Why is participation being restricted to 100 members? It can hardly be called an AGM if all members cannot participate.

'An electronic vote open to the entire membership will be held afterwards.'

I'm looking forward to this AGM hopefully pointing the BCA into a positive direction and well done to the team for pulling this together in such a modern way to cope with our current situation.

However, the constitution requires the electronic vote after the AGM to be open for 'approximately 30 days'. What is the reason to only have it open for 7 days? While the term 'approximately' is open to some interpretation, I wouldn't say 7 is approximately 30. This seems to be a constitutional violation which could severely limit participation.

mch said:

Why is participation being restricted to 100 members? It can hardly be called an AGM if all members cannot participate.

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If you go to an AGM for a big company with 6,000 shareholders present, you can't decide on the day that you are going to start waffling on.

If you have a specific thing to say in response to a report, contact the author. If your response is unsatisfactory, contact the secretary and make your representations. If something was important enough that it had to be said at an AGM, then it should have been submitted as an item before the deadline. But practicality dictates that not every BCA member can speak at an AGM. The eight-hour AGMs of the past were a massive waste of time anyway since they usually confused issues with last-minute poorly considered amendments that nobody's had time to think about same just cause problems later.

mch said:

Why is participation being restricted to 100 members? It can hardly be called an AGM if all members cannot participate.

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Zoom has a limit of 100 participants unless you go to the next stage up of subscription. In practical terms it's probably unmanageable to cope with more, although I've just been to an on-line Festival which had more than 100 participants and they were coping with questions from the floor. Since the usual attendance is comfortably under 100 they probably thought 100 would be sufficient.

An alternative to upping the Zoom subscription would be to have a simultaneous Facebook feed for those people who were confident that they wouldn't want to speak at the AGM. (And if they did want to speak, they could do this by Facebook Messenger). You need extra admin - it's not feasible for the secretary to monitor who wants to speak on Zoom and who is sending messages on facebook, and deal with Secretarial stuff. I think you need a couple of "watchers" to support the Chair and Sec.

Facebook feed, while theoretically simple, may have technical problems - the reason that the Festival I mentioned had >100 on Zoom was that they couldn't get the Facebook feed to work, and had to hastily up their Zoom limit.

Matt,

Firstly, it is very nice that the BCA is appreciated in their efforts ;-)  I too must also give great praise to all involved in helping to get an AGM in place in these unusual time, particularly the IT working group, who I know have been working flat out. Lets hope we can actually pull it off.

I also have to thank-very much for the heads up on the electronic voting. As you appreciate, the Exec is fairly green and possibly are not familiar with the constitution as we should be (which we need to correct), so appreciate the comments from members when we have made a mistake. I am a bit surprised that this was not flagged up at the previous council meeting when we ran through the AGM procedure - I must have sent them all to sleep!

The Exec have discussed this and will change the voting timing to be open to midnight 31st of October, which is 20 days (effectively 3 weeks). This will allow a Council meeting to occur early November after the results have been published. We would assume BCA members will not have a problem with this.

Phil
Acting BCA Chair

Hey Phil

Good stuff! My primary concern at 7 days was that many people are encouraged to participate in BCA votes following seeing discussion on the ballot questions on social media, including here ok UKC, as well as hearing about the ballot through their clubs or friendship circles. This is especially important as the BCA lacks email addresses for at least 2000 of its members, unless that has changed since I was Secretary.

Therefore, 7 days would have allowed very little time for open forum discussion and circulation which is a healthy part of any democracy.... especially given the magnitude of some of the proposals on the table.

It would also not allow enough time to deal with the influx of people claiming not to have received their ballots or having issues with whatever system is being used.

I still think that 20 days is a strange number, and when the constitution says 'approximately 30' then why not choose 30 days and just move the Council meeting back a few more weeks? Unless there is some critical deadline that needs a council meeting in the first week of November which could justify the reduced period? I just worry that any deviation from the constitution puts the decisions made open to question, especially from those who don't like the outcome. I'm fairly sure this is something the newly invigorated Council would prefer to avoid. My 'honeymoon period' as Secretary last year was quickly halted when the CSCC tried to discredit the outcomes of the AGM based (incorrectly) on constitutional anomalies, so as the voice of experience, sticking as closely to the constitution as possible will make your life easier in the long run 

Good luck and thank you for all your hard work! The new team seem to be doing a very fine job indeed under some VERY challenging circumstances.

nobrotson said:

'An electronic vote open to the entire membership will be held afterwards.'

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An AGM is not just about voting.

andrewmc said:

If you have a specific thing to say in response to a report, contact the author. If your response is unsatisfactory, contact the secretary and make your representations. If something was important enough that it had to be said at an AGM, then it should have been submitted as an item before the deadline. But practicality dictates that not every BCA member can speak at an AGM. The eight-hour AGMs of the past were a massive waste of time anyway since they usually confused issues with last-minute poorly considered amendments that nobody's had time to think about same just cause problems later.

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Whilst members may not have something to say in advance of the AGM relating to the reports or other agenda items, it's very likely that they may have pertinent comments to make on on the discussions that will arise at the meeting.

kay said:

Zoom has a limit of 100 participants unless you go to the next stage up of subscription. In practical terms it's probably unmanageable to cope with more...

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Yes, I'm aware of the 100 limit on the baseline Zoom subscription, but since BCA is not by any means short of funds there is no reason why it cannot purchase the next stage. I've attended online political meetings on Zoom with considerably more than 100 attendees and have not encountered any problems in coping.

Thank you to all of the above for their comments.

On the BCA site I've said I've no interest in talking at the event and it has directed me to watch via the Facebook online page. 

BCA eAGM 2020

For an in-depth discussion regarding the proposals being put forward tomorrow (and voted on for the subsequent month) we managed to get what I hope is a good cross-section of council members to have a debate. It started out as a zoom call and video but after several misadventures ended up as slightly poorly edited podcast that will hopefully put into context the motions for discussion tomorrow.

https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1408813.rss

Many thanks to those that took part, and if you could leave any feedback regardless of how lovely or devastating it would be much appreciated.
https://forms.gle/r6QDfUm3MghcKwa77

Possibly the most interaction with BCA ive had.

Please did any record the zoom meeting? Or if you can skip forward on the facebook live stream, please does anyone have a list of start times for the discussion on the agenda proposals?

Ian Ball said:

Please did any record the zoom meeting? Or if you can skip forward on the facebook live stream, please does anyone have a list of start times for the discussion on the agenda proposals?

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Discussion on proposals started at about 57 minutes into the Facebook stream.

I watched about 45min of the AGM today on live Facebook - it was superb to be able to see what was going on while I pottered around the house.

From what I saw I thought the technology used worked well, it was well managed and didn?t have lots of people talking all over each other.

I hope the use of remote meetings helps to modernise the BCA like so many organisations have had to do in recent times and allows more people to interact in an easier manner.