Fellowship elections participation

[Daniel Pocock]

On 25/04/17 23:08, Paul Boddie wrote:
> On Tuesday 25. April 2017 22.16.16 Daniel Pocock wrote:
>>
>> How soon did you want to implement the change from Fellow to Supporter?
>> Could this be deferred for another 3 months, for example, to let more
>> Fellows give feedback?
> 
> As far as I remember, the Python Software Foundation chose to introduce 
> membership classes, and this is apparent from their site:
> 
> https://www.python.org/psf/membership/#what-membership-classes-are-there
> 
> Fellows of the FSFE would be "supporting members" in that terminology system. 
> For reference, I would probably be a Fellow of the PSF if I had remained a 
> member.
> 

Another pattern is for people to be full members of a local or national
association and then each of those associations sends a delegate to a
peak body such as FSFE.  In that case, no individual person would really
be a "member" of FSFE any more, the members (for legal purposes) would
be the national organizations and their delegates would be the only ones
who vote on things.

One benefit of this model is that the delegates are likely to have met
many more people in person in their own country/region and so they open
up more communication.

> But is it worth spending so much time on the naming? I would rather see the 
> communications channels improved and perhaps some kind of survey being done - 
> possibly informal, in order to spare us from those survey sites that just 
> marshal feedback into a collection of "metrics" that tend to promote inaction 
> - to figure out what everyone's motivations are, whether they are content with 
> their involvement, whether they see potential for more involvement, and 
> perhaps some idea of what kinds of things the FSFE could do to get them more 
> involved.
> 

A survey could look at some of the following:

- volunteer or donor (Jonas already answered in another email that about
20% are volunteers and 80% donors)

- what other organizations are people involved in?  (e.g. national
equivalents to FSFE)

- if there was an AGM, would they attend in person?

Not too many questions in fact

Regards,

Daniel