[EuroPython] Who is "the community" & voting

[Magnus Lyckå]

At 00:34 2003-07-17 +0200, Martijn Faassen wrote:
>   * if someone visited a EuroPython conference less than N years
>     ago, this person is a member/gets a vote. This means that all visitors
>     are members.

I'd like to adjust this item to something like "If someone
attended the previous EuroPython conference, this person does
not have to pay a membership fee to be a member."

I think membership in an organisation should always be the
result of an active decision by the member.

In Sweden, members of labour unions have been collectively
made members of the Socialdemocratic Party, and until not
long ago, people where automatically made members of the
Swedish state church at birth if a parent was a member. I
think this has made most thinking Swedes a bit allergic to
all suggestions of automatic membership...

It's fine with me that paying the conference fee will mean
that membership in the EPC society will be for free the next
year, and that EPC visitors are *invited* to become members,
but I think it's important that no person or organisation
becomes a member without actively stating that they want that.

I think that is important both for the EPC society and for the
members. No person should feel that "these guys claim that they
represent me, and I didn't say I wanted that". Also, the society
should not have members that just ended up members by default,
but don't really care about the community.


--
Magnus Lycka (It's really Lyckå), magnus@thinkware.se
Thinkware AB, Sweden, www.thinkware.se
I code Python ~ The Agile Programming Language