[Discussion] Motion Expressing the Will of the Body on CiviCRM

So, I heard back from national and received answers to some of the concerns posted here regarding the risk of users messing up the data in CiviCRM.

I was assured that there are safeguards in place to keep everyone, except for the state admins, from being able to do major damage to the data. In short, a “county volunteer” is going to have a lot fewer permissions than a “county leader,” and a “county leader” has fewer permissions than a “state leader,” and a “state leader” has fewer permissions than a “state admin.”

In addition to the differences in permission, there is an aggressive backup schedule that is kept for several weeks and less aggressive backup schedule that is kept for months.

National put me in touch with Evan McMahon from LPIN who may be willing to offer a training for us, to help ease some of these concerns. Please let me know if you are interested, and I will reach out and see if we can get it scheduled.
 
Guys, this thread started as a “respectful request” for a “common-sense approach taken by executives to day-to-day management” that would result in District Reps being granted "similar permissions to those planned for county leadership’. I’m respectfully requesting that this body take a pause to reconsider the purpose and direction of this conversation.

The idea that SLEC should have permissions similar to those of County Chairs doesn’t seem to me to be much of a stretch, and I don’t see how this motion is not going to pass. (Note: Whitney is presently at Freedom Fest, and may or may not have some down time over the next few days to start a vote, but clearly there are plenty of co-sponsors, and I expect her to post a vote at her earliest decent opportunity.) If the motion was sincere and the intention of those supporting the motion is sincere, then you’re not going to have any problem from me or the staff getting this sorted out.

The problem now is that this conversation has gone way beyond the initial scope of the motion. What Carter posted above is not news to the people actively involved in the migration (primarily Kyle and secondarily me). When the appropriate time comes for District Reps to be trained on the use of the system, we’ll have the training ready. We’re just not there yet.

The Development Department and I (Luke, our Vol Coord, was invited but couldn’t make it on short notice) spent two hours with @kyle.russell yesterday going over what’s working with Civi so far, what’s not working yet, and what the priorities are for getting everything working. (Getting our donation reporting squared away is the current priority, but there is more to it than that.) @joeburnes and I were already planning to reach out to Evan for help; one of us is going to do that today, we just hadn’t decided yesterday which one. We still need to do that, and a training schedule will be discussed after we address some questions we want to ask him about the capabilities of the system and how they’re using it in Indiana. [Just saw Jeff’s post. For the record, Joe and I were also in a class of Evan’s, and would also vouch for his capabilities.]

@jcowart already reminded everybody what our timeline looks like. There is no purpose in initiating training on a system that is not fully operational yet. Give us some time to get the data squared away and smooth out some rough spots, and we can go from there.
 
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I think we are in agreement that the discussion here has spiraled to a point where it isn’t germaine to the actual motion.

The specific system capabilities aren’t known by this board, and I find it strange some are making arguments based on assumptions (and also strange that some who do know the system capabilities chose not to chime in).

At the end of this day, and I’m risking sounding like a broken record here, this motion asks for SLEC to have access, at a level similar to county chairs, to be determined by the chair.
 
Exactly, and all we need now is a vote and we can move on.

A couple of things about the strange arguments and silences:

In my experience on this body, it is not that unusual for people to opine at length based on assumptions, nor is it unusual for people who value their time to stay out of it unless/until absolutely necessary. So you and I agree that we could have a more productive conversation here (and more productive conversations generally) if people who know more of the facts said more and people who know less said less, I just don’t find this particular situation as ‘strange’, perhaps.

For the record (and to be fair to Kyle, who has a lot on his plate), a lot of this stuff is being figured out as we go. Even yesterday’s session developed new questions about the permission sets and what our options are for development. Until we get these things figured out, we’re just not ready for a big roll out. And it’s not the kind of thing that can be expedited by throwing more manpower at it due to the complexity and inter-relatedness of the problems we’re working on solving. But we’re making steady progress, and I believe Jessi’s timetable is reliable.

One other component: We’re Texas. Some of the things we want or need will affect other states. (For example, I wanted our annual donor subscriptions to be opt-out rather than opt-in. Now all the states have that capability.) As we hammer this out, we have a limited ability to ask for favors in the form of tweaks and add-ons that meet our needs. And we have an ability limited only by our budget to pay for tweaks and add-ons that we really think we need. So this isn’t just a download from national of a static platform, take it or leave it. It’s more of a dialogue about what works and what doesn’t with a view to making it work really, really well.

All that to say please be patient. We’re working, we’re making progress, and so far we’re on schedule.
 
Having met with Evan one on one today, I can attest to the possibilities the system provides that could really help us grow the party, increase effective intra-party comms, and generally enable more success at all levels within the party. I look forward to seeing what creative leaders can do with its capabilities as I’m finding it can be an effective “tool” in the right hands and with enough knowledge of the system.

I can also attest to the short term bottleneck of getting the transfer and setup for Texas done and in a way that makes it ready for training/adoption by many. I realize too that it seems like it’s taking a long time. However, Andy, Ken, and David have only so much time in a day and aren’t just dedicated to us as they have other states and duties to deal with. And as Andrew said, it’s not a problem that can be solved by more manpower…although there are things that might benefit from more manpower once we get the base system fully functioning and up to speed.

And while I’m always in favor of getting shlt done…I’m also in favor of doing it smartly. I’m proud of the fact that so many SLEC members are taking an interest. It hasn’t always been that way and it is refreshing.

We will get there.
 
Give It To Me GIFs | Tenor
 
Joking aside, I don’t think anyone is saying we need access right now, but the CRM is a shiny new thing and we’re all very curious about it, especially since some of us have been hearing about it for quite some time. We just want to make sure we are gonna get access to it, and cross all that with a desire to help and this is the result.
 
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andrew said:
(Note: Whitney is presently at Freedom Fest, and may or may not have some down time over the next few days to start a vote, but clearly there are plenty of co-sponsors, and I expect her to post a vote at her earliest decent opportunity.)
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@wbilyeu It would be really convenient if this could happen tomorrow, otherwise it will trigger Bylaws of SLEC V.2.
Bylaws of SLEC V.2.:
The chair shall clearly present the issue as a motion to be voted upon by forum or email. If this does not occur within one week after the request to vote the vote on this issue shall not be taken up unless another request to vote is started.
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At that point it would just be quicker to get all the people who want this done together and use Bylaw I.2. to initiate an electronic meeting.
Bylaws of SLEC I.2.:
The SLEC shall be required to meet upon the written request of one-third or more of its members
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Or worse yet III.1. 😱
Bylaws of SLEC III.1.":
The SLEC may, without meeting together, transact business by mail, by voting on questions submitted to them by or with the approval of the Chair or one-third or more of the SLEC members
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I know everyone is busy and I hate the V.2. loophole. I hated it when I discovered it when I was chair and it was written for me. I was on the Bylaws committee and after it passed I went to the author Arthur Thomas and was like “Look we fucked up. If you read this strictly it seems to indicate I could refuse a motion.” He told me that was the intention in case there was a bad or out of order motion (which out of order would be unnecessary because it’s already out of order.) Anyway I have been against it since day 1 and it’s doubly stupid that it puts a requirement on you to act or it automatically rejects it which makes no room for life occurrences like seems to be the case now. Anyway, just making everyone aware of the deadlines so they don’t get missed, hope the fest is going well. 🙂
 
My reading is the same as yours. So, let’s fix V.2. Something along the lines of replacing the last sentence with “If the chair has not presented the issue as a motion to be voted upon by forum or email within 48 hours of the motion attaining the required co-sponsors, the vice-chair shall do so.”
 
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