[TriLUG] Palmer for another SC term; proposed amendment to the bylaws

[Brian]

Woah, that was cool.  I highlighted a line of text, clicked Reply, and 
Thunderbird included only that line in the quoted material.  Neat! 
Anyway...

I have an opinion on this issue but haven't been able, so far, to find a 
succinct way of expressing it.  Thanks to Matthew Frazier's note, I have 
a lead-in.

On 4/26/2013 11:08 AM, Matthew Frazier wrote:
> the overall (perceived) attitude of TriLUG towards women

I'm a man, and I (like to think I) don't have any negative attitudes 
toward women, and (like to think I) don't contribute to such a 
perception when I attend meetings.  However, I'm a man, so I don't 
perceive the perception in the first place, since I'm not the one 
feeling shut out.

So the real question is, how do we change the perception?  A policy is 
all well-and-good, provided it's carefully worded (and it's clear that 
our Steering Committee is well aware of the need for caution in 
policy-making), but what does a footnote on an e-mail or a website do to 
affect how a person /feels/ when he or she walks into a TriLUG meeting?

My suspicion is that a policy is going to do b****r-all to change the 
perception.  The question is "what are we /doing/ that we can /do 
differently/?"  My perspective doesn't afford me the answer to that 
question.  Others with a different perspective than mine will have to 
provide that knowledge.  Otherwise we can only resort to randomly 
changing our behavior in the hopes of fixing a problem we don't fully 
grasp.  I suggest floppy straw hats and plastic sunglasses for everyone.

http://undecidedgames.net/~brian/hatbig1.jpg

Cheers,
~Brian