[Inpycon] Decision making / Consensus building process. Was Re: Necessity of foreign delegates.

[Dhananjay Nene]

On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Anand Balachandran Pillai
<abpillai at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:07 AM, Noufal Ibrahim <noufal at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 21 2011, Dhananjay Nene wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> > We've decide the mailing list to be the place for clarifying and
>> > resolving issues and lets welcome comments so long as we can still
>> > ensure we can deal with them and work to closure quickly.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> Agreed and I think one days worth of discussion is okay for one of the
>> largest potential expenses that we can incur.
>>
>> FWIW, I don't think your initial mail was inappropriate (almost nothing
>> is). I was a little surprised but it's best to clear all this on the
>> list (along with the flames, smoke and the rest of it) rather than
>> resort to private emails and phone calls.
>
>  When I said "uncalled for", this is what I meant. The issue could
>  have been thrashed out between some of us privately by an
>  email to a few or a phone call before splashing it widely to the list.
>  I didn't mean that we shouldn't discuss these things. If I gave
>  off such a nuance, please excuse me.

I am getting extremely conflicting signals. I am confused.

>  I think some of us in this list deserve such a treatment considering
>  the effort we have taken in organizing many aspects of this conference
>  last year. As stake holders in IPSS and Inpycon and as  some of the
>  pioneers and early leaders in this forum and the conference, we deserve
>  and expect it.

A courtesy many including myself will only be too happy to extend,
provided we believe this is preferred way of doing things.

> I am sorry to say it out loud in this list, but considering
>  the volume of opinionated emails from those who lend more out
>  of their vocal cords and typing fingers rather than lending a hand
>  or a leg on the ground, I felt I had to say it.

Unclear where this is directed. But again, I thought thats a part and
parcel of the way things get done.

I think it is important to bring this out in the open. Anand, what you
refer to here is exactly the way I am used to the most historically -
if I may give that a name, the quiet diplomacy approach. At the same
time, I am led to believe that the preferred approach is to really
bring out all the issues in the open and thrash them in the open - the
loya jirga way. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loya_jirga). There is an
obvious tradeoff between these approaches not limited to how they
influence noise, transparency, involvement etc.

Add to that the complete amorphousness of decision making structures.
While there is transparency, there does remain a lot of ambiguousness
since there is no specific team in charge of decision making,
something I am adapting to though have never had to deal with this
degree of amorphousness ever before.

So my simple question is -> How do we want to handle it going forward.

Dhananjay