Chad's missive has again awoken the aardvark in the room. Who or what is
*we*, and what to *we* want that to be?

I became active in Code4Lib at the time that I was also very active in
establishing the new Drupal Association. While I understood then, as I do
now, the significant differences between those organizations, I thought
that, in some way, I could put my experience to work for Code4Lib.

11 years ago, Code4Lib was doing fine with no structure whatsoever.
Universities were volunteering to produce the Cons with the
understanding that they would do what they could with the resources they
had, and that sometimes that meant low capacity, and that they would sell
out quickly.  The only time I recall voting was at cons where we had to
decide between competing offers for the next year.

A few years ago, *we* seemed to be running out of volunteer institutions
who could produce the Con on their own, and I was one of several folks who
suggested CONCENTRA, who have produced most of our Cons since then.

*We* had an unwritten rule that Cons should at least break even — most did
— and that surpluses should pass on to the next host. With no organization,
and dealing with schools who sort of expected organization, this was
occasionally problematic. We found a solution in CLIR, who stepped forward
to provide us with fiscal agency. We aren't them, and they aren't us, but
if the outside world (e.g. Slack) looks at us, they see them.

My Code4Lib journey has been influenced and inspired by my mentor and
personal demon, Dan Chudnov, who pretty much shared my goals, but eschewed
my methods. I started an early movement to organize Code4Lib. Dan organized
the opposition. His side prevailed. I (hope that) I learned a lot from Dan.

I still believe that we would benefit for a continuing organization. Not
necessarily a clone of the Drupal Association, but at least an entity with
bylaws, including a definition of membership, and a process for decision
making. This doesn't have to be a money thing.

My neighborhood in Los Angeles has a group defined as an Association that
has the minimum of legal standing. It is restricted in the amount of money
it can have in the bank, but with CLIR as our fiscal agent, that would not
be a problem for us.

There is more to be said on this subject. Perhaps we are do for another
breakout at the Con.

Thanks,

Caryu


On Thu, Mar 11, 2021 at 7:13 PM Chad Nelson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> The conference planning committee, working with the folks at CLIR, have
> arranged for the Code4lib Slack instance to be upgraded to a "Standard"
> paid account. The main motivation of upgrading was to maintain access to
> chat history, as we had been exceeding the free-tier message limit at a
> rolling window of  about 6 weeks. As Slack has become the de facto location
> for many operational conversations about organizing the conference,
> retaining access to that organizational knowledge has become absolutely
> essential.
>
> However, Slack is also an informal community space, and I think we need to
> consider the implications of this "permanent" access to chat history and
> how it may impact some community members willingness to participate in the
> conversations there. Slack does provide an option of limiting message
> retention on a channel by channel basis, which is something we may want to
> consider.
>
> Moreover, I think this question about Slack points to a larger issue, that
> while *the usage* of community communication platforms (Slack, irc,
> discord, this listserv), is already covered in our Code of Conduct
> <https://github.com/code4lib/code-of-conduct> we don't explicitly state
> how
> community members should expect* data collected by/ on these platforms
> could be used. *While being fully aware that Slack has access to this data
> and we can't control what they do (and that's a whole nother conversation),
> we can make decisions about what our expectations are *as a community,
> *and
> what norms we want to set.
>
> Conversations in Slack have already yielded requests for access to the
> public
> message export
> <https://slack.com/help/articles/201658943-Export-your-workspace-data>
> that
> Slack provides, and pushback that no Code4lib Slack users have actually
> consented to having their message data used for research / data analysis
> purposes.
>
> I think we need to make some intentional choices about our data, instead of
> just accepting the defaults, and that we need to be transparent about
> whatever we decide so that community members, present and future, know what
> to expect.
>
> While I'm sure some conversation will happen here, perhaps a good topic for
> a breakout session at the conference?
>
> Thanks
> Chad
>


-- 
Cary Gordon
The Cherry Hill Company
http://chillco.com