Re: [alac] Opening our meetings

[Jean Armour Polly <mom@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Vittorio, I  would say the meetings should be open except for 
"executive session" confidentiality issues like personnel, 
litigation, etc. Where I work we have a public board meeting every 
month. At the door, there is a sign-up sheet for those who wish to 
address the board. If anyone wants to say anything they need only to 
sign up and say who they are. At the appropriate time in the agenda 
the Board president calls on them to speak. Everyone gets 5 minutes. 
It is true that there have been shouting matches a couple of times 
but in general this works well for us, because it gives people an 
opportunity to speak as an official part of the agenda, and the board 
gets an opportunity to be hear what is on people's minds. The 
5-minute rule helps keep order.
JP

At 10:24 AM +0100 3/1/05, Vittorio Bertola recently said:
> All,
>
> I think we should consider the possibility of opening up our meetings to
> observers - i.e. people who would watch but not speak or interrupt the
> meeting.
>
> For the new members - we had to start having closed internal meetings
> after we had problems with a few individuals disrupting our meetings
> (e.g. in Rio 2003). Still, I think that there should be no problem in
> allowing people to observe our internal discussions (except where we
> have specific reasons to keep confidentiality, e.g. on appointments) if
> they accepted to stay silent. (We will also have public meetings to
> discuss with them.)
>
> On the other hand, we would still run the risk of these people not
> abiding by the rule and disallowing us to finalize all the work we need
> to do in a short timeframe.
>
> What do you think?
> --
> vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
> http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...