It is curious just how inefficient JCR Open Meetings/JCR Politics is. We have a good starting point - the JCR is elected via. STV, the JCR are required to meet 4 times a term, and have an Open Meeting every term.

Then we have people independently writing motions and submitting them. Not unexciting or particularly inefficient so far. But then you get to the Open Meeting. You discover that actually, quite a few people object to the wording of point 3.4, but otherwise find it agreeable. So you waste time arguing about pointless things and actually not getting to the point of discussion.

We also have an annoying point. A clear, precise motion takes time to write. So if there needs to be someone keen enough on writing up the problem, otherwise it doesn’t get raised.

The “Solution”

A good start would be to have the drafting of such items public. Several of us used a wiki for drafting motions, and this seemed to work rather well. Combine this with a discussion forum, where issues can be discussed in a more informal form, then many minor issues should reach the meeting in a mutually agreeable state. Where there are things to be discussed, they will be more obvious and should be reached quicker.
I think next term I’ll advertise a publicly-accessible UseModWiki for this purpose.

Documenting JCR/Generic Society Activities

In the longer term, Societies (JCR, Universities Societies, University student unions) need to look into how they can make themselves more transparent and accountable. In some respects internet/e-mail has removed transparency from the system (for example, a lot of e-mails sent which are not recorded, previously some of this would have been recorded in committee meetings). It is now the responsibility of the organizations involved to use the technology to improve communication. It isn’t difficult - organization and discussion can usually take place easier via. a wiki then lots of e-mails. This material just needs to be then stored offline regularly and we’re done. There are obvious advantages internally as well as for those observing. The main example being continuity and efficiency of learned processes - it will be recorded how/when people were found to speak/perform/rooms were booked, which the new committee won’t have to research afresh. In the case of College JCRs who are having to deal with college authorities who have been in their roles several years, this can only be a good thing.

Generalising

This is of wider importance to general government. Quite a lot of the ideas about transparency and openness can be scaled up. Why can’t local councils by default make information available on what they’re up to more easily available online? Informal discussion of planning applications by residents, trying to achieve changes that solve the problem before a formal objection has to be submitted.
A political party have an internally-editable, public-viewable working version of their manifesto on display. Members/voters could comment on what parts of the policies they agree with, discuss points of dispute. I’m sure the reader can think of better examples. Most importantly, if openness was improved at a student level, then hopefully we can get new politicians who are interested in openness continuing.
Unfortunately, there is a lack of an incentive for politicians to act in such a way, openness will lead to embarrassing things being released more often, which the public are likely to be less-than-forgiving about.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

I’m now no longer involved with The Archimedeans. Even better, we have a new webmaster, so I haven’t got anything to worry about.

In departing, I thought it would be a good idea to change to the New Frontend (the old frontend looks like this), and the backend code relating to the choice of the front end has been tidied up, so it is now much easier to redesign the front end design with a separate test version, and then instantly deploy. The update also makes the bookshop and past newsletters consistent with the rest of the site.

The only slight exception that still exists is the forums, the header here has been copy-pasted, but the alternative would be a lot more hacking. The left hand menu has been removed for the fora, since it would require some effort to even implement it at all, and then the hacking just mentioned to ensure it dynamically updates. This solution is much simpler.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

You may have come across this product before:

<--- Guylian' s Chocolate Sea Shells. Quite good but expensive.

Now, what do you do if you enjoy a branded product, but don't like the price? You buy a supermarket own brand. Too expensive, buy a supermarket basics/value own brand.

With that in mind, Sainsburys are selling their Basics version of this product, so if you don't want to spend about £5 on the original, you can buy this version for only £2.

But Valentines Day gets close, money is already being stretched by buying a quality card, and you want to buy chocolates as well, but don’t have £2. Say you only have £1. What do you do?

A potential replacement? —>

You might start running through some alternatives. Chocolate is chocolate after all, and who doesn’t like chocolate digestives dipped in tea? Well, those who don’t like tea for a start. But otherwise, Tesco chocolate digestives could be a good replacement. You get a lot more mass for your money after all (or, for mathematicians, why not a copy of your favourite theorems. You’ll get a lot of maths for your money).

Unfortunately, you may have a fussier girlfriend/boyfriend/girlfriends/boyfriends/whatever, who may consider your Chocolate digestive purchasing as just being cheap, not fully appreciating the beauty of your optimisation of their enjoyment. Luckily, Sainsburys know their market. The day before Valentines Day (well, this offer was probably running for a few weeks), they were selling the Basics version for only £1. Nothing says “I love you” more than a guy who optimizes how much enjoyment you get per £ spent on them.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there - 1 Comment(s) made).

Yay! The Lindy Hopathon was brilliant - lots of money has been raised (over £5,750 at the last look of the justgiving page), and we had a great night! The amazing Ros had done a fantabulous job organizing the event, and she clearly knew we were coming, as she had baked some lovely cakes (well, some other people also baked some cakes as well I think)!

We even managed to get on Anglia News:

Then we had Matt and Lotte’s leaving thingamajig at The Snug. Colin Hazel providing music, and generally fantastic company.
What could be more fun?

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

Firstly, I’m a sponsored dancer for the Cambridge Lindy Hopathon, for the CF Trust. I’ll be actually putting some more effort into getting sponsorship real soon, but for now, please sponsor me, by going to http://www.justgiving.com/lindyhopathon2008 , and mention my name in the comment.

Now, a rant about privacy…

Read the rest of this entry »

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

I opens a ticket for some minor corrections to the hpodder documentation. 3 hours later, it is fixed in the source. Oh yeah. Further, looking now, I probably could have made it as a patch in about 5 minutes, and sent it to the developer, which would take them no time at all to accept/reject.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

From bugs.kde.org:

bugs.kde.org temporarily offline
bugs.kde.org is temporarily offline to celebrate KDE 4.0.0 launch.

Insert spontaneous applause

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

The BBC Flash iPlayer has been launched.

Estimates for time until it is reverse-engineered and we know how to get hold of the lovely video files? Well, I say lovely. Probably FLVs.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there

“Weldon’s dice data” (mentioned in Real Analysis & Probability, Dudley p.273, but he references Feller, 1968, pp.148-149),
give the probability as 0.3377 plus/minus 0.0008 (presumably this is on a ridiculous confidence interval, maybe I’ll follow up the reference sometime), due to the fact that the faces are made with hollowed out holes for the numbers, making the 5 and 6 sides lightest, placed opposite 2 and 1, which are the heaviest sides).

This clearly implies that I have to change my strategies in dice-based games.

(Ramblings originally posted in Robert's Blog. Please leave any comments there