Our primary goal is still to embody the inclusive values of the Icrontic community, and to empower everyone to establish and communicate healthy boundaries. What we missed in the last version is making any distinction between safety and comfort. We also realized that the language we used in the Code in previous versions came across as pretty dry and "corporate" sounding.

As a result, we revised the Code to include more of an authentic Icrontic voice, and to reinforce the idea that although we want everyone to be comfortable, the true purpose of the Code of Conduct is to help people feel safe in all Club settings.

Introducing version 3.0 of the Icrontic Code of Conduct.

Highlights include such gems as "goofy and sexy nerds" and "Do Do This Shit" - it really is worth reading!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z9qYna1hbyxABfxsMTFxD2BH2V50khKHQYR8bBbmYZI/edit?usp=sharing

Documents

• Icrontic's Bylaws, signed & enacted 20 March 2024.
• Icrontic's Code of Conduct
• Icrontic Club Membership

Minutes

• 25 Aug
• 28 July
• 8 July
• 19 June
• 8 June
• 5 May

Historical

• Full Board formation announcement
• Initial Board formation announcement
• Transition team & Club formation kickoff announcement

We have improved our Icrontic Social Club Code of Conduct with a new version to make sure that our community is welcoming and safe for everyone. We want to empower people to feel comfortable establishing their own boundaries and communicating them. We want those boundaries, with specific and explicit consent, to be the foundation of our relationships and interactions. We want our community members to feel safe establishing a boundary, withdrawing consent, and reporting violations without fear of retaliation.

After reflection, we felt the first version of the Code fell short of these goals in a few ways. We believe our new version (version 2) of the Icrontic Social Club Code of Conduct reflects these community values and empowers each of you to feel comfortable and safe in this community.

We value and we support each of you.

Sarah, Linc, Brian, Rob & Emily

Icrontic Social Club Code of Conduct version 2.1

Link to Document

All Icrontic Social Club members, event attendees, event-runners, sponsors and volunteers are required to agree with the following code of conduct. Icrontic's Board of Trustees and their designees will enforce this code. Full cooperation from all persons is mandatory to help ensure a safe environment for everybody. We expect everyone to follow this code in all contexts.

Summary

Our Club is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, level of ability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), theological perspective, technology choices, or relationship status. People violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from events, Club digital platforms, the Club itself, and any Club venues without a refund at the discretion of the Board.

Consent and Conduct

Our Club seeks to empower people to feel comfortable establishing boundaries. Consent should be built into your behavior and actions at Club events. If you intend to engage with someone in a manner that could be perceived as intimate or personal, never presume consent. Always seek explicit permission beforehand. We also emphasize the importance of respecting individuals’ autonomy and avoiding any form of peer pressure when seeking consent.

Our Club does not tolerate discrimination, harassment, bullying, intimidation,non-consensual behavior in any form, or any behavior that undermines the well-being and dignity of others.

Unacceptable behavior includes:

• Harassment which includes (but is not limited to) unwelcome and offensive conduct based on (but not limited to) gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, level of ability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), theological perspective, technology choices, relationship status.
• Social or peer pressure, deliberate intimidation, bullying and/or stalking, and any other behavior which is likely to cause alarm or distress to a reasonable person.
• Photography or recording that can reasonably be interpreted as harassment.
• Targeting and/or intentional misgendering or deadnaming individuals, including in a passive-voice or sarcastic tone and/or structure. Accidental misgendering is not a violation of policy and is encouraged to be addressed in a respectful, gentle manner by all parties involved.
• Sustained disruption of talks, event flow, or individual events (including through intoxication by any substance).
• Inappropriate or unwanted physical conduct. This includes touching, hugging and kissing. Please respect people’s “personal bubble” without explicit consent. Consent can always be withdrawn.
• Unwelcome sexual or other personal attention. Be aware of and respect the personal boundaries of other attendees, which may differ from your own.
• Theft or extortion, including by deception.
• Mocking or sarcastic patterning/behavior towards rules and regulations in a group, team or event setting.
• Retaliation against any individual who reports an incident or concern, including but not limited to issues of consent.
• Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior, or any behavior that is against the law.

Incidents

If you are being subject to unacceptable behavior, notice that someone else is being subject to unacceptable behavior, please first consider informing the person or persons responsible that you would like them to stop. Often the offending behavior is unintentional and those involved will resolve the incident amicably.

If you believe that bringing up the incident with the person or persons involved may have negative consequences for you or others, or could lead to further breaches, or if you are uncomfortable with the confrontation, please report it.

If you reach an amicable outcome without reporting, we encourage you to still report for awareness. You can specify your report is for informational purposes only and requires no action.

If you are unsure whether to begin the reporting process, we strongly recommend you privately document your experience to preserve details while your memory is strongest.

