who has time for the GA?

[Daniel Pocock]

On 29/08/18 10:22, Reinhard Müller wrote:
> Am 2018-08-29 um 11:05 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
>> If you don't have time to meet people personally, it is inevitable there
>> will be some misunderstandings in electronic communications, especially
>> for those trying to squeeze too many things into their life.
> ... says the person who didn't attend any of the two General Assemblies
> he was invited to, because, well, he had no time.
>
> Yes, I do fully agree that a lot of misunderstandings, name-calling,
> mud-throwing and wasted time could have been avoided if only you had
> tried to talk to people (in person or by email) before making complaints
> or accusations in the public.

Do you notice how in my own message, I made significant effort to avoid
being personal: instead of a focus on Bernhard's situation, I draw upon
a mixed set of examples from multiple people.  But I didn't want to
emphasize other people personally, so I left out their names.  The focus
of my message was clearly the practical problems with people having a
"life term" in the GA.

Your reply does the complete opposite: not only is it very personal, it
is also inaccurate, misleading, insulting and disparaging.  For example,
everybody knows I had already planned to go to the Balkans before the
last-minute GA meeting was hastily arranged to avoid the elections.  But
I don't want to focus on that or myself, I want to bring back the two
issues I raised:

- this type of thing (and your message is a great example) seems to be
happening a lot with electronic communications.  It also seems to happen
far more frequently on the private mailing lists, that is one of the
reason I'm using public channels.  So you actually help demonstrate what
I wrote and I thank you for doing so as I didn't want to start picking
out examples like this that were sent privately on the GA list

- what do you think about the general issue of the "life term" in the
GA?  How do we avoid the organization becoming stale and ensure the
people with the most energy and time to commit are able to get properly
engaged in governance, attend meetings, propose motions or nominate for
office?

Regards,

Daniel