[Inpycon] Concerns/Issues with PSSI (WAS: Stepping down from the PyCon India 2018 core team)

[Vanitha Shanmugam]

On 8 March 2018 at 23:40, vijay kumar <vnbang2003 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>>>
>> There is the email thread that happened in PSSI mailing list.
>>
>> https://anandology.com/tmp/pssi-sponsorship-thread.pdf
>>
>> In which, Vijay threatened to run PyCon India without PSSI and demanded
>> Sree for explanation for why a courier was delayed by a day.
>> Is that a way to treat a senior volunteer who as been with PyCon India
>> from the very beginning and even lost a family member for PyCon India (yes,
>> many of you don't know that).
>>
>
> Request you not to mistake me for asking this. But I could not understand
> "for PyCon India" in the above statement.
>
> Anand C,
> I would request you to provide complete info for everybody here to
> understand. All I asked Sree was to share the soft copy of invoice when the
> hard copy was already couriered. Even after repeated requests Sree neither
> shared the soft copy with PSSI board members nor with PyCon India core
> volunteers. This was not the first time he did this but he did the same
> during PyCon India 2017 for every payment or invoice. He always agrees to
> follow a protocol defined however,when the time comes, he ignores the
> protocols and end up doing what he wants. He ignores the reminders and
> requests to follow what we agreed as well.
>
>
> Just to let everyone know here, I had requested Sree to share PyCon India
> 2016 and 2017 expense report which he agreed. But he never could get
> approval from the core team of PyCon India 2016 and 2017 to share the same
> even after multiple requests. After which he requested PSSI executive
> members to process Audit report of 2016-17. I would request everyone here
> to help me understand how an Audit report can be processed without knowing
> the expense report of the one and only event supported by PSSI.
>
> And for the record, Anand C and even the President of PSSI did not take
> any action to get PSSI follow process instead I was questioned for
> requesting to follow process. And it continues here as well.
>
> Also, every year PSSI comes up with new process for PyCon India depending
> on who are leading PyCon India that year. In PyCon India 2017, PSSI agreed
> to let the core volunteers take decisions on everything related to the
> event and PSSI act only provide financial support. But in 2018, the process
> was changed and the core volunteers were not consulted neither their
> concerns were considered. That was the reason I said that we might have to
> rethink on working with PSSI. The email shared by Anand C has all the
> necessary info.
>
> I had a hard time making PSSI board members understand our bye-law to
> involve executive members of PSSI in all the decision taking. I took that
> struggle hope that would help resolve the issues in PSSI but you went ahead
> with dissolving the board without even understanding how Indian law works
> and what is there in the bye-law.
>
> How can one trust PSSI when there are so many internal conflicts?
>
> Note: I was told repeatedly that PSF has given PSSI authority to run PyCon
> India. Could you please provide me insights as to when and how this
> discussion with PSF happened. Being a PSSI secretary, I do not have this
> details.
>
> All this make me feel that a set of people here has something against me
> and come hard on me for whatever I say or do.
>
>
>
>> I Agree that PSSI has its own problems. I've been arguing that PSSI need
>> to be more efficient and transparent. It is a big mess and there is no
>> sense of trust among the members. I've suggested everyone to stepdown and
>> let new people representing all python usergroups in India to take over and
>> drive. Everyone who replied to that agreed except Vijay and Varnita.
>>
>>
> Thanks to you, who helped creating PSSI bye-law, we cannot just get the
> new members in and replace the board at once. Any member must complete a
> year before becoming a board member. Looks like you missed to read the
> response instead made up mind that we are not agreeing by just checking who
> the sender is.
>

+1
Including email discussion on dissolving board in PSSI mailing list for
reference here. [0]

Just curious, if it was just me and Vijay who did not agree to dissolve the
board, why PSSI did not proceed with dissolving the board? In a community,
you cannot wait for consensus from every member and everybody has rights to
share their opinion and the decision goes with majority. There are 12
executive members [1] and how can just 2 people disagreeing impact a
decision?

Please do not expect everybody to agree with what you say and naming them
in public just because they did not accept does not look sensible to me.
Request you to respect everybody's opinion.

Also, we suggested to open membership to gradually replace PSSI board as
replacing board at once by nominating people was not an option as per PSSI
bye-law. We even called for a meeting to discuss about membership policy
and also on opening membership. Only 4 members (Sree, Krace, Vijay and me)
attended the meeting. Anand C who suggested to dissolve the board did not
attend the meeting. I wonder if it was done intentionally to dissolve the
board as suggestion provided was not processed.

If I remember right, the 5 year term of existing board will be completed by
this June and we do not have members to take over PSSI. This was
communicated well before requesting to open membership and we could not
come up with policy still.

None of the policies made in PSSI are followed. We have had so many
discussions in PSSI mailing list to get answers for certain queries and
also to make sure the process is followed. But nothing has helped. There
are lot many open email threads and I have no trust that those threads will
be closed. I hope this email will not be added to that list and request
everybody here to suggest a way forward to fix this.


[0] : https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VCN27zqKzQb8tpT9foNiLKUMKR4oT2nu
[1] : https://pssi.org.in/  <https://pssi.org.in/>




Thanks,
Vanitha
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