Concerns

If you encounter behavior that makes you uncomfortable, we encourage you to let us know -- not to get anyone in trouble, but so we can learn how to be better to each other and support everyone's growth.

Reporting

We value and appreciate all efforts to provide a safe and friendly community for all. Violations of this code reduce the value of the community for everyone. If unacceptable behavior persists - even after the person involved has been asked to stop - or if you feel uncomfortable with confrontation, the behavior should be reported to any Board member or a Board designee.

When reporting an incident or concern, you will be consulted on what level of anonymity you need to feel safe and what outcomes you hope to see. We default to believing victim statements.

The Board member’s contact information (and/or that of their designee) will be posted in an official Club digital platform (such as Discord), and for each event. No one else is authorized to act on their behalf without explicit permission on a case-by-case basis.

Enforcement

Persons asked to stop any unacceptable behavior are expected to comply immediately.

If a person engages in unacceptable behavior, the Board will take any action they deem appropriate. Possible actions may include:
Warning the person officially to discontinue the unacceptable behavior
Suspension of some or all of membership benefits (either temporarily or permanently)
Expulsion from the Club

The Board members or their designees will be happy to help participants contact local law enforcement, provide escorts, or otherwise assist those experiencing harassment to feel safe.

We value you, and we support you.

1. We finished defining Committees: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DQpcm-F-_drjSVZMoJ1gGsfEWdd4nAxyHa99rth915Y/edit
2. We assigned folks to Committees (but you can still volunteer! https://forms.gle/k4Rp8i1otKZbyvju8 )
3. We made minor revisions to the Code of Conduct based on community feedback: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z9qYna1hbyxABfxsMTFxD2BH2V50khKHQYR8bBbmYZI/edit
4. At no time did Rob leave his son out in the rain.

We chose a controversial selection strategy: If you volunteered for a committee — tag, you're it. 😂

Committee assignments start 1 August, and your first act should be to choose a Chair, read & understand your committee definition (and ask for clarifications if needed), figure out how you'll work, and recruit anyone else you think is required for success. Each Committee will have its own private Discord channel to facilitate communication. It would be great to read the other committee definitions as well so you understand the overlap!

The Board is here to help if you have questions or challenges!

Here are the current committees:

• Membership: @primesuspect, @CB, @FridayUnited, @DontCallMeKelso, @Massalinie, @GnomeQueen
• Moderation: @BobbyDigi, @CB, @cola, @DontCallMeKelso, @Linc, sparkles, @Sazbean
• Expo: @Linc, @CB, @BobbyDigi, @GnomeQueen, sparkles, @FridayUnited, @SailorDoom, @GHoosdum
• Events: @Annes, @Linc
• Platform: @Linc, @Strikes
• Archives: @GnomeQueen, @Linc, @primesuspect

Thanks to all our past and upcoming volunteers!

We would especially like to request WOMEN to volunteer for the MODERATION committee!

Volunteer here: https://forms.gle/k4Rp8i1otKZbyvju8

Membership in Icrontic is not required to participate in the community, attend events, or game with Icrontic folks, but membership carries with it the benefit of having a voice in the shape and future of the community. Some of the benefits of membership include:

• Eligibility for board seats and committee positions!
• Swag! (Including a very nifty official membership card!)
• Receiving official club announcements and communications!
• Potential discounts on events and activities!
• Respect and admiration of your peers!
• A special role in our Discord server!
• Probably a lot more!

Membership is granted on an annual basis, and is $5 per year. If you participate in ANY Icrontic event that has a ticket cost or fees associated, that purchase also includes membership if you'd like (e.g. all paid Expo attendees are eligible to become members). Membership can also be sponsored by another member if you are unable to pay!

In order to be eligible for membership, you must be 13 years old and you must agree to the Icrontic Bylaws and to abide by the Icrontic Code of Conduct

To sign up as a member,:

• STEP 1: Fill out this form: https://forms.gle/g4wgq4bejo21TWP8A
• STEP 2: Until we have a better mechanism in place, send $5 to @Linc via Paypal, CashApp, or Venmo per the instructions on the form. If you have bought a 2024 Expo ticket, just fill out the form and we'll handle it manually since your ticket includes eligibility.

Membership is opt-in so if you DON'T want to be a member, that's fine!

It is important to note that no one channel takes precedence over the other: We have only opened multiple channels of communication so as to meet community members' personal preference or communication needs and as a way to be as accessible as possible we have chosen these three methods of communication.

On 8 June 2024 we had the second Board of Trustees meeting for the Icrontic Social Club. This was our first time meeting as a "complete" board! I was joined by @primesuspect, @sazbean, @ghoosdum, and @massalinie. We're excited to make a few announcements from our very productive 3.5-hour session.

