we have two email groups

[Dan Dugan]

For the last several years, the EBSS Google group list has been our public discussion group. So far as I know, that is working fine, though inactive. Perhaps we could try a Facebook group.

It was Yahoo groups that were closed down by Yahoo.

When we sent out invitations to monthly dinners, we didn’t send them to the public Google group. We sent them to a list of multiple addresses that was copied and pasted. This method accumulated errors and missed people, because there was no central registry for it and it was more like a “telephone game.”

Being mailing list-savvy, I volunteered to create a free private dinner mailing list where additions and corrections would stick. I and Alan worked to get the dinner participants transferred over, always a bit of a chore. Eventually we got everybody on.

Then Judy and Irene declared that we didn’t want to have a private dinner list. This makes sense when our “dinner” is a Zoom meeting, but (at least to me), doesn’t make sense for governance. The EBSS has no organized way of making decisions. Consensus of the dinner group is our “board."

It’s clear to me that we need an inner circle communications loop, and that was what the dinner group was intended to be. Maybe we should have called it the “EBSSboard” list.

I can fix something technical, and did that with the dinner list, but I’m afraid I can’t fix inconsistent policy. Over to the leadership, whoever that might be.

-Dan