Geek Culture Community Events
After current board members voted by anonymous ballot, here are the results of the 2010 Legion of Tech Board Elections.
The 2010 LoT board is:
We welcome Jason and Christie to the board, and look forward to working with them to put on awesome events in Portland! 
Thanks to everyone in the community for your continued support!
Now that the nomination period has closed, we wanted to give you a quick update on where we are with the Legion of Tech board elections. As we’ve mentioned in our previous blog post, we hope to have 5 to 7 total board members in 2010, and we will be electing our new board at our next board meeting on February, 11, 2010. We will announce the results of the election on this blog within a few days of the election. Here are the candidates:
Running for re-election
Running for new board seats
Continuing to serve the remainder of their 2-year terms (not up for re-election):
Adam DuVander and Raven Zachary will not be running for re-election. They have both decided that they need to devote more time to their growing businesses. As founding members of the Legion of Tech board, both Adam and Raven have been instrumental in making Legion of Tech a success, and they have worked tirelessly on many of our events. We wish them both the best of luck.
We are getting ready to have the Legion of Tech board member elections in February, and we wanted to give people plenty of time to get involved. Normally, we hold elections in December, but given our recent issues, we voted to postpone elections until the February board meeting, which is currently scheduled for February, 11, 2010. We hope to have 5 to 7 total board members in 2010.
Now is your opportunity to run for the Legion of Tech board. In order to get your name on the ballot, you must meet the specified criteria and follow the process outlined here:
Current board members serving the remainder of their 2 year term:
Current board members who are up for reelection for a new 2 year term:
Current board members whose terms expire at the end of December and are not running for reelection:
A huge thank you to Raven Zachary who had been invaluable in his role filling in as interim chair, but who is too busy running his new business, Small Society, to continue as a board member in 2010. Raven was one of the founding members of Legion of Tech, and he was a co-organizer for the first Ignite Portland and BarCampPortland before we even started Legion of Tech. He will be missed, but we wish him the best of luck with his booming new company!
I regret to inform you that the Legion of Tech Board of Directors (”Board”) recently discovered that a previous board member had taken money from the organization. That person spent thousands of dollars on personal expenses using a credit card that the Board was unaware carried a balance. That card was connected to a bank account that the former director was to have closed months ago. The account remained open and the former director wrote personal checks from the money in the account–money that was to have been transferred to the new bank account upon its close.
Upon learning of this fraud last week, the Board acted swiftly to hold an emergency board meeting. Actions were taken to freeze both accounts and the individual was removed from the Board.
The Board has appointed myself (Adam DuVander) and Raven Zachary as the team to deal with this matter on behalf of the Board. Additionally, the board elected Raven Zachary to serve as interim chair for the remainder of 2009.
How does something like this happen? First, remember that we are volunteers that are motivated to bring people together for great events. To pull off something like Ignite Portland or BarCamp, all the organizers need to count on each other to do their part. The same is true on the Board. At this point it probably goes without saying that we misplaced our trust.
As current treasurer, this discovery came after months of repeated attempts to gain access to the financial records for the account where the fraud took place. Prior to this event, I never had any association with the account, outside of receiving a check for what I was told was the closing balance.
The new account at a different bank of which I do have control, has always had an up-to-date accounting available to the finance committee. In addition, we have improved our financial process. All expenses, of which we have few, will be signed by myself and another Board member. Additionally, all Board members will be aware of each expense.
With the assistance of an attorney, the Board is attempting to reach an agreement with the former Board member to repay all funds. It was only the pursuit of this agreement, on the advice of our counsel, that kept us from making this matter public earlier. Know that we have and will share as much as we possibly can.
Thank you for taking the time to understand this issue. Legion of Tech remains committed to producing Ignite Portland, BarCamp Portland, and related events.
Update: Raven posted a comment below with additional clarification - please read it.
Being on the Legion of Tech board is a big time commitment. We aren’t one of those boards where you can attend board meetings, provide advice and then go away until the next meeting. We’re a working board, and board members are expected to organize events and contribute in other ways to the organization. When life throws a curve ball and personal or work commitments start requiring more time, it can be very hard to continue participating on a working board.
This brings me to the point of this blog post. Over the past month, both Craig Fisk and Chris O’Rourke have resigned from the board to take care of personal and/or business issues that required more attention than they could provide while also maintaining their commitments to Legion of Tech. We wish both of them the best of luck and hope to see them involved as volunteers in future Legion of Tech activities.
The seven remaining board members are:
Our bylaws state that we will have at least 5 board members, but no more than 10 board members, so at this point, we don’t plan to hold any special elections to replace Craig and Chris. In fact, we have been considering reducing the size of the board anyway. The organization that manages the Open Source Bridge conference has only a three person board, and the majority of the event is run by volunteers. While we don’t think we want to reduce the board to three people, we think that having fewer board members would help us be a leaner organization with less overhead while giving other people in our community more opportunities to volunteer for events. Right now, we have so many board members, that most of our event organizing committees are made up of mostly board members.
We’d like to have more opportunities for people in the community who aren’t on the board to step up and help with events like BarCampPortland, Ignite Portland and Startupalooza. We’re excited about finding additional ways to get the Portland tech community more involved in our activities.
What do you think? How can we engage the community to be more involved in our events? How would you like to be involved?
With the first meeting of the new Legion of Tech board on Thursday, we elected new officers for 2009:
Last years officers were Chair: Dawn Foster, Treasurer: Todd Kenefsky, and Secretary: Raven Zachary. A big thank you to Todd and Adam for stepping into new roles, and we’re looking forward to many more events in 2009!
First of all, thank you to everyone who ran for the Legion of Tech board.
The new Legion of Tech board for 2009 is as follows (in alphabetical order):
For those who ran, but were not elected, thank you again for running. The competition was stiff, and all of the people running were strong candidates. We will move the names of those who were not elected to the board of advisors nomination list. We’ll be voting for advisors in the January board meeting.
I wanted to let everyone know that the Legion of Tech board elections are coming up in December. Anyone who wants to run for a board seat is welcome to participate in the election process.
The Election Process
Board Member Roles and Responsibilities
Board members are elected to 2-year terms and are responsible for upholding the bylaws of the organization. They are also required to attend monthly board meetings.
The day to day responsibilities of the board may include any or all of the following:
Advisory Committee
If you want to get more involved, but do not want to serve on the board of directors, Legion of Tech will also be forming an advisory committee made up of 5-10 people from the community (non-board members).
Purpose of the committee:
How it works:
What you need to do
If you are interested in running for the Legion of Tech board or the Advisory Committee, please contact your favorite member of the existing board to request a nomination. Keep in mind that the nominations are due on November 1 for the board of directors and on December 1 for the Advisory Committee.
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