Participation is open to anyone with an interest in the software; not excluding software vendors, re-sellers, users, students, engineering and manufacturing professionals.
This is a living document and is subject to changes by user group's presiding officers based on simple majority voting by the group's members.
Service Structure for Officers and Operations:
- Each group should remain autonomous and serve their respective areas.
- Each group should determine the best suited time for their meetings. Attempts to have the meeting times and locations vary to allow more involvement. A lunch time meeting or after work meeting should be tried and placed in a rotation. Different locations may add a convenience factor for some to have involvement.
- Host should meet certain criteria for groups head count; provide adequate seating and technical provisions.
- Meals may be a shared responsibility between UG members - donation, Host or Vendor/Reseller.
- Group meetings should follow a loose form of "Roberts Rules of Order".
- Officers should be elected by a simple majority vote based on attendance of the registered members or attendees.
- Officers should be volunteers from within the User Community, preferably not from the vendor or sales structure so as to avoid perceived conflict of interest.
- Officers should serve a two year term and may be reelected again and serve multiple terms per the group's determination. However a rotation of service commitments is healthy and recommended for continued group success.
- Officers should hold board meetings as needed to discuss group agenda and plans. This can happen in person or by conference call. Per groups needs or determination.
- Each UG should determine the meeting frequency this should be decided by a group conscience vote.
- (Suggest that the frequency should be 3 or 4 meeting per year)
Officer roles and responsibilities:
Chairperson: (Well suited for a public speaking person)
- Presides and is the facilitator for the meeting. Welcomes attendees, Introduces presenters, maintains meeting order.
- Facilitates all business portions such as elections, communication of events, etc...
- Is the representative of the meeting for any public relations reasons.
Administrative Chairperson: (Well suited for a detail oriented person)
- Assists the Chairperson and is the stand in for their responsibilities when required.
- Serves as the Communications Officer for all emails to the group.
- Records the minutes of the meeting, distributes as required.
- Serves as Treasurer as/if required and keeps a journal of all accounts. This must be published, available and submitted to the Board for each meeting.
- Oversees UG Calendar for rotation of meeting facilities, scheduling as required. Advanced planning so to create continued active participation.
- Serves as the registrant; keeping a non-public list, not for distribution to anyone. This is to be used for group email communication only as a blind CC list.
Technical Officer: (Well suited for a senior user with public speaking skills)
- Recruits and books technical presenters, per Board approval.
- Oversees and facilitates a re-occurring group session held at each meeting called the "Tips-Tricks-Trends Roundtable" (call it whatever) this is a user participation portion of the meeting whereby all users can share helpful things they have learned, they can share any technical questions for the group. This must be moderated and all participation needs to be conducted in a safe environment for all to share, subject matter needs to be limited to a few minutes only and it should be germane to the mutual benefit of the group. Facilitator must maintain control of group share!
- Technical recorder for all UG bug-list and or UG wish-list for enhancements. Submitting them to Board.
Software Vendor and VARs (Value Added Resellers)
- Their attendance, input, participation is highly valued, however an excessive dependence on their efforts has the potential to make the group a sales presentation or software demo. Also this has the potential to make users feel that they cannot compete with authority and technical competence as the vendor.
- A portion of each meeting should be allowed for them to make any product announcements or promotions that are current and are of value to the group. Each group may decide to limit this to a short portion or may invite them to provide a lengthier new feature demo / training session. All participation and contributions they may wish to make should be presented to the board in advance.
Code of Conduct:
- All members and attendees are expected to conduct themselves in a professional and courteous manner. Defamatory and slanderous behavior will not be tolerated.
- Members who exhibit repetitively disruptive behavior will be excused from the meetings and removed from the active members list.
Privacy:
- Member email addresses are not to be distributed or posted on the group blog. Email address may only be used for group email communication of meeting notices as a blind CC list.
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