DMB: proposal for minimum meeting attendance

Dan Streetman ddstreet at canonical.com
Wed Aug 25 19:44:25 UTC 2021


I'd like to present a proposal for a change to the DMB membership
rules, for consideration and discussion at the next DMB meeting
(and/or over email, of course).

Background:

The DMB has historically had problems with reaching quorum at its
fortnightly meetings, which sometimes delayed or even blocked
applicants from presenting their case for membership. I've (privately)
recorded roll since joining the DMB, and while our record of reaching
quorum last year (2020) after the elections was quite good, at 82% (18
of 22 meetings), this year it's fallen, and we're down to 58% (10 of
17 meetings). Note that some meetings have no applicants, so failure
to reach quorum for those isn't always critical, but it is an
indicator of overall problems in attendance. The attendance record for
each of our members, in increasing order but without naming any
members, is: 0%, 18%, 53%, 65%, 71%, 71%, 94%.

This past meeting (2021-08-23), we had difficulty reaching quorum, but
finally did get enough members, however then unfortunately the meeting
ran long due to the initial delay and we lost quorum before completing
the vote for an application.

Definitions for purposes of this rule:
"scheduled meeting": listed on the DMB wiki agenda page, regardless of
whether a meeting actually takes place or there are any agenda items.
"attendance": sends any IRC message, from their recognized IRC nick,
to the IRC channel where the meeting is held, sometime during the
scheduled time for the meeting (or slightly before)

Proposal:

I propose amending the DMB rules of membership (which I don't think we
have documented currently, in which case we should first write them
down on our KB wiki page) to set a minimum attendance requirement as
follows:

"Any DMB member who fails to attend 6 consecutive scheduled DMB
meetings (during a period no shorter than 12 weeks) shall be
considered inactive and removed from membership in the DMB. At such
time as any DMB member is found to be inactive due to this rule, the
current DMB chair will add an action item to schedule a public vote
for a new DMB member. This proposal is not retroactive, and the
attendance requirement shall start the first meeting after this
proposal is adopted."



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