National Council Meeting

I had a great day today and met some interesting people. At times the schedule was specific about what we were to talk about and at other times we changed it to talk about what we wanted to talk about. This was my first experience with Robert's Rules of Order or whatever they are called. So without further ado, let me talk a little about what we covered.

Bylaws: Brian from Texas gave us a rundown on the bylaws and how they impact what we were doing. Elections for the national officers will be held tomorrow. I didn't catch any specifics.

Communications: We discussed the communications plan from the national party to the state party chairs, to include weekly summaries of activity, a monthly newsletter and how to handle changes in leadership. Group communications was also covered regarding the member database, email lists, and forums.

Georgia Whigs: Drew from the Georgia Whigs gave a pair of presentations that discussed GA's strategic approach. He divided this into Communications, Structure and Strategy. Part of the discussion on Communications was about the Tenets. He added several Tenets including: Methodology over Ideology, Self-Discovery, and a Long-term Solutions approach.

They have a two-pronged approach which I didn't capture, but I think it was developing leaders and getting members active. To do this there is an Academy that members go through which provide some basic education about Whig stuff and state stuff. These classes are online and last a couple of hours. The first class introduces members to the Academy where they create a personal profile. This profile contains personal info and a resume, as well as a number of Whig artifacts, like classes taken and events participated in.

Now there is also an Association Forum and a Solutions Forum. The Association Forum brings participants together to identify and quantify problems and alternate problems. So a given situation, like high-drug use (my example) may have a primary problem, identified if a super-majority of the participants agree, that it is culturally encouraged and getting high makes you forget about your troubles. There is also an alternate problem, if less people agree, which states that poor upbringing causes high drug use. Once problems are identified, they move to the Solutions Forum where Whigs can debate and vote on solutions to the problem(s).

There was a presentation on Strategy but that is confidential.

Tenets: We spend significant time on developing and refining the National Tenets. They will be announced shortly.

Short term and Long term Goals: We all contributed our ideas to the goals over the next year and those for the next 10 years.

Ballot access: we talked about what it takes to get a candidate on the ballot in each of the 50 states. Along with that comes the rules for collecting donations. Also, establishing the party officially.