SBAY.ORG Members

The list on this page shows the membership of the South Bay Community Network, Inc., also known by its domain name "sbay.org", a California non-profit corporation based in Silicon Valley. sbay.org serves as an umbrella for communications-related technical groups and forums. It's all about creating and maintaining community.

On this page...

The purpose of membership
Becoming a member
List of members
Other organizations which use the "meritocracy" membership model
Voting status of members

The purpose of membership

Membership in the corporation is for those involved in the community-building and supporting roles that the corporation serves to the projects and groups which are organized under its umbrella. It actually isn't necessary to be a member of the corporation to participate in any projects or attend forums.

Anyone interested in the purposes of the corporation is qualified for membership. Generally, we expect members to be someone who participates in at least one Special Interest Group (SIG) or brings to the organization connections from their community involvement in Open Source Software or electronic communications. Just as with the SIGs, there are no dues for corporate membership. This is entirely an advisory and participatory role. The members of the corporation are in effect a wider pool of advisors than the Board of Directors. The members elect the officers and directors, and are the ones eligible to hold officer and director positions.

One scenario where a participant might choose to seek membership is when they're involved in one of the SIGs and take an interest in the wider community that the corporation serves. This becomes more likely when someone participates in more than one SIG.

Another scenario is if anyone seeks a position as an officer of a SIG. In order to maintain a sufficiently strong organizational link for the Volunteer Protection Act of 1997 to apply to the SIGs, we must require that officers of SIGs are members of the corporation. For the same reason, the leader of each SIG is also given a non-voting seat on the Board of Directors if they weren't already elected to a voting seat.

Becoming a member

Membership in the corporation is a privilege earned through participation. A potential new member may be nominated by any one of the following:

any three members of the corporation
any Special Interest Group of the corporation
the Board of Directors of the corporation

Nominees are voted in by the entire membership.

List of members

The members of the corporation are as shown in the table below.

Name	Amateur Radio Callsign	SIG Affiliations	Community Affiliations
John Amos	K6TVM	SVWUX	ARRL SCV Assistant SM, San Jose RACES
Craig Anderson	N6YXK	SVWUX	San Jose RACES
Reg Charney			ACCU
Mark Cohen	K6EF	SVWUX, Linux Picnic
Jeremy Cooper	KE6JJJ	Stratofox
Bill Dale	N2RHV	SVWUX, Linux Picnic	ARRL SCV SM, Milpitas RACES
Jennifer Davis		Linux Picnic	BayLISA
John Delaney		Linux Picnic	IEEE, SVEC
Owen DeLong	KB6MER	Stratofox	ARIN Advisory Council
Brad Douglas	KB8UYR	SVWUX, Stratofox, Linux Picnic	GRASS GIS, SBARA, Fremont ARES, Fremont CERT
Elise Engelhardt		SVWUX, Linux Picnic	SVEC, ASME
William Estrada		SVWUX, Linux Picnic	Mt Umunhum Wireless
Thomas "TR" Fullhart	KG6WEL	SVWUX, Linux Picnic, Stratofox
Ian Kluft	KO6YQ	Stratofox, SVWUX, Linux Picnic, RadioExam	San Jose RACES
Ben Loomis	KG6BNL	SVWUX
Steven Loomis	K6SPI	SVWUX
Sean Lynch	KG6CVV	Stratofox, SVWUX	San Jose RACES
Ted Matsumura	KC6RTB	SVWUX
James Morgan		SVWUX
Justin Rocha	KG6SGU	Stratofox, SVWUX, Linux Picnic
Steve Rubin	AE6CH	Stratofox, SVWUX
Cliff Skolnick	N1DPH	SVWUX	Apache Software Foundation
Heather Stern	KG6ZYC	Stratofox, SVWUX, Linux Picnic, RadioExam	BayLISA
Warren Turkal		SVWUX
Tim Utschig	KI6GDX	SVWUX, Linux Picnic
Mark Whittington	KA8I	Stratofox, RadioExam
Michael Wright	K6MFW	Linux Picnic	SVEC, San Jose RACES

Other organizations which use the "meritocracy" membership model

A "meritocracy" means governing by those who have made accomplishments. This membership structure was loosely based on that of the Apache Software Foundation. ASF also serves as an umbrella for volunteer projects. Though there are plenty of differences in the organizations, there were many times during the writing of our corporate By-Laws that it was observed we were trying to solve problems ASF had already dealt with. At those times we considered what was applicable to our organization. It's fair to credit ASF for the ideas and give a tip of the hat for the nice work.

Voting status of members

In some relatively rare circumstances, such as amending the By-Laws, a 2/3 vote of all the members is required.

We wanted to try to prevent situations where less than 2/3 of the votes are available to be cast, making such a vote impossible. During the discussions about the new meritocracy membership system, there were some ideas about having voting privileges expire and have members re-qualify for them. But that's not at all consistent with the kind of organization we've been or want to be. That idea didn't get far. Though it was a step along the way to better ideas.

It's unavoidable in any volunteer organization that people have cycles in which they have more or less time available. So we wanted to allow members to put up the figurative "do not disturb sign" when they need to, and then not be pestered to help reach a 2/3 vote. But we needed the system to be open for members to return to active status, which is consistent with the all-volunteer nature of our organization.