Subject: IMPORTANT: Call for Agenda items, LLG annual meeting, important announcement

From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 04:22:41 -0400

This is a call for agenda items that people would like to have discussed at 
the annual meeting of the Logical Language Group. Please submit things to 
me, and I will incorporate them in a formal meeting notice to be snail 
mailed in a few weeks as noted below. Be as specific as possible, and if 
you want to see the Bylaws amended in some way, I need the exact wording 
that you would like to see approved.

ALSO, if you are NOT a voting member of the LLG, and feel that you are 
interested enough in organizational matters that you would like to be, and 
that you can fulfill the responsibilities of members under the Bylaws (they 
are on www.lojban.org), please let me know, and you will be considered for 
voting membership during the meeting.

There is no obligation for a voting member to speak Lojban (yet) - there 
was a motion last year that we evolve towards holding the meetings in 
Lojban rather than English, and it is intended that we attempt to run this 
year's meeting with bilingual translation available. Xod is responsible 
for setting that up at this point, if people want to volunteer to help with 
translation.

Here is the information on the meeting. See also the last couple of 
paragraphs of this message which contain an important announcement in the 
context of the meeting call.

The following motion was passed by the Board last November:
>4A. I move that the annual meeting be called for Sunday June 15, 2003 at
>6PM EDT, to be held online using IRC or some similar means to more
>effectively include non-US Lojbanists. Formal notice of this meeting will
>be snail-mailed to all members before May 15, 2003, including a proposed
>agenda and any bylaw amendments to be considered at the meeting. This
>meeting may be continued over multiple sessions if needed, but if it has
>not concluded before July 15, 2003, then it will be adjourned until
>Saturday, July 26, 2003 at 2PM EDT, to be conducted in person at LogFest.

Thus for the first time, the LLG Annual meeting will be held on line, and 
it will be held BEFORE LogFest, if possible. To maximally comply with the 
Bylaws in this untried effort to get more of the membership participating 
directly in the meeting, we have to send out official notice in a few 
weeks, which has to include the specific wording of any proposed Bylaw 
amendments to be considered, and as specific as possible details of any 
agenda items to be considered at the meeting.

The parameters of the meeting have changed slightly since November. The 
following is a brief list of the annual meeting agenda as included in the 
Bylaws (note that the bylaw version on lojban.org is incorrect and is 
missing item (6))

(1) roll call;
(2) proof of notice of meeting or waiver of notice;
(3) reading of Minutes of preceding meeting;
(4) reports of Officers;
(5) reports of committees;
(6) proposal and approval of new members, who shall assume membership
immediately if present at the meeting, or at the end of the meeting if
not present.
(7) election of Directors, if necessary;
(8) unfinished business;
(9) new business.

There is virtually no restriction on what may be discussed under new 
business, but bylaws amendments are severely constrained. We want to 
identify as many issues as possible so that people can give instructions in 
their proxies for any portions of the meeting that they cannot 
attend. Please let me know what you want to discuss.

I am planning that the meeting be conducted by email up until agenda item 
5, because other than calling the roll and approving the minutes of the 
prior meeting, that portion of the meeting is not interactive and thus does 
not require timely interactions. The meeting will be conducted on the 
LLG-members list with information copies of all reports posted to Lojban 
List for the benefit of interested Lojbanists who are not voting members.

(An alternative for either this portion or the IRC portion of the meeting, 
may be to use the PHBBB forum on lojban.org which has been set up for the 
byfy. But this may require setup work from Robin that he has no time for 
per his posting of a couple days ago. Any decision on this will be likely 
made before the formal meeting announcement.)

After agenda item 5, I intend that the meeting will adjourn and reconvene 
on one or more IRC channels, so that debate and voting can take place 
interactively. The date and time of that reconvening has not yet been 
decided yet; whether the decision needs to be made before the meeting will 
be decided by John Cowan as parliamentarian. We intend that people have 
plenty of warning, and that the time will be chosen to be as fair as 
possible to people spread over half the globe. We will ask that people 
provide proxies covering specific issues (but wait until the formal meeting 
announcement next month) so that they get a vote and the meeting can be 
conducted even if the time isn't suitable for them.

In the last few years, I have turned over the chair of the meeting to John 
Cowan after the initial stuff, since he is a knowledgeable parliamentarian 
and runs a more orderly meeting than I do. As Vice President of LLG, he 
also serves in my stead when I am absent, and assumes my responsibilities 
as President when I cannot. The logical time for this turnover is after 
the reports, which also corresponds to the reconvening just described.

IMPORTANT:

This year will be somewhat different with regard to turning over the 
chair. It is my intention to resign as President and Director of LLG after 
the conclusion of the email portion of the meeting, in which case John 
Cowan will assume the chair automatically for resumption of the meeting in 
an interactive forum. I am not planning to run for reelection to the Board 
of Directors of LLG, though I plan to continue in a less 
time-and-responsibility-intensive leadership role in the Lojban community, 
and will continue to serve on the byfy. At this point, I am planning as if 
John Cowan will be the next President for transition purposes, but the 
actual election of a new President will be made by the Board of Directors 
elected at the annual meeting, after that meeting is over, and I will not 
be on the Board that makes that election.

Nora LeChevalier is planning to resign as Secretary/Treasurer of LLG and 
Board member at approximately the same time (though possibly before the 
meeting starts), and as Robin Powell mentioned in his announcement, we are 
already starting a transition on the assumption that Robin will be elected 
as the new Secretary/Treasurer in June or July, though again this will be 
up to the Board. Some assumption as to who the next Secretary will be is 
necessary, because in this first transition of power, there is an enormous 
amount of information and records and CLL inventory and responsibility to 
be transferred and no precedents have been set; in the LLG, the 
Secretary/Treasurer has more actual power than the President, handling all 
correspondence, monies, and the important order-fulfillment function.

Shawn Lasseter is also not planning to run for reelection to the Board of 
Directors. There will thus be at least 3 potential openings for new people 
to serve on the Board (the Bylaws require the Board to have between 4 and 7 
members, and we have 7 right now). If you are a consistently active 
Lojbanist who can commit to the level of effort needed to serve on the 
Board, you may wish to consider seeking election. Nora and my decision to 
not seek reelection to office or to the Board is intended to encourage a 
new wave of leaders to take over, a group more oriented towards the 
directions that LLG has been taking as an organization. Many new people 
have become active, and Nora and I haven't had the time to stay in touch 
with the net-based wave of change that has been sweeping through the 
community; furthermore, in the last couple of years, even the functions of 
our offices within LLG have been only intermittently fulfilled, and we 
cannot in responsibility commit to continuing them.

This orderly transition of power will also serve to put Lojban up with 
Esperanto among the few artificial languages wherein the founder turned 
over his power and authority in the organization during his lifetime. This 
should bode well for Lojban's future.

Bob LeChevalier

-- 
lojbab [email-masked]
Bob LeChevalier, President, The Logical Language Group, Inc.
2904 Beau Lane, Fairfax VA 22031-1303 USA 703-385-0273
Artificial language Loglan/Lojban: http://www.lojban.org