San Diego Inventors Forum

A case for dictatorship....
At the June 2008 regular monthly meeting a couple of questions arose that beg clarification of our status as an organization.
Currently we do not have, as far as I know, a formal "club". Formal clubs have charters, bylaws, BoD, policies, procedures, and committees to make sure all the rules are followed. Strict adherence to openair standards for nominations, budget approval, as well as consensus as to decisions, are mandatory, where percentage of members constituting a quorum as well as stipulation of what kinds of decisions require simple majority versus 2/3 are in the founding documents.
Power politics are ostensibly mitigated by this formal structure. Things like special perqs for officers are no-no's. Democracy is the model. Robert's Rules govern, and for good reason. People are wanky and there have to be controls in place to prevent feifdoms and cliques, mechanisms to preclude gratuitous self-serving privileges and benefits that advantage some over others.
SDIF isn't such an organization, and my understanding of the recent survey results is that the "members" do not want this, do not want to serve, do not want to meet in separate BoD/committee meetings, do not want to listen to committee reports at meetings. Rather, we want to show up if we feel like it, listen, learn, and leave. This is what I want.
Having an informal dictatorship is easy. All it takes are a couple people who want it to happen. This is what we have now. It works. The problem is confusing honest interest in what the guests want to see with questions they actually have 'authority" to decide. Just because Ed or Adrian asks, "What do you think we should do about the directory" doesn't mean they have to do what we want. If we want that kind of power as a membership we have to put up with the rest of the baggage formalization entails. The fact that the question was asked seemed to imply the group had some role in the final decision, and we don't. I repeat, we are nobodies. We have no power, no authority. We pay five dollars and get a sandwich and cookies and answers to our questions. This is the only value equation. We have no standing to expect more.
Bottom line, decisional questions shouldn't even be posed to the group unless there is a structure in place to support the process. We do not have and do not want such structure. What we have is the best of all possible worlds: a place to hang out once a month with others like us who know things we want to learn. No cost, no committment, no muss, no fuss. Pizza cake. I like it.
Best and highest,
Maggie

Margaret Runchey, PMP, CPF
CS3 Consulting Services Inc.
cs3@gate.net