Hi everyone,

I've been thinking about how for some of us our committees feel a bit like silos and pondering Dorene's and Bonnie's ideas about where they might go. Based on that, I'd like to offer a suggestion and see what you think:

Namely, that committee work be interest-driven rather than structure-driven. Say I'm on the Education Committee (which I am) and I have a networking idea I'd like to work on with Outreach (which I do: CIIS as an ally to the Alliance). So I go ahead and pitch the idea to the Outreach folks and ask who wants to work on this with me. For the duration of the project, then, I'm on the Outreach Committee. If I have educational projects to do, I stay on Education; if not, I drift to Outreach for a while.

What happens if nobody shows up for a committee? Nobody is Pollinating at present, at least in public view. So that committee is temporarily an archetype: always virtually present, but unconstellated until people with an interest show up. When they do, why, they get to pollinating (get thee behind me, Freud).

The main thing will be for the Executive Committee, and Bonnie and I in particular, to have a good sense of which projects need work, and in what order. We can introduce these: "Anybody want to help Craig get the Alliance into his classes at CIIS?" In the absence of interest, either we don't work on it then, or we get volunteers to do it. Or I can serve as a floating committee chair, which I'm glad to do because I'm interested in what all the committees do.

I think one challenge will be keeping track of who is doing what. Perhaps we can notify someone (Dorene?) when we have a new interest to work on?

Curious to know what you all think of this. Cheers--