Mardi Gras gets new board
New Mardi Gras members voted for experience over fresh blood last night, with all eight new board members having previously served on the organisation’s executive.
Joshua Keech, Tony Knight, Kirk Muddle, Nicholas Parker, Rob Partos and Steph Sands were all re-elected for another term at the five hour meeting. They will be joined by Lynne O’Brien, who previously served on the 2002 board, and former treasurer Michael Douglas, whose platform included moving the parade to William St.
As reported in Sydney Star Observer two weeks ago, outgoing chair David Imrie did not attend the meeting.
The new board will meet in the next week to decide upon how it will be structured.
Sydney Star Observer understands there is a move among some of the new board members to no longer have a single chair, but instead spread those duties among the entire board.
Under the plan a single board member would each be responsible for Parade, Party, Festival, Harbour Party, Sleaze Ball and Fair Day, while one would continue to be responsible for the company’s finances, and another for the board’s relationship with the organisation’s staff. There is no requirement under the NMG constitution for the organisation to have a single chair.
There has also been some discussion around the possibility of re-introducing the co-chair model of several years ago.
A motion to safeguard membership consultation procedures was defeated in a formal debate after more than an hour of questions and debate from the floor.
A motion to investigate a new way to protect the organisation’s intellectual property rights was supported.
Full report in next week’s Sydney Star Observer
Candidate profiles: https://starobserver.com.au/news/2009/08/04/nmg-agm/14892
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Who gives a crap who is on the board as long as they do there jobs and let it get to the stage of the old Mardi Gras board because with out it’s members and volunteers there would be no mardi gras. And the board need to wake up and treat it’s volunteers a lot better then have have been in the past with out you volunteers your nothing. Stay on track what mardi gras stands for that is fighting for our rights and not making profits to line board members pockets. So stop your bitching and get on with the job and that is not only make mardi gras the best in the world but fight for our rights and give more to your volunteers.
I don’t agree with Ben here:
“Wow, the new board is not two days old, but the whingeing and bitter outrage have cranked up already!”
it’s important that public debate like this be heard and encouraged. I wouldn’t describe the debate above as wingeing but as a means of reasonable public debate. I don’t always think that but for the above I certainly do. It seems too often reasonable feedback, even if negative, is slammed down in these forums as wingeing, bitching “bitter outrage”, when it is necessary that these opinions be heard for NMG to continue to improve or to operate as a meaningfully democratic organisation.
Wow, the new board is not two days old, but the whingeing and bitter outrage have cranked up already!
NMG chose to accept email proxies. The election was clearly decided on proxies. That is why the current board members who abused the database solicited votes via email. As the email I got read all I needed to do was to send a reply including cc’ing the secretary from the registered email address attached to my membership for my proxy to be considered valid.
As the secretary of NMG stated:
“In relation to those proxies authenticated electronically, they were accepted only if an email was received by me which was sent from the email address which the company’s records show as the member’s email address and the email indicated the member’s approval of the information communicated in the proxy.”
If this is in violation of the constitution, who will challenge this and how?
Not being as familiar with the Constitution as I should’ve been, I did not realise I had access to the member database (and therefore the medium to communicate information about myself, my candidacy, my plans should I be elected) until I had been informed by another member that he had received such messages from another candidate. As soon as I heard that, I requested a copy of the database.
I received a quick reply from a gmail address to my ninemsn address containing an Excel spreadsheet containing 3,030 member names along with associated postal addresses, email addresses and membership status. The only body text of the email was the word “Attached” – no information about the use of the information or caveats associated with it.
I made the decision that a communication including information about my hopes and plans for the board could potentially be seen as spam, and did nothing with the data.
I hope this isn’t seen as ‘sour grapes’; I just feel strongly that, as members, our information should be protected and not sent out to candidates (such as myself) in this way. The suggestion was made that candidates should be able to supplement the 200 words we were originally given the option of communicating with further information, and have that communicated on by an official NMG email – I think that’s a great idea.
I made the decision not to spam the database, which may not have worked to my advantage. But rest assured, I have deleted the Excel spreadsheet, hope all the other candidates that received it have done the same, and further hope that the board amends the constitution to protect our information in the future.
Sorry “A Member” by saying “What do you think Australia Post does with your address? Believe me, I used to work there and they sell that database (and all of the lovely statistical breakdowns it contains) all of the time.” shows you have no idea of the value of a targeted database. The Mardi Gras database is a very specific list of people with very specific implications if it is given out or stolen.
