[Koha] Vote for Koha Con 2011

[Thomas Dukleth]

As I explain further below, I agree with others that diversity is best
achieved by rules and not by weighting voters differently based on their
affiliation.

Anyone promoting a particular KohaCon proposal should also advocate for
that proposal.

Anyone who intends to attend KohaCon 2011 should be encouraged to vote, at
http://survey.web2learning.net/limesurvey/index.php?sid=15529 .  If you
know of any people who would attend KohaCon 2011 to learn about Koha but
may not be subscribers to the Koha mailing lists, may not give great
enough attention to the mailing lists, or may be otherwise unaware of the
process for selecting a venue; then please inform them and encourage them
to vote.  The vote is open and will not end until the 17th of February (US
Eastern Standard Time).


Remainder of reply inline:


1.  MAINTAINING DIVERSITY.

1.1.  NATIONAL DIVERSITY FOR KOHACON.

On Fri, February 4, 2011 10:08, mohan pradhan wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> My point of adding country is that weightage should be given first to
> country and then to institute. Otherwise, a big country have more vote
> (having more institutes) and small country will have few votes. Also there
> should be a system, how many votes an orgnization can give i.e. person
> within an organization. All these should be mentioned and there should be
> a
> system for taking into consideration these points i.e. rules for casting a
> vote.. This will allow to organize the conference even by a small country
> having support of many countries.This meets the philosophy by which the
> vote
> counting method was adopted at the beginning to give equal chance to give
> opportunity to all the countries of the world to organize Koha Con 2011.

I agree with what Chris Cormack and Reed Wade have written in reply that
the Koha community has worked best when vesting power in individual people
as distinct from organisations of which people are members.  The fact that
some countries are more populous than others is an issue which needs
addressing for diversity but no country has a sufficiently large
population to dominate the community as a whole.  The fact that there may
be an especially large number of people interested in hosting KohaCon in a
particular country is a good reason to host KohaCon where there is the
greatest interest for promoting the software.  As both Chris and Reed
stated, we may need to introduce rules to help maintain diversity in
venues for international Koha conferences to keep KohaCon from being
repeatedly held in the same populous countries.

The Koha community is too small to have significant international
attendance at more than one Koha conference in a year with community wide
endorsement.  However, local and regional conferences should be
encouraged.  Anyone who wants to organise a conference promoting Koha for
whomever may happen to come should be encouraged.  A KUDOS conference for
Koha is being held in the US with presumably little expectation of
attracting many people from distant countries.


1.2.  ORGANISTIONAL DIVERSITY IN THE KOHA COMMUNITY.

The question of voting by organisation as opposed to individuals was
briefly raised at the last #koha IRC meeting but seemed to be rejected as
contrary to the common understanding of how the Koha community works. 
There are always tensions between large and small organisations about
which we will need to be continually aware.

We have some diversity rules to keep any single organisation from
dominating the Koha Committee of Horowhenua Library Trust, the current
legal entity for the Koha project.


1.3.  MULTIPLE OPTIONS FOR DIVERSITY IN KOHA SOFTWARE.

Both small and large organisations benefit from the different investment
which each type of organisation makes in the Koha software.  Often
individual large organisations have a greater ability to finance software
development than small organisations but small organisations can pool
resources collectively.

Choice of system preferences and a commitment to not breaking features
allow all interests to be served by the same software.  The nature of
software allows it to be designed to not exclude anyone's interests.

Koha is free software which anyone may modify under the GPL to serve an
individual which it may not serve already.


1.4.  DIVERSITY RULES.

We may need to add internationalisation and institutional size diversity
rules where there are potential problems over competing interests.  Good
rules help the democratic process to work for everyone by protecting
minorities and their interests from domination by any particular majority.
 Everyone has a minority interest over something which needs protecting.


2.  SIMULTANEOUS POLL RESULTS.

>
> Further the results of the polls should be visible instantly, whenever a
> vote is given instead of sharing the result at the end.
>

I favour releasing results in small blocks of votes instead of one at a
time.  Voting to consensus is good idea but people should not have an
overly easy opportunity to merely follow a few initial votes or the last
few votes without taking the time to actually evaluate the question being
voted upon for themselves.

Ultimately, all votes must be completely transparent because we have an
open electorate and not a predefined list of registered voters.

[...]


Thomas Dukleth
Agogme
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New York, NY  10003
USA
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+1 212-674-3783