It’s about time we get an EHBA election …

Discussions EHBA
21

Probably there is a lot of stuff (most of the stuff as far as I know) that is done and it does need any democratic mandate and legitimacy - will your proposal take into account?:

  • sometimes it is better to not change things that work good if there is no real reason
  • some people don’t want to be in a limelight and get elected - they just to get involved in some work for the community

Like if there are elections and government is changing it doesn’t mean that every single clerk in the ministry is exchanged - not every single person who does something needs to be elected. Usually, that’s just my experience, in pro bono “organisations” most of the work is done by people that are not elected and without being driven/influenced/inspired by elected people.

Probably when this list of duties/plans/goals/responsibilites will be done then easier it will be to see that bigger picture :thinking:

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22

In a community with lots of different people from different nations and with different ideas, i can’t really think of decisions that don’t need any democratic mandate.

Also, I am just a volunteer, it will not be my proposal if other members of the community want to join. You are absolutely welcome to share all your ideas and thoughts about this with me and whoever will be working on the proposal, your opinion will count exactly like the opinion of every other person working on the proposal.

  • sometimes it is better to not change things that work good if there is no real reason
    i accept your personal opinion on this, but maybe other people, since we are many from different countries and languages and ideas, have a different opinion on this.
    • some people don’t want to be in a limelight and get elected - they just to get involved in some work for the community
      everyone is always welcome to help elected or not.

no one is saying that every member has to change, everyone welcome.

In my experience in pro bono “organizations” decisions have always been taking democratically, and every member had 1 vote that counted exactly like the others.

Yes, the best thing is to start working on it.

23

Even if it goes nowhere it’s a good talk to have, my thoughts :
note : by “mandatory” i mean the bare minimum i’ve in my mind now that this entity should provide (imo) .

Mandatory goals of EHBA :

  • maintain / update ruleset
  • providing the frame for organizing Euros (bid, slot allocation, etc)
  • provide a clear and shared decisions taking process (how to vote, if needed)
  • assure communication (between other bodies, if they exist, country, club, players, etc)

About communication : i personally like the role of representative actor.
like club rep speaking to country rep speaking to EHBA board.

This way the EHBA board could focus to talk to “only” x country representatives to either send communications or collect information / decision etc.

This make club and community active too, having to discuss and share view about and explaining subject before sending back the club decision to the country rep, then to the EHBA board.

Note : i’m not advocating about club vote against individual vote, a club rep could easily pass the detailed votes (i.e. 10 peoples YES , 9 people NO, 4 voted BLANK, etc). I’m saying that having a “backbone” for communication and vote process that would give some responsibilities to country and club is a good thing to keeps players involved and informed.

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24

Dani sorry to say that but it looks like you want to talk through that with using more democracy and mandate and democracy and mandate and democracy and mandate as bullets. In your original post there is like 300 words about elections, nothing about EHBA. Like you think about EHBA as about some power to be grasped. Usually organisation is way more working than deciding.

Does taking care of website, hostings bla bla bla needs a democractic mandate? Is posting something on FB requires democratic mandate?

So what I meant in my post is… that possibly in that list of duties, responsibilities, actions taken in past years etc etc etc is many things that are not DECISIONS, they can be kept as it is and maybe doesn’t require to force volunteers to get into limelight and being elected to do job that anyone didn’t want to do before. If there are volunteers, they do stuff we shouldn’t jeopardise loosing them.

It all takes me to the point that:

  1. How EHBA works now
  2. How it could/should work
  3. Election plan

I’m sure that @django can help with first, probably in can be to some degree extracted from previous posts :)

p.s.
we can just imagine a situation when we have like limited repetetive things to be decided.

  • EHBC slots allocation
  • EHBC format nuances i.e. can team of 3 register to 4v4 tournament etc
  • EHBC host (usually there is no decision at all, just one host)
  • rules
    And what we actually need is to find a way to delegate that decisions to community in democratic way - it doesn’t mean that for sure we need to elect a committee
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25

its about time that the euro board is truly re elected and whoever was assuming its function get a relief and have less to think of

i ll work on a few things prior to perpignan 2025 and offer support to perpignan . when election time comes i will probably be able to present myself as a candidate.

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26

I support efforts to bring some fresh wind, structure and processes into EHBA as it was once envisioned and do it in a manner that does not add unnecessary strain to current EHBA and Perpignan until EHBPC is over.

Formalizing these two points is essential for more participation and transparency. I think Poloverse will help greatly in that aspect.
I also think it will give more opportunity to participate to people who are not as “well established” in the community yet.

I would be happy if Django and Alejandro continue to be part of EHBA and have a lot of gratitude for the work they have invested over all those years for our community! :heart:

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@coolquentin agree with the points you listed and agree that it could help to make clubs and communities more active.
I also completely agree that even just having to discuss a subject in a club will make people feel more involved.

@metriod I also think that for more participation, it could be useful to try and reach more people than the ones we can reach with this post. So I will start trying to communicate with as many players as possible that this is happening and that everyone who wants to participate, even just in the proposal, is welcome.