First, we officially added @ghoosdum & @massalinie to the Board and selected board officers. For the term ending 1 Aug 2025, our President will be @sazbean, our Treasurer will be @ghoosdum, and I'll be our Secretary.

Second, we established an official system for club membership, Code of Conduct, and official communication channels. Those were announced separately.

Third, we approved the mission & scope for our first two committees. They will be the Membership Committee and the Moderation Committee. We'll explain them in greater detail and solicit volunteers in a separate announcement.

There's still lots to do! Our next Board meeting will be the first day of Expo, 19 June.

The initial board (Sarah, Brian, and myself) sat down to consider them all on Sunday, 5 May and talked about how we hope to see things organized. After a thorough discussion of all the candidates, we realized we could move forward much quicker than planned.

We want the Board to strictly be an oversight body. They set the guardrails on governance, interpret the Charter, and provide a backstop for accountability. And… that’s about it. We don’t want the Board to get directly involved in things like organizing events, moderating Discord, or managing where we keep files & photos.

These areas and many others are (or will soon be) places for leadership in our community. We hope EVERY single person nominated volunteers for prominent roles in the committees that will soon be forming, because we need their support.

As an oversight body, everyone has to live with the results if the Board decides something. Who would everyone trust to make sober, considered but also emotionally intelligent choices when it really mattered? Empathy & curiosity were at the top of our list for priorities.

After thoroughly reviewing all the candidates, we had enthusiastically unanimous agreement on exactly two. We also decided it was best to start conservatively with a 5-person Board, leaving open the possibility of a bigger Board in the future if it’s warranted. Therefore, we chose to SKIP the planned interview process and move forward immediately with those two appointments.

We’re excited and pleased to announce that Emily McRae (@Massalinie) and Rob Updegrove (@GHoosdum) will be rounding out the first full term for the Icrontic Board of Trustees.

Please join us in congratulating our new trustees!

ahem. What I meant to say—

We've been working on a transition plan for moving the community from a private-ownership structure to a board-led structure. It's not about making big changes to the community, it's about creating a more predictable power structure & accountability that doesn't rest on one person's shoulders. We were all set to nominate our Board when I realized we had a chicken-and-egg problem. If we're trying to move to a less owner-centric model, isn't a bit weird to hand-pick the entire board without more input? On the other hand, we haven't even defined "membership" yet, and auditable elections would be an administrative nightmare on top of that.

Our solution? Form a minimum "first" Board to select the rest of the Board.

I am pleased to announce that as of last night (20 Mar 2024) around 8PM ET that Icrontic is no longer a privately-owned endeavor and, in fact, has a Board of Trustees. The inaugural members are myself (Lincoln Russell), @primesuspect (Brian Ambrozy), and @Sazbean (Sarah Worsham). We'll be choosing at least 2 additional Board members to be officially seated at the start of the annual term (per the bylaws), 1 August.

We met at La Palma in Detroit and signed the official paperwork. A bonus unimpressed @Pink is also included.

To do this bit of legal gymnastics, we added an Article 8 to the charter, establishing how we made the transition.

As there's still no legal club entity this is all symbolic, but I think it's an important one. Icrontic no longer has co-owners, it has a Board of Trustees. May it provide another 25 years of fun and shenanigans. Cheers!

There's also a lot of room for improvement about how we communicate with the rest of the leadership team and how we make important decisions. After a few months of research and reflection, I decided the best way to accomplish all those goals was to form a Board of Trustees for the community. We can start that process now and hopefully put it in place sometime near Expo.

I've made an FAQ about what this means for folks who want all the details. The key takeaways are that we're going to do even more work this year to be intentional about how we manage this community and give more folks an opportunity to participate in making it the best it can be and ensuring it lasts.

If you're not interested in how the sausage gets made at Icrontic, you can safely ignore all this. This isn't about an edict to change the community, just in how it's managed (currently in private). If we do everything here successfully, you won't notice anything but small, positive changes over time.

What's the big idea?

Forming a Board of Trustees for Icrontic.

A board of trustees is a "governing body" for an organization. Basically, they're a small group that meets periodically to discuss high-level policy and vote on it. This is different from running the forum, Discord, or events directly.

Why form a Board?

The 20-year longevity of our community has hinged in no small part on my partnership with Brian. Brian has lately stepped back from day-to-day management and I'm uncomfortable with the position that leaves me in. There's a very big difference between a partnership and one person having a "benevolent dictator for life" role. I think it's a step backward, and it places more pressure on me.

Privately inviting others to be “co-owners” feels empty, too. All you "own" is a wild amount of responsibility and the ability to accidentally break things with alarming speed. You have to love it to do it, and it's OK to not want to commit to doing it forever. Reframing it as a “community trustee” makes it an honor and a limited-time commitment, not something you feel obligated to do.

Ultimately, a Board is a more sustainable model for community governance if we want Icrontic to be around in another 20 years.

