Online Meeting System for Societies and Committees?

T-Ranger asks: "This past weekend a board that I'm on, which usually handles all its formal motions during face to face meetings, had a formal motion go over the mailing list. Unfortunately, Majordomo was broken for 24 hours, so I think that the vote should be invalid. At the same time I have been pushing for more and more of the board's discussion to happen online, and in principal support online voting in this limited setting. So, I'm looking for some web based software that can handle it. Ideally it would record when each voter acknowledges each step of the process: the call for a motion; the motion; seconding of the motion; the formal call for discussion; the formal call for the vote; and then handle the vote itself. Knowing when each member acknowledges each step, IMHO, is a requirement for quorum; and I believe that there should be a consistency of the members who make quorum over the length of the formal process. Does anyone have pointers to such a system?"

MOOs work for this sort of thing

[Cecil]

Warning: Shameless plugs ahead. Disclaimer: I don't make any money from my pimping of MOO.

Although I don't know of something that does specifically for what you're asking for, in my experience [www.moo.ca] a MOO makes a good platform for conducting official meetings. Everyone logs in, you can talk to one another (privately if you wish), and logging is easy.

Plus, it's decently easy through the MOO's C-like internal programming language to code up a motion/voting system in a certain room so that everyone can head in there for a meeting and have everything handled and logged correctly.

More info about MOOs can be found here [mud.org] and documentation is plentiful on the web. Additionally, I could probably even give you some pointers if you were to drop by [www.moo.ca] my MOO [moo.ca].

Re:MOOs work for this sort of thing

[Caharin]

I'd have to second this idea. It was the first thing that came to mind for me when I read this article.

Basically, get a codebase and strip out a lot of the code. It should be a pretty easy task for anyone with a good programming background. It should go quickly. Make sure that each person has an account set up, so you can ensure that there are no people acting as others.

You'll be able to discuss, and with some custom code, vote. You, as an admin, can see everyone's IP to track them and insure untampered results. Easy!

Best of all, it can be customized to whatever you specifically need.

CSPAN called...

[Anonymous Coward]

...they want their mind-numbingly boring question back.

Zope

[bobv-pillars-net]

You could use Zope [zope.org] and Plone [plone.org] to accomplish this sort of thing. There is a very flexible workflow implementation. With a little python scripting you can make it do just about anything.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

important stuff

[TheSHAD0W]

It's very important for the shadow government [nctimes.net] to be able to stay in touch.

Go ahead

[cybermace5]

You know what you want; build it! About a week ago I knew nothing about MySQL and PHP, but I'm building a site to allow hobbyists and small machine shops to link up and do custom work. Basically, say you want to laser-cut a big logo on your modded case; well, you'd submit a request and then people on the site can let you know what kinds of equipment they have, and if they want any money above materials cost etc. Already have a bunch of users and several workshops up, and the request portion of the site will be live soon. Everything from the user login system on up designed from scratch. Notice that I'm not linking to it at this point, though.

It's not hard to learn this stuff, and you as a group can actually design something that uniquely works exactly how you want it to.

IRC

[SoundGuy666]

We use IRC when we are forced to have an online meeting. The time-logging is done for you by your favourite IRC client, as is the logging. Our solution to voting/etc was to use private messages to the secretary, or a simple "show of hands" where appropriate.

Cheap and cheerful!

OpenACS

[aquarian]

Try OpenACS [http]. While there are many web publishing and collaboration toolkits out there, OpenACS comes closest to supporting this kind of thing already. It would be very easy to do exactly what you're describing. Go to the Q&A bboard on the OpenACS site [www.http], and post your question there. I'm sure you'll get several good ideas.

sorry for the typos, links here, Re:OpenACS

[aquarian]

Try OpenACS [openacs.org]. While there are many web publishing and collaboration toolkits out there, OpenACS comes closest to supporting this kind of thing already. It would be very easy to do exactly what you're describing. Go to the Q&A bboard on the OpenACS site [openacs.org], and post your question there. I'm sure you'll get several good ideas.