Thanks to those who responded privately to the post below, and even greater thanks to those who posted their comments below.
The responses that I have received confirm that, by and large, the members who decided not to attend the Monaro Folk Society AGM had no idea that there would be a second presidential candidate, and that the result was not representative of their views.
Allowing for family memberships each having two voting members, there were about 300 folk eligible to vote. Needless to say, only a fraction of this number attended the AGM.
However the response also suggests a lack of interest in the subject. If someone is willing to do the work then does anything else matter?
I can see this point and I think we should all be appreciative of the significant role that has been undertaken.
The response has not shown strong support for changing the rules, so best not to worry about it I reckon. Let's Dance!
Cheers
Lance
13 October 2010
30 September 2010
An Unrepresentative Election
I thought I would write because a number have people have asked me why I stepped down as MFS President. The answer is that I didn't.
I would like to make it clear that I had no idea that there would be another candidate for the Monaro Folk Society president position.
In my opinion the attendance at the AGM did not reflect the membership at large, and appeared to me and to others that I have spoken to, to be largely made up of people associated with two groups within the society. The election results reflected this.
Just for the record, I would have been happy to continue in the role.
The unrepresentative election process should cause concern about our rules.
I feel that members have the right to know before the meeting (when they are deciding whether or not to attend) who the candidates are, what their background is, and what they stand for. Just the same as members know what motions will be put, at least 14 days before the meeting.
In other organisations that I have been in, candidates declare their intention to stand, provide a photograph and short statement about their background and what they stand for, and voting takes place over a few weeks with all members having the opportunity to vote.
As a minimum, I think that nominations should close say two weeks before the meeting with candidates' names published, with further nominations on the night only if there were vacancies left by the formal nomination and election process.
Do you agree? If there is a lot of positive response I will draft an amendment to the rules.
Please add your comment below. If you see a link marked "x comments" you can click it to add your comment.
Regards
Lance
I would like to make it clear that I had no idea that there would be another candidate for the Monaro Folk Society president position.
In my opinion the attendance at the AGM did not reflect the membership at large, and appeared to me and to others that I have spoken to, to be largely made up of people associated with two groups within the society. The election results reflected this.
Just for the record, I would have been happy to continue in the role.
The unrepresentative election process should cause concern about our rules.
I feel that members have the right to know before the meeting (when they are deciding whether or not to attend) who the candidates are, what their background is, and what they stand for. Just the same as members know what motions will be put, at least 14 days before the meeting.
In other organisations that I have been in, candidates declare their intention to stand, provide a photograph and short statement about their background and what they stand for, and voting takes place over a few weeks with all members having the opportunity to vote.
As a minimum, I think that nominations should close say two weeks before the meeting with candidates' names published, with further nominations on the night only if there were vacancies left by the formal nomination and election process.
Do you agree? If there is a lot of positive response I will draft an amendment to the rules.
Please add your comment below. If you see a link marked "x comments" you can click it to add your comment.
Regards
Lance
13 August 2010
Price Points
We will have decide on our membership fees at the annual general meeting on 23 September 2010, and so I thought I might share with you some generally accepted ideas on price-points.
I have studied marketing for years when working towards Fellowship of the Australian Insurance Institute and in Executive Development Programs, and have a degree in Economics and diploma in Business Studies. That doesn't mean I have the only right answer any more than anyone else, but it does mean I have come to many conclusions that I think are soundly based and that I hold firmly.
I think I can reasonably expect fellow members to consider those views, not in a one-minute discussion at the AGM, but carefully and with time to think things through.
Price is not a major problem for us, and our activities represent excellent value-for-money. However we would all have noticed that the folk community is at the price-sensitive end of the spectrum, a long way from Yves Saint Laurent buyers who will buy more if the price is higher.
For us, there is always "elasticity of demand"; higher price = lower demand. People fall along a spectrum, and some will be on the margin between paying and not paying. More of them will drop out at price points like $30, which is why you hardly ever see anything priced at $30 at Woden shops (they would go to $29.99 but that's a bit too contrived a price for us to use).
There will be unengaged folk who don't think about it, they just see the price that they perceive as in the next $10 price bracket and we're gone. Buying decisions are initially based on a quick emotional reaction to our price and whether we are speaking to the customer's needs.
People then rationalise their decisions but we and our product have to achieve that initial interest before they will go on to think about our offer.