However my primary concern is the blase attitude of the legal trained Board member who just stated it was “allowed in the constitution” when queried about the use of the database to EMAIL members from candidates private email addresses.
I think you’ll find it allows access to the Register yes, but not handing it over with no warnings about its use. It is disingenuous to put the onus on the board nominees to be aware of corporate rules and privacy law – he knows full well that the Mardi Gras board is generally considered by the community to a political election more aligned to a politician than a board of Macquarie bank.
If access to Register is given a warning must be given to the user on the rules governing its use – even just quoting from the constitution would probably do this.
Just checked and the Constitution shows: 7.12 (k) “Any Candidate may approach the Secretary for access to the Register for the purpose of providing additional material to such members at the Candidate’s own expense. ”
however :
5.2: “The Register must contain the following information about each member:
(a) the member’s name and address; and
(b) the date on which the entry of the member’s name in the Register was made. ”
There is NO mention of Email address, DOB, etc – if this was intended to be included in a Legal register it would surely have been included in the constituion – does this mean it cannot be included in the Register that you are allowed to make available to the candidates?
And therefore was the Membership email list made available & not the official register? and is this legal under the constitution or was it done outside the constitution as some people asked at the AGM?
Another significant worry is HOW the excel document was provided and why it was used on personal computers & not MG owned ones? If it comes out that the list of members details was emailed outside the Intranet MG have breached basic IT security rules and have compromised the list. Email is considered NOT secure – no company should send unencrypted data on normal email.
If this is the case have they breached privacy laws by not protecting our personal details? I do not know the answer to this …. but I would like an explanation showing they didn’t, and the IT security protocol document they follow to put our minds at rest.
Don’t you think after all this time we are a little tired of being taken for a ride? We don’t pay our membership for a bunch of losers to suck up to the board every year to see what they can scam. Supporting this organisation for so many years I won’t be renewing my membership I won’t par-take in Mardi Gras. You had your chance you screwed IT and the broader community over year after year after year.
Get your sponsorship priorities right get your management team right and STOP relying on “volunteers” to make up the staffing short fall and the buck has to stop with someone.
In most organisations someone somewhere is accountable. The way you treat community organisations who give a damn sight more about our community is shameful. Your high paying sponsors will only ever care about their bottom line. I understand business is business last year has shown me NMG is as incapable as ever of being run without corruption.
Making a decision to split parade and party is a joke. How many international visitors next year after the GFC will be able to afford an extra week’s hotel bill in Sydney?
Imrie you are a coward
NMG = FAIL
(-œUnder the plan a single board member would each be responsible for Parade, Party, Festival, Harbour Party, Sleaze Ball and Fair Day,
So lets get this right -¦going by what was said last night -¦ theres a paid Head Of Events who isresponsible for each of those events listed, theres a CEO who is paid to look after the entire Organisation, including the events listed, then theres a group of volunteers -˜charged’ with organising each event, each group has two co-chairs also responsible for their event, AND THEN theres also a Board Member responsible too?? If theres a Board member responsible, why is NMG paying people to do the job?)
The information you are quoting here Disgruntled, are the words of a journalist reporting something that he has been told by someone he knows. They are not claimed to be the words of the Board nor of any member from the Board. They are an idea; your attack of them suggests that you think that they are a bad idea. Did you raise them last night because if you did I certainly didn’t hear you.
(Last night the Board stated that mistakes were made on contracts because they were -˜afterall busy and only volunteers themselves’ -“ WELL SHOULDN’T THIS TELL THE BOARD to stop playing egotrips and looking after the Events, and leave that to the PROFESSIONAL being paid for it.)
The Board members have only ever acted as -˜Event Sponsors’ and I heard nothing last night nor did I read anything in the article which would suggest that the Board Members start to manage the events. Tony Knight quite clearly stated that he was glad that Katrina Martin was brought into the organisation to carry out those tasks and I hope she does hem properly.
(By their own admissions -“ mistakes were made because the Board was looking in the wrong place.
Create a new Board -“ done by AGM last night. But be a Board, not a group of little overseers.
Mike Smith -“ yes quite right, but really people or otherwise called members, obviously don’t care. If they did, the AGM would have had many more attendances than it did.)
I agree wholeheartedly Disgruntled and I hope that you will give this board all of your support and all of the feedback it needs to make sure it does the best job it can.
Mike I have read the Constitution and it very clearly states that only faxed or mailed Proxies are acceptable.
