2006 World Council meeting discussion

[awallin]

Hi All,

It could be useful to have a discussion here about the 2006 AGM just held electronically (minutes now on the website).

As a whole, did it work ?

What could be done better next year ?

In some countries, all of the votes for that country were decided by the very few who bothered to vote (notably GBR and GER). Is that right ? Or is it something that IOMICA should not worry about (leave it to the owners of the NCA in question)

One NCA reported that it would not vote, but three NCAs didn't submit any votes (SWE, ITA, and BAR). Any particular reasons ?

Comments !

regards,

[Andy Stevenson]

What could be done better next year ?

On the whole the AGM itself went ok I think. For next year I think the Exec should work on a robust & easily manageable on line voting system. This was where we stumbled a little I think.

Other than that, submitting anything past a deadline should be a shooting offence!

Cheers

[awallin]

For next year I think the Exec should work on a robust & easily manageable on line voting system. This was where we stumbled a little I think.

I know we discussed this previously, but let's re-iterate here, maybe some readers have suggestions or good ideas.

Were you thinking of an on-line system for the NCA representatives to use as they submit results that they themselves have gathered from their owners ?
Or, the bigger and more complex task of gathering votes directly from owners on-line ?

If the latter, we need a way to identify that each username that votes is actually an owner and affiliated to an NCA.

This identification work must I think be assigned to the NCA representative - there's no way that anyone on the exec will have time to correctly identify some 2000 owners worldwide ?

In practice, we know that our internet host provides us with the ability to run PHP and a MySQL database. Programming these things is not rocket-science, but I personally do not have the neccessary time. Thus we would have to look for an existing, preferably open-source, software package.

Perhaps we could start by listing the requirements ?:

• * User registration (username+password), verification (by whom?)
  * Two or three user categories (Registered, Certificated, Exec)
  * Assign user to usergroup (i.e. NCA). A usergroup manager (NCA representative) should check that the username is valid (a Registered or Certificated owner)
  * Administrator should be able to set up polls, questions with multiple choice type of answers.
  * Users should be able to answer polls within a given time-frame, and the answer should be stored in the database
  * Totals for each NCA calculated and output

anything else ?

The 2007 AGM is likely to take place at the Worlds in Marseille. I think any technical or document changes etc. could/should be handled beforehand on-line, but perhaps the election of the new Exec would benefit from an actual person-to-person meeting ?

Anders

[Andy Stevenson]

Were you thinking of an on-line system for the NCA representatives to use as they submit results that they themselves have gathered from their owners ?
Or, the bigger and more complex task of gathering votes directly from owners on-line ?

My first thought was a system for NCA’s to log their vote. Online voting for owners is certainly a worth goal however, some research into what’s available is needed. I’m still in the process of setting up a test server with Open Survey Pilot, it looks promising.

This identification work must I think be assigned to the NCA representative - there's no way that anyone on the exec will have time to correctly identify some 2000 owners worldwide ?

Indeed, a system for owner vote will require a method of NCA’s using any existing databases they have. It would be an interesting exercise to establish how many NCA’s maintain computer databases & what format they take.

In practice, we know that our internet host provides us with the ability to run PHP and a MySQL database. Programming these things is not rocket-science, but I personally do not have the neccessary time. Thus we would have to look for an existing, preferably open-source, software package.

Agreed. See above, Open Survey Pilot is a web based PHP system that uses mySQL. Once I get round to setting it up on a test server I let folk in for a look round.

Perhaps we could start by listing the requirements ?:

* User registration (username+password), verification (by whom?)
* Two or three user categories (Registered, Certificated, Exec)
* Assign user to usergroup (i.e. NCA). A usergroup manager (NCA representative) should check that the username is valid (a Registered or Certificated owner)
* Administrator should be able to set up polls, questions with multiple choice type of answers.
* Users should be able to answer polls within a given time-frame, and the answer should be stored in the database
* Totals for each NCA calculated and output

anything else ?

That looks like a good start, although I’m sure others will crop up as we go.

The 2007 AGM is likely to take place at the Worlds in Marseille. I think any technical or document changes etc. could/should be handled beforehand on-line, but perhaps the election of the new Exec would benefit from an actual person-to-person meeting ?

More than likely, assuming there are enough of the Exec & World Council in attendance to make it happen, it would be daft not to.

Cheers.

[Steve Landeau]

USA saw no problems whatsoever as far as the IOMICA relationship was concerned. Our major problem lies between the IOM Class Secretary owners list, and the AMYA IOM owners list. Lots of work to be done there. I now understand the difference between having our own NCA, and running under the AMYA as our DM.
The Excel file was easy to manage, and I'd have no problems doing it again in the same manner. Thanks to all that put in the time to get it done.