So, the bottom line is that I think our prices should be figures like $29, not $30. I am more concerned about the extra members that we are likely to get at $29 than at $30, than I am about giving change, and when you go from prices like $29 to $30 you are likely to lose more from lost "sales" than you gain from those who remain.
I have these firmly held convictions that I would like you to consider, but in the end I will of course go with the majority opinion.
Regards
Lance
I have studied marketing for years when working towards Fellowship of the Australian Insurance Institute and in Executive Development Programs, and have a degree in Economics and diploma in Business Studies. That doesn't mean I have the only right answer any more than anyone else, but it does mean I have come to many conclusions that I think are soundly based and that I hold firmly.
I think I can reasonably expect fellow members to consider those views, not in a one-minute discussion at the AGM, but carefully and with time to think things through.
Price is not a major problem for us, and our activities represent excellent value-for-money. However we would all have noticed that the folk community is at the price-sensitive end of the spectrum, a long way from Yves Saint Laurent buyers who will buy more if the price is higher.
For us, there is always "elasticity of demand"; higher price = lower demand. People fall along a spectrum, and some will be on the margin between paying and not paying. More of them will drop out at price points like $30, which is why you hardly ever see anything priced at $30 at Woden shops (they would go to $29.99 but that's a bit too contrived a price for us to use).
There will be unengaged folk who don't think about it, they just see the price that they perceive as in the next $10 price bracket and we're gone. Buying decisions are initially based on a quick emotional reaction to our price and whether we are speaking to the customer's needs.
People then rationalise their decisions but we and our product have to achieve that initial interest before they will go on to think about our offer.
So, the bottom line is that I think our prices should be figures like $29, not $30. I am more concerned about the extra members that we are likely to get at $29 than at $30, than I am about giving change, and when you go from prices like $29 to $30 you are likely to lose more from lost "sales" than you gain from those who remain.
I have these firmly held convictions that I would like you to consider, but in the end I will of course go with the majority opinion.
Regards
Lance
04 May 2010
A Friendly and Inclusive Future
Bob Hodgson has placed a discussion paper on the MFS Members web site. You can find it under "Discussions" in the index at http://www.mfs.org.au/members/
I won't try to summarise Bob's point of view; you can see the full paper by following the link above. However I do agree wholeheartedly with the thrust of the paper, and its arguments.
In particular, I agree that the future success of the MFS depends on us being friendly and inclusive. We are a not-for-profit community organisation, and our main objective is to promote all aspects of folk lore.
To pick up on one example from the discussion paper, like Bob I am dismayed at the MFS Committee decision to exclude all non-MFS events from our printed dance calendar. You may wonder how a President can be dismayed at a decision made by his own committee? Let me explain.
As chair my role is to tap into the collective wisdom of the committee. The President does not have any decision-making or veto power over committee decisions, but instead has the executive role of carrying out decisions made by the committee.
I am guided by the decisions of the committee at our face-to-face meetings, and focus on determining the "will of the meeting" during our necessarily limited time. This has worked well in general, but in this case it has allowed a decision that appears to me to be ill-considered.
I am a "friendly expansion and growth" person and you cannot put an unfriendly contractionary head on the shoulders of a volunteer who is otherwise inclined, so I will try to find someone to do the calendar, but I am withdrawing my labour and it won't be me working on the printed dance calendar under those conditions.
The decision was made at a Christmas meeting which was supposed to have a minimum of essential business, and because of low attendance a vote of three in favour was enough to pass the motion.
I realise my mistake in allowing such an important motion to be moved without any notice and in such a setting, and it won't happen again while I am in the chair. I will now only accept motions that have been put on notice with adequate supporting documentation and input from the volunteer(s) responsible and other stakeholders. We live and learn.
To return to Bob's discussion paper, I cannot do it justice by summarising it here, but it refers to the important subject of welcoming new activities into the society. New activities mean more members and more mutual support for all. I can see no negatives whatsoever to welcoming new activities.
From my point of view, if the activity owners
- wish to be a part of the society,
- comply with the financial reporting responsibilities that are needed under the incorporations act for a non-profit organisation and are in place for the responsible governance of the society, and
- encourage membership of the society and help promote our objectives
then it is a win-win decision to welcome them into our organisation with all the benefits to the activity that being part of a larger organisation brings.
I commend the discussion paper (under "Discussions" in the index at http://www.mfs.org.au/members/) and invite discussion either on the members-only discussion tab of the paper, or by clicking on the public "comments" link below. If you have any problems getting into the paper on the members' web site, or anything else, please get in touch.
