845-5653 | http://iops.tamu.edu/faculty/roliva/
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Formal posting of revised motions and final discussion
David Lane
Mon, 14 Mar 2011 09:36:29 -0000
Dear Members of the Policy Council and Other Interested Parties:
I am writing to inform you that the formal posting of (revised) motions are now available on the PC Menu: In consequence, the final electronic discussion period is now open. Please refer to the Policy Council Menu to find the list of motions, associated notes, and reports. Final discussion will take place for one week, using this listserv. Voting will immediately follow.
Regards,
David C. Lane, President 2011
London School of Economics and Political Science
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Results of Voting Motions 102 – 113
David Lane
Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:36:05 +0100
To Policy Council Members and Other Interested Parties:
The formal voting period of the Winter PC Meeting has come to an end as of March 28, 2011. Voting is now closed, and the voting system is turned off. A summary of the results of voting for motions 102 through 113 is below; all motions passed. Full motion information is available on the PC Menu and will soon be archived in the Minutes section on the Governance page.
Motion 102: Subject: Recognition of Benelux Chapter
Proposed by: Martin Schaffernicht, Seconded by: Etienne Rouwette
Passed (Y:20/N:0/A:0/NV:4)
Motion 103: Subject: Promoting Chapter Activities, $20,000 in 2011 budget
Proposed by: Rogelio Oliva, Seconded by: David Ford
Passed (Y:17/N:1/A:2/NV:4)
Motion 104: Subject: Awards Committee member appointment Jac Vennix
Proposed by: David Ford, Seconded by: Rogelio Oliva
Passed (Y:20/N:0/A:0/NV:4)
Motion 105: Subject: Publications Committee make-up and terms
Proposed by: George Richardson, Seconded by: Robert Eberlein
Passed (Y:20/N:0/A:0/NV:4)
Motion 107: Subject: Disband Dues/Conference Fee Ad Hoc Committee
Proposed by: Rogelio Oliva, Seconded by: David Ford
Passed (Y:18/N:0/A:2/NV:4)
Motion 108: Subject: SPOC Chair to be semi-permanent; appoint R. Oliva
Proposed by: George Richardson, Seconded by: David Ford
Passed (Y:19/N:0/A:1/NV:4)
Motion 109: Subject: Form ad hoc committee on Organization of the SDS
Proposed by: Leonard Malczynski, Seconded by: Rogelio Oliva
Passed (Y:17/N:0/A:2/NV:5)
Motion 110: Subject: Standing Committee members and term appointment
Proposed by: George Richardson, Seconded by: Leonard Malczynski
Passed (Y:18/N:0/A:0/NV:6)
Motion 111: Subject: Form EOPU Ad Hoc Committee
Proposed by: Rogelio Oliva, Seconded by: Leonard Malczynski
Passed (Y:16/N:0/A:1/NV:7)
Motion 112: Subject: Discontinue VP at Large Office
Proposed by: David Ford, Seconded by: Rogelio Oliva
Passed (Y:19/N:0/A:0/NV:5)
Motion 113: Subject: Minutes Approval of Summer PC Meeting, Seoul 2010
Proposed by: J. Bradley Morrison, Seconded by: Aldo Zagonel
Passed (Y:18/N:0/A:1/NV:5)
Motion 106 was withdrawn. For all motions, the voting open date was 2011.03.21 and the voting close date was 2011.03.28. Source: http://www.systemdynamics.org/cgi-bin/sdsweb
END OF MOTIONS, 2011 Winter Policy Council Meeting.
Respectfully submitted,
David C. Lane
President, 2011
D. C. Lane BSc MSc DPhil FORS
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street, LONDON WC2 2AE, Britain
Tel: (UK)(0)20 - 7955 - 7336
Fax: (UK) (0)20-7955-6885
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OMG! No vote on motion 103
Malczynski, Leonard A <
Wed, 30 Mar 2011 20:43:09 +0000
Everyone,
Please believe me, I would be the last person on earth to not promote system dynamics!
I voted no because I personally felt that we needed more thought on this motion.
I realize that there has been little discussion and I started to think about who and how we could implement this.
In my convoluted memory this motion strangely reminded me of a referendum in Haiti years ago.
The question was something like, "Are you in favor of democracy and a presidency for life?"
I am in favor of promoting chapter activities. I am in favor of a better understanding of how to do it.
Please accept this as a symbolic vote or a complete mistake by a new member of the Policy Council.
I guess I'm volunteering to be more involved.
Regards, see you in Washington D.C.,
Len
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