With fluctuating cash flow, the organisation needs to be efficient. Volunteers can get burned out, and cash desperation can lead to poor deals. I have ideas to structure the organisation, so in lean times it may comprehensively fulfil the ISOC charter and member’s aspirations, and in good times drive funds further.
I believe the board should remain limited to governance, and the membership should be digitally empowered, so anyone can contribute from the day one:
-
New mainstream digital services -
-
Slack will be the main communications tool. Install on your smartphone so you’re always logged in.
-
Email will only be used for official announcements and to coax people back into Slack.
-
Facebook and email for event promotion, as well as cross-platform messages
-
Trello for project management. This is an investment to minimise administration time-costs and enable closer engagement of far-flung members.
-
-
Project driven - members will be able to start their own projects with their own spokespeople. Any organisation partnerships and sponsoring will be sought on a per-project basis.
-
No CEO necessary - only in the good times will a CEO be a luxury to assist with fundraising for projects and to treat members like customers.
The current NBN campaign will continue to flourish as one of many projects: differing opinions will be possible in separate projects with separate spokespeople. Governance and transparency will be fixed by restoring prior mechanisms and empowering members to review the board against the constitution and policies within a Governance and Transparency slack channel.
With me there is no pretence, I’m a firm believer of brutal honesty, admitting one’s flaws to learn, and helping many more people than you can alone through organisations like this.
-
Director of ICT Geelong [2015-2017]
-
GovHack Committee Member 2015 and 2016
-
Founder of Alivate - software development company with 9 staff. est. 2007.
-
Founder of StartupCloud - Australia’s first regional coworking space est. 2011.
-
Bachelor of Business Information Technology with Honours 2006 at Deakin University
-
Ran Melbourne Wireless meetings in Geelong in 2015
-
Runs Geelong Silicon Beach Meetups
-
Runs NBNOptions.org since 2007
Full disclosure
-
I have a novel wireless system design I would like to commercialise one day, and beyond my community ambitions, my involvement here should help me connect with lots of people in the telco industry and continue to learn.
-
I have a novel VPN software system which I’ll be commercialising in the coming year. It will be freemium and targeted at system administrators and coders. It’s something that I would mention in the random channel of Slack in the future as a member.
-
I am currently a member of the fledgeling Conservative Party