Board Member Accessibility

[guest@endurance.net]

K S SWIGART   katswig@earthlink.net


I must confess that I have never had any difficulty in getting in touch
with any AERC board member and having whatever extent of dialog with them
to the extent that I am interested.

I have attended rides where they are either the ride manager, the ride
secretary, the ride vet, or just riders and have found them as
approachable as I would want them to be.  I have shared riding miles, ride
dinners, chatted before the pre-ride meeting.

I have talked with some of them over the phone, I have exchanged e-mail
with some of them.  I have discussed AERC issues, horse care issues, and
some just general philosphy of life issues.

To be fair, I counted some of them among my friends before they became
members of the AERC board of directors (and so have had greater
communication with them); which probably made those members more
accessible.  But I have generally found members of the Board of Directors
(even those that were virtual strangers to me) to be very accessible at a
ride and have ridden many miles down the trail with some of them.

Plenty of information is provided inside the front cover of every issue of
the Endurance News telling me who to contact and how to contact them with
respect to any issues that may be of concern to me.  Assorted members of
the Board publish their views and concerns in the Endurance News and if
these were to raise a concern with me I would have plenty of information
available for contacting anybody on the board that I wanted to (one does
not, after all, have one's telephone number published in a nationally
distributed magazine unless one is willing to take any phone calls that
come from having done so :)).

I must also admit, however, that the annual convention is not a place
where I would go if I wanted to express a personal view to a member of the
board (actually, annual convention is not a place that I would go, just in
general, but that is beside the point).  Time is in short supply at
convention, and by its very nature there are TONS of other things to be
doing at convention (they already book wuite a few events to run
concurrently--as well they should).  If I wanted to introduce myself to a
member of the board (because I would like to be able to put a name to a
face and I felt it was important to know them personally), then I would
arrange to do so in advance and they s/he could tell me what they thought
was a good time to do this (and there is no reason that this couldn't be
done at either of the social events--the dance or the awards
dinner/reception or it could be done by waylaying them on the way to the
bathroom).  But even so, convention wouldn't be the first place that I
would choose to do this for the very good reason that the convention is
the one time when a member of the board of directors is least likely to
have much by way of "spare" time.

Inaccessiblity of board members is not something that I have ever
encountered with any member of the AERC Board.  I haven't been in touch
with all of them, but I have never found any of them (past or present)
that I have ever tried to contact or to have a conversation with to be
unwilling to reciprocate.

But then, the annual meeting of the general membership isn't a place where
I would go to try to establish a personal contact and/or to engage in a
meaningful one-on-one dialogue.

I have found that that kind of thing is best done from the back of a horse
:).

kat
Orange County, Calif.

p.s.  Despite assertions to the contrary, the AERC is not a democracy...it
is a republic (I refer you to Plato's _Republic_ if you would like to
understand the differences...and why Plato vehemently asserts that a
democracy is a pretty shitty form of government).  As a result, it is
incumbant upon members to address issues to their representatives (i.e.
the members of the board) BEFORE those representatives are called upon to
make decisions (i.e. AT the board meetings).

The publishing to members of issues that are to be discussed at upcoming
decision making events is a good way to get members to do just this.
Inviting them to a "round table discussion" AT the decision making event
is not. Not, at least, if you want to be able to take into consideration
these opinions before making a decision and not have it turn into an
acrimonious brawl where no decisions actually get made (this, BTW, is one
of the reasons that Plato gives for democracy being a shitty form of
government).

Making representatives available between the decision making events is
also a good way to do this.  In this day of instant communication, pretty
much every member of the board is easily available to anybody who is in
possession of a telephone.