First ITSA Annual General Meeting announcement!!!!

[ta0]

The first ITSA Annual General Meeting will take place December 12th (Saturday) to the 20th (Sunday).
It will be a virtual assembly where every full member of ITSA will be able to contribute their ideas and vote using the internet.

This is the inaugural assembly and therefore it will be historic. I hope many more will become full members before then and participate.
http://www.spintops.org/membership.html

A special board will be created for this, I am not yet sure if inside this forum or at a forum on spintops.org.

[ta0]

As of this morning we had 34 paid full-members from 8 countries.
I think we should have at least 50 voting members from 10 countries by the time of the inaugural general meeting. Let's make it happen!

If you have become a member (either full or junior) you should have received an email from me with your membership card. If you are a full member and your membership number is 30 or lower you should have received your embroidered patch already. I have a stack of 7 more envelopes to mail tomorrow 

[ta0]

We already reached 10 11 countries! 







We have members from: USA, France, Czech Republic, Mexico, Japan, UK, Spain, India, Netherlands, Australia and Puerto Rico!
I expect members from Colombia very soon.

EDIT: I added Puerto Rico. I was reminded that it has its own Olympic Team.

[jim in paris]

10  countries is a good start !!

we still miss Canada and Italy



jim

[André Boulay]

This is great!   

[ta0]

Almost all those who are full (regular) members of ITSA should now be able to see (if you are logged in) a new board bellow Current Posts called ITSA Official Meetings and inside there one called ITSA 2015 Annual Meeting. This is where we will be having the first annual virtual general assembly! 

For the time being the board is invisible to junior members and non-members. Later I will look into how to give limited access to non-regular members.
As I wrote on the first post there: We are making history!   

[ta0]

Less than a week left for the beginning of the inaugural general meeting!

Thanks to all those who have become members. As of today we have 40 paid members who can vote. I would like to reach 50 this week.
It has been nice to get applications from spinning top aficionados who I had not heard from in a long time. Still, some big names are still missing (including players who had a strong opinion about the name of the association!)

I would say that at this time players are underrepresented with respect to collectors and turners, considering the forum membership and the fact that one goal of the association is to recognize top spinning as a bona fide sport and provide players with events to attend. My dream is that one day ITSA will be a member of  IWGA (International World Games Association) which is composed of non-Olympic sports but it is still recognized by the International Olympic Committee.

Remember that any member can be a candidate for the board of directors. In fact, according to the by-laws (to be ratified or modified as the first business of the assembly) the number of directors could be increased to 5 or 7.

[ta0]

I have looked into making the ITSA official board visible to non-members of ITSA, but with the board settings that seems to not be possible without also giving posting and poll privileges. Unfortunately, I am currently too busy to look at mods of the forum to achieve this.

If you are an ITSA member, you should log-in: we currently have a vote to ratify the by-laws (voting lasts 3 days).
Next we will be voting on the board of directors and the international board.

If you are not yet an ITSA member, if you join us now you can still participate in this historic inaugural meeting (it will last until next weekend). You will also officially be a founding member of ITSA!

[ta0]

I have made the general meeting board visible to Junior Members. They will be able to participate but not vote. The drawback is that during this week they won't be able to vote on polls on any other board either. After the general assembly is over I will restore their poll voting permission.

Unless I figure out something else, I cannot give non-members visibility of the meeting board without blocking them from posting on all the other boards. But you can always join ITSA as a Junior member for free and then you will be able to see the board and participate in the inaugural meeting.

[ta0]

The first vote (to ratify the bylaws) ends Tuesday. At the time I am writing this, it is 21 in favor, none against, so it is going to pass. But the more votes the merrier!
There are currently 4 candidates for the Board of Directors. We will probably start that vote soon after the bylaws are ratified.
I am happy that we reached 50 paid members. But more is again better, so if you have been procrastinating: itsa time you join!

[ta0]

The bylaws were ratified, 22 to 0!   
Considering the time it takes to read them, it is great that 44% of the full members took the trouble to do it.
We are completely official now! 
It's a bird . . .  It's a plane . . . It's a ITSA!!!

Vote is open to elect the Board of Directors!
The vote includes an amendment to make the number of directors 4.
Voting lasts 48 hours.

[ta0]

After the vote for directors ends, the next things to consider are going to be more interesting, like the International Board, US nats "committee" and general goals for next year.

If you have not done so already, I suggest you post a "I am present" on the general discussion thread.

[ta0]

We are looking into seeding the International Board.
We also have poll to determine the priorities of ITSA next year: please, log in and give your opinion if you are a member!

The latest member is Joe Mauk, so we can add the Philippines flag! 

[ta0]

The inaugural ITSA general assembly has ended!
Congratulations to all who participated! It was a great success!


I have made it visible to all forum members (you have to log in and it is read-only).
I might eventually try to move it to the spintops.org site.