Cheers
Lance
I won't try to summarise Bob's point of view; you can see the full paper by following the link above. However I do agree wholeheartedly with the thrust of the paper, and its arguments.
In particular, I agree that the future success of the MFS depends on us being friendly and inclusive. We are a not-for-profit community organisation, and our main objective is to promote all aspects of folk lore.
To pick up on one example from the discussion paper, like Bob I am dismayed at the MFS Committee decision to exclude all non-MFS events from our printed dance calendar. You may wonder how a President can be dismayed at a decision made by his own committee? Let me explain.
As chair my role is to tap into the collective wisdom of the committee. The President does not have any decision-making or veto power over committee decisions, but instead has the executive role of carrying out decisions made by the committee.
I am guided by the decisions of the committee at our face-to-face meetings, and focus on determining the "will of the meeting" during our necessarily limited time. This has worked well in general, but in this case it has allowed a decision that appears to me to be ill-considered.
I am a "friendly expansion and growth" person and you cannot put an unfriendly contractionary head on the shoulders of a volunteer who is otherwise inclined, so I will try to find someone to do the calendar, but I am withdrawing my labour and it won't be me working on the printed dance calendar under those conditions.
The decision was made at a Christmas meeting which was supposed to have a minimum of essential business, and because of low attendance a vote of three in favour was enough to pass the motion.
I realise my mistake in allowing such an important motion to be moved without any notice and in such a setting, and it won't happen again while I am in the chair. I will now only accept motions that have been put on notice with adequate supporting documentation and input from the volunteer(s) responsible and other stakeholders. We live and learn.
To return to Bob's discussion paper, I cannot do it justice by summarising it here, but it refers to the important subject of welcoming new activities into the society. New activities mean more members and more mutual support for all. I can see no negatives whatsoever to welcoming new activities.
From my point of view, if the activity owners
- wish to be a part of the society,
- comply with the financial reporting responsibilities that are needed under the incorporations act for a non-profit organisation and are in place for the responsible governance of the society, and
- encourage membership of the society and help promote our objectives
then it is a win-win decision to welcome them into our organisation with all the benefits to the activity that being part of a larger organisation brings.
I commend the discussion paper (under "Discussions" in the index at http://www.mfs.org.au/members/) and invite discussion either on the members-only discussion tab of the paper, or by clicking on the public "comments" link below. If you have any problems getting into the paper on the members' web site, or anything else, please get in touch.
Cheers
Lance
07 April 2010
Into the Wide World of Web 2.0
Welcome to the world of Web 2.0, and the ongoing evolution of the World Wide Web, its architecture and the way we use it. The web is moving from a static form where information was being posted by webmasters and read by users (Web 1.0), to a rapidly progressing user-orientated environment that promotes interactivity and input from a variety of sources, Web 2.0.
This blog (Weblog) is not only my posting of events as they happen, with my narrative, but also your opportunity to let the world know what you think about the issues.
The domain that we are currently on is www.blogger.com owned by Google and one of many online forms of content management systems designed for composing and maintaining Blogs.
Wikis (like those at mfs.org.au) are another form of web content management system arising from the availability of Web 2.0 technologies. All the data is open to the wiki community to edit and be scrutinized for validity, and this makes for constant evolution in change of content and the growth in the amount of information.
Web 2.0 has a huge emphasis on user input and online community or social networks, users input personal information and find common ground and relationship in which they can spread their own network. A great examples of this would be sites such as Facebook, and Myspace.
But enough of my views on the wider world of Web 2.0, I would love to hear what you think about the mfs.org.au wikis and this blog, and the use that we should make of Web 2.0.
This blog (Weblog) is not only my posting of events as they happen, with my narrative, but also your opportunity to let the world know what you think about the issues.
The domain that we are currently on is www.blogger.com owned by Google and one of many online forms of content management systems designed for composing and maintaining Blogs.
Wikis (like those at mfs.org.au) are another form of web content management system arising from the availability of Web 2.0 technologies. All the data is open to the wiki community to edit and be scrutinized for validity, and this makes for constant evolution in change of content and the growth in the amount of information.
Web 2.0 has a huge emphasis on user input and online community or social networks, users input personal information and find common ground and relationship in which they can spread their own network. A great examples of this would be sites such as Facebook, and Myspace.
But enough of my views on the wider world of Web 2.0, I would love to hear what you think about the mfs.org.au wikis and this blog, and the use that we should make of Web 2.0.
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