As for the rest of your statement I have no idea what was provided to candidates, to whom it was provided or what is allowed, so I have no comment.
I would hope that all candidates were given the same access and that the information about my membership doesn’t end up being sold without my consent.
I would suspect however, that the information that we give NMG becomes theirs in line with the policies that most organisations adopt about such things.
What do you think Australia Post does with your address? Believe me, I used to work there and they sell that database (and all of the lovely statistical breakdowns it contains) all of the time.
Proxies gathered via email 24 hours beforehand without notifying the new nominees they had access to the database, or that proxies via email would be valid, is far from fair and free elections.
I am actually more concerned that NMG saw fit to give all member details, which Joshua Cromthamel said contained not only email address but home address, phone numbers and other data, to candidates to use from their own email accounts. How can they guarantee the security of the data on networks other than their own. Then when questions, Josh Keech, the apparent legal adviser to the board stated that the privacy implications fall to those who chose to use the data, and as directors they were aware of that is.
What a joke. Who will be next to get our details? Atlantis selling me a cruise? Gaydar selling me a membership?
Proxies are a democratic way to cast your vote. I am one of the members who handed my proxy to my number one candidate and I am very happy with the result. Well except for the new board member who suggested moving the parade to William St… Pleeease….
“Under the plan a single board member would each be responsible for Parade, Party, Festival, Harbour Party, Sleaze Ball and Fair Day,”
So lets get this right …going by what was said last night … theres a paid Head Of Events who isresponsible for each of those events listed, theres a CEO who is paid to look after the entire Organisation, including the events listed, then theres a group of volunteers ‘charged’ with organising each event, each group has two co-chairs also responsible for their event, AND THEN theres also a Board Member responsible too?? If theres a Board member responsible, why is NMG paying people to do the job?
Last night the Board stated that mistakes were made on contracts because they were ‘afterall busy and only volunteers themselves’ – WELL SHOULDN’T THIS TELL THE BOARD to stop playing egotrips and looking after the Events, and leave that to the PROFESSIONAL being paid for it.
By their own admissions – mistakes were made because the Board was looking in the wrong place.
Create a new Board – done by AGM last night. But be a Board, not a group of little overseers.
Mike Smith – yes quite right, but really people or otherwise called members, obviously don’t care. If they did, the AGM would have had many more attendances than it did.
While I think the board does need one member to act as the face of the board and chair meetings, thank god they’re considering a shared approach.
Maybe this time we wont have to suffer through a ‘all hail king of the mardi gras’ approach as we have with another past chair that will remain nameless.
Doesn’t anyone feel that the number of proxies in the candidates hands to be a hijacking of democracy? By their own admission there were almost double the amount of proxies than people in attendance last night.
Congratulations to the new Board.
I think it would’ve been nice for the election results to be communicated in a formal email from NMG, but I understand it was a late night for all and the SSO got the story out first.
Thanks for the support offered by ‘A Member’ – I’m happy to my knowledge of strategic partnerships, especially in the travel and events industries, to NMG, and hope to remain an active volunteer.
I agree with -˜Another Member’.
But I have to say that the responsibility for renewal and refreshment of the Board is a two way street.
I would hope that the Board reaches out to the unsuccessful candidates Adam Atkin, Adam Bratt, Joshua Crouthamel & Mohamed Dour and seeks their ideas.
I would also hope that these four men offer those ideas freely and assist Mardi Gras investigate the practicality of their ideas and works with the organisation if it chooses to implement any of the ideas that the Board feels will add value to our organisation.
Organisations need a leader, maybe two.
As outlined at the meeting Anna McInerney can take on the public face roll of Mardi Gras (she will have to remember to return calls though!).
But to leave the board without a figure head rings alarms. Bring on a responsible chairperson to oversee the organisation and direct the way forward with the rest of the board’s support.
Leave the PR to the person paid to do the job.
Mardi Gras needs to encourage young people to be involved in the organisation and yet its the young ones who havent been responsible for screwing things up that didnt get on.
I hope that the board encourages those young people who showed their enthusiasm for the organisation by involving them in sone other way and encouraging them to stand again rather than just forgetting they ever stood.
Now that this election is behind us I would like to see all of the membership get behind the ENTIRE Board and let them know what form and shape we want the Festival, the Parade and the parties to take.
As a long serving volunteer I would suggest that everyone who wants to be involved join Mardi Gras, volunteer to work at one of more events and help make it all happen.
Viva La Mardi Gras