Breck

Thanks, it makes sense. We ARE the bylaws committee and I anticipate procedural problems. It is a bunch of super smart academics with varied social skills, lovely people, but not the easiest bunch to work with. I may just cast it as a game, lots of them play D&D so they know how to play by rules. That is super useful. Thanks. Breck

Thank you Richard for the quick reply. I was in the process of ordering those exact books and will read relevant sections. Breck

Hello all, I am starting a committee and feel that we should do it "by the book", the book being RONR. I will use RONR authority language for Meeting of a Group That Does Not Yet Have Bylaws: We have no special rules yet. My first question is how we run the first meeting. Items of concern are: 1) How to decide a presiding officer (PO)/chair? I have searched extensively and cannot find how to boot strap that decision--it could be contentious believe it or not. 2) Should I hire a professional parliamentarian PO to start things off on the correct foot? How does one find one and what are typical costs? 3) We have some very open ended thinking to do--essentially the committee is formed to create bylaws for governance for an open source software project. How best to have some non-decision making discussion to start the process of determining our bylaws. I am inclined to "borrow/steal" from existing organizations like the Apache foundation but we still need to have a discussion to research the possibilities. Does this all happen under "New Business". It would be awkward have the PO recognize individual comments. Maybe all the "open ended" thinking happens outside the scope of the meeting. 4) We are geographically distributed so will be doing meetings via video conference. Are there any special considerations given that format? 5) What is the best intro to RONR out there? There is a Dummies book, obviously the book itself but that is too daunting as a primer. I tried hard to answer 1) on my own but no luck, 2-5) I got lazy and tacked them on since I have your attention. thanks Breck