If we wait to start talking about it until conference 2017, that means
conference committee 2018 will have to find its own temporary fiscal agent.
Or 2018 could just not happen at all, I guess.
Even if we do all the pre-work and just wait to make the decision at the
conference, that doesn't leave much wiggle room for 2018.
Also, if we only talk about it in person, we leave out everyone who is
unable to attend conference. That's potentially a lot of interested people.
I'm not sure we want to become *that *kind of library organization; our
virtual decision-making model is one of our most attractive features, in my
opinion (speaking as someone with disabilities and an uneven budget over
the last few years).
So I would encourage anyone interested in exploring fiscal
sponsorship/becoming a nonprofit/[other solutions?] to form a group/task
force/committee/whatever and to start researching options now, with a
reasonable deadline for communicating back out to the whole community, so
that we can all take part in making an informed decision before the 2018
conference committee needs to get started (if, indeed, our community's
consensus is to do 2018).
Chad volunteered to help, and his knowledge about the 2016 process and
budgets will make him incredibly helpful. We should take him up on that. I
volunteered to help, and my previous research on starting a nonprofit
and/or finding a fiscal sponsor for a previous project will make me also
potentially helpful. Maybe we should take me up on that, or maybe the
committee should not have anyone *quite* as in favor of radical change (or
as new to the community) as I am. I defer to the group on that, once it
forms.
Does anyone else want to self-nominate, to join a group to investigate
making Code4Lib fiscally sustainable? Does someone want to *organize* that
group? (Put the group on some communications medium, make deadlines, keep
people on task -- stuff like that.) To be clear: nobody is proposing that
it be a decision-making body; it would just be a fact-finding group, who
would write up a list of the options to present to the larger community
(and maybe preside over some kind of vote? I don't know, I guess the group
will decide how to get the community to make decisions, too).
- Coral
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