Proposal: Define committees; empower them to decide how to communicate

[lilliealbert]

As the board takes on more of a leadership role with the ongoing efforts that Sarah Allen has been leading (cross-geography knowledge sharing, communications, volunteer development), I propose that the board:

• formalize those committees
• name a committee chair for each of them
• set expectations for reports on how the work is going
• empower those committees to communicate in whatever way is most effective for them

I've expanded a bit on those ideas below, board & non-board members, please discuss in the comments!

---

Formalizing Committees

The committees that I think already exist in some form:

• Communications (blogging, Twitter, maybe someday a newsletter)
• Student-to-Volunteer Development (aka "Leveling Up Working Group")
• Cross-geography knowledge sharing

We should work with Sarah A to figure out who is currently participating in these committees, and if there is someone there who would want to chair the committee, and if not, recruit someone.

The board and the current committee members should come up with a 1-2 sentence description of the committee's work, and figure out what the committee would like to accomplish in the near- and far-term.

(I would also like to add Operations, Teacher Development, Curriculum Development, and Outreach & Diversity committees, but that can come later.)

Committee Reports

I propose that each committee writes up a short monthly report (a paragraph or two) about what they worked on that month, along with any blockers / things that they could use the help of the board in resolving. The board can then aggregate the reports and share a summary with the larger RailsBridge community. (Potential bonus from this: people see what each committee is doing and get involved?)

(It'd be important that to let all the committee chairs knows that every month's report doesn't have to be epic — the report "We met once in November and discussed curricula, then the rest of the month was swallowed by the black hole of the holidays" would be a totally valid one.)

Choose Your Own Adventure ... of communications options

Each committee should be able to set up its own communications structure. Some committees will need to have synchronous communications (Google hangouts, conference calls, in-person meetings if possible), and some will prefer asynchronous communications (mailing lists, GitHub Issues, IRC or Slack?). We should post each committee's communications preferences somewhere so that interested individuals can join their discussions.

It'd be great if the board could work with the committees on finding the most effective ways to communicate.