Are you trying to quit community leadership?

No. Perversely, doing this is a lot more work for me than the status quo.

I think the system as it currently stands has a visibility & communication problem. I do a lot of work for Icrontic silently behind the scenes that gets reported to few or no one, because I've always just done it and there’s rarely reason to talk about it. I'm currently head moderator, head event planner, event host, treasurer, secretary, head of procurement, and head engineer — that’s just off the top of my head.

I think about the community in terms of 5 or 10 years into the future and there’s not a clear audience for me to discuss it with. Creating more structure will put us on a path to more clearly communicating goals and formalizing roles so that it's possible for other folks to fill them if they desire. I think it's highly likely I continue in many of those roles in the immediate future, but I'd like an orderly way to hand off some of them over time so the community isn't forever reliant on my bandwidth and I don't feel obligated to volunteer for things for which my enthusiasm has waned.

Wasn’t this a team effort all along?

We couldn’t have managed this long without the outstanding help of our moderator team and our event planning team. I think the challenge is that what we’ve most successfully delegated thus far is tasks more so than leadership. I anticipate more top-level structure will have positive knock-on effects to our entire process.

What would a board do for Icrontic?

When the Board first meets, it will do so with a charter (created by the transition team). Just like the US Constitution defines some basics of how Congress works, that’s what a charter does for a Board. It’s just broad strokes for “how does this even work.”

The charter will lay out a values statement and purpose, but that’s about it. My hope is the first Board will mostly help codify what we already have: A large committee for moderators, a large committee for Expo planning, and a small committee for managing our web server. They would do this by appointing co-chairs, giving them missions, and formally asking folks to volunteer for them each year, so we’re sure everyone is invested in the mission. I don’t actually have the energy to do this right now, so this is already a huge improvement if we get that far.

I plan to re-volunteer for most things I currently do. We’re still using ICHQ for events. This is just making space for other folks to volunteer in new ways too. For me, it’s making my opt-in explicit instead of assumed. For everyone else, it’s a structured way to decline something or offer alternatives.

Eventually, the board would presumably control community assets (domains, data, software, and logo). Note the board is NOT directly responsible for moderating the community or running Expo themselves. It’s for high-level direction and continuity, not day-to-day management.

How would we initiate this?

My proposal is forming a 7-person (probably) board from a pool of nominations made by the community. Brian and I will (probably) select the initial board with the help of a transition team, and we'll likely be members of it. They’ll meet a few times a year to check in on how everything’s going and make changes as needed.

How will the transition team work?

Use the Google Form for self-nominations below. We’ll select a few folks to help us, with the goal of wrapping up by Expo. I anticipate a few meetings over 4 months (March-June), probably mostly over Discord text chat. I’ll probably do most of the document drafting unless others are inclined. I’d like to make this a “low lift” for volunteers, not a major time commitment. The role of the transition team is consultative, not final arbiter, but our goal will be consensus. I hope to have the team in place by the end of February.

What work will the transition team do?

Drafting a value & purpose statement for Icrontic is the primary goal. That will be embedded into the charter for the board, which will need to be considered for further changes, additions, deletions. Soliciting nominations for the Board would also be helpful. The transition team will, I hope, brainstorm on what qualities we're looking for in our Board composition and what individuals would be a great fit. Most of this work will be asynchronous, but we'll meet synchronously a few times as well, as folks schedules allow.

A successful transition team will produce a polished charter (with value statement) and 10+ nominations for the Board.

How do I volunteer for the Board?

The transition team will determine how to conduct nominations to the Board and frame how we solicit them. I hope to begin that process no later than May. It should include enough details for you to gauge your interest in the required amount and type of work that will be involved.

What if no one wants to do this?

If we receive less than 10 volunteers to serve on the Board, or have other clear indications this plan isn’t going well between now and Expo, we may choose to abort the plan. We can’t force folks to be interested and engaged in self-governance, and it’s not the end of the world to keep the status quo. (Nothing about this answer should be interpreted as us being less than wholly dedicated and motivated to seeing this through, we’re just accounting for all possibilities.)

So a Board owns Icrontic now?

No. Well, maybe? It’s complicated. First, a transition team will help Brian and I draft a values statement and initial charter for the board. We’ll consider a roadmap for future governance. Key questions include whether to always have a standing board, how to select boards, what powers are initially transferred to the board, and what internal rules govern those powers. Once the board is in place, they will have the powers enumerated in the charter and may grant themselves additional powers over time with the cooperation of Brian and I. If the Board pursues legal recognition as a Social Club, we could transfer legal ownership of assets to it in the future.

Next steps...

What other questions do y’all have?

Self-nomination form for transition team: https://forms.gle/E3WeMRqhsLHt9K4Y7

I’ll close nominations on 16 February with a goal of forming a team by 1 March.