[Ambassadors] EMEA Membership Questione

[Jeroen van Meeuwen]

Robert M. Albrecht wrote:
> Hi,
> 
>  >> The membership fee is astronomicaly high, thats correct. For many
>  >> people or countrys is out of the question. And I think it`s the
>  >> highest membership fee I ever saw.
>  > The interessting question is, what happens with this money ?
>  > The most interesting question is, what do you think is an appropriate
>  > membership fee?
> 
>  Nope. My question points into the future. If the money is will spend,
>  the fee is ok. If the money is not well spend, it`s crap. Every for
>  himself has to judge this after one or two years.
> 
>  For KDE Cebit Booth or Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin we don`t
>  go in a hotel, we rent a flat for a week (400 Euros per week for all 10
>  people). Moving more people to a booth than are needed to equip the
>  booth may be great fun, but it`s not well spend.
> 
>  > Are you just bluntly disagreeing or is this based on every possible
>  > argument you could think of?
> 
> I`m not disagreeing at all, I just raised a question and did not answer it.
> 

What will happen with the money is exactly what has always happened with 
the money. There's just more, it's being spend more efficiently, and 
it's being spend by the actual party that initially commits itself to 
coughing up money, rather then having to await reimbursements or money 
transfers.

You are questioning the spending of (say..) ~0.1% percentage of a budget 
here -the part which comes from membership fees. You are doing so based 
on comparison to other parties that may or may not have 1 large 
corporate sponsor, that was already taking care of some of the spendings 
before the party spending the money ever turned into an NPO, and had 
enabled themselves to take donations by becoming an NPO, or parties that 
are specifically intended to attract members.

Then, you're saying you are not OK with a membership fee if the revenue 
from those fees isn't being spent in a way you think is appropriate, 
while what you should be worrying about is; previously I requested money 
or swag or CD/DVDs from Red Hat, is that going to change?

>  > How does one, given a low membership fee so that everyone can join,
>  > arraign a General Membership Meeting requiring a two-third majority of
>  > all votes cast (not just all attendees)?
> 
>  In Chaos Computer Club we have a statement, that membership meetings can
>  take place via telecommunication. That`s perfectly legal. Moving people
>  physically is not a legal requirement.
> 

However CCC does need to have membership meetings in person for changing 
anything related to the organization itself, like Statutes, Board, and 
with meetings over telco one cannot easily use representatives 
authorized to submit your vote for you -because you might not be able to 
attend yourself.

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen
-kanarip