@OGxBENJI an elected Euro board could be the start that leads to an elected World committee.

@pajac EHBA is not a power to be grasped since according to previous declaration of other players in this thread it doesn’t exist yet.
We are here to try and create something, not destroy.

If you are asking me personally, I believe that every decision that involves other people in a community needs a democratic mandate.

I accept the fact that you think differently and if you want, in the proposal, we can add a vote:

  • everyone who wants to keep things like they are now, without democratic mandate, is free to vote for that.
    If the majority votes for that, that will be the decision that everyone should respect.
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Dani, please try to read what I’ve said. Repeating that something needs a democratic mandate is just a slogan - repeating it over and over again doesn’t bring us a single step forward, doesn’t make any of your arguments more or less valid.
I don’t think that decisions for community don’t need democratic mandate - I never said it. Probably 99% of them need that mandate (that 1% is nuance). I don’t know from where comes that misunderstanding but you just put words in my mouth. Please, don’t do that.
Only thing that I ask is… there is a lot of work that is done by volunteers mentioned in both threads. This work is mostly (as far as I understand) nothing even close to “making decisions”.
The other that I’ve already mentioned is that there are milion ways to make decision in a democratic way. Creating a committee is not the only tool in the box. Tool should be selected according to needs we have.

If you have any doubts to what I’ve said please reach me via DM it will be easier.

Going back to quasi-productive stuff:
Recently there was a big pool about format, mandatory mixed etc. etc. - as far as I remember it had a nice reach. It was sent to me by people that I didn’t even suspect about reading poloverse or polo telegram etc.. Similar way could be used to get some attention and visibility if we will come to any plan of introducing some democratic process. Yes, I’m aware of all the drawbacks and doubts of polls like this - I think about it more as a broadcasting machine.

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29

in my opinion, democratic elections are fine whenever the whole european community would and want to be involved in the process of voting. either as individuals or clubs. but already this step makes it questionable for me.

we rarely meet all together - tournament slots are limited, either it’s a small regional event or championships. my experience on choosing the board members come from my bike messenger/ organiser past. in that case, there are no limitations on who can come to european championships and vote for candidates/run for the board, except for individual reasons and being a messenger (currently or in the past).

and yet there are still mostly same people involved on that level of involvement. organisers of annual championships don’t get into the board automatically and i’ve seen they rarely will to engage more or on the longer terms before/during/after their event.

current state of affairs in polo community partially satisfies me. the first step to become a board member is to show interest and motivation to join, that is no matter if the board of open or election type. i am more concerned about leaving it, if needed. leaving your responsibilities and tasks behind, when you have or want to, in our case might be harder. there is a number of people involved, but without new members joining on some regular base, making this flow natural, it’s difficult to leave all “burden” on others, often friends you know and worked together for a long time.

i am not sure if election campaign ;) is a solution. imho, open organisation with transparent list of current and potential tasks plus encouraging community to join and help with their resources, even for shorter period of single tasks (a-z involvement), seems promising.

based on my own feelings, it requires some courage for people with a shorter bp experience (eg. due to lack of tournament trips, socially backed up etc.) to offer their help to the group of very experienced players. im not accusing that is it currently done, but again based on my own experience of sort of vet member/organiser if messenger community/events, i know it can be easy to overlook how intimidating for new comers can be. on the other side, i’ve witnessed that new comers are excited and eager to participate, but regularly burnout or short of full awareness what means to be involved on the highest level of european community organisation.

all this said, i would like to state im willing to help with some duties at EHBA. i know i could be a help with some tasks and bringing some ideas, again (it’s the last time i mention it, i promise) inspired on my outside of polo experience.

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30

Hi,

To summarize, I really agree with the need of new ways to make important decisions for our community. Here is what I understand from our need of transparency.

  • Volunteers need to be able to easily work for community, because all of what they do is awesome for us, we need it. Yes, it represent 90 or 99% of the actual duo. (thx to Ale and Django of course <3)
  • We need to find a way to democratically validate critical decisions such as: ruleset evolutions, EHBPC format, mandatory mixed or not, qualifications process and so on (basically all of what @coolquentin listed).

Both points are critical, is a board the best way to adress both of them ?
And if the democratic decisions aren’t taken by a board, then how ?

So my guess is there could be two approaches:

  • a board elected to take decisions and work cloesely with any volunteers (in or not in the board).
  • A structure to permit at least to national or club reps to vote for any important/radical decision that was before taken by volunteers. which of course demands the work of volunteers in order to build such a structure.
    This could be somehow a part of this forum.
    We could also get inspired by some open source web project, where organisation is key because thousand of volunteers work on the same topic.

Maybe there’s other ways to do it. what seems important to me is to construct a legitimate structure, able to work as well as our magic duo, but also able to adress touchy subject to the community in a slightly more democratical way.

I guess it’s good to dig a bit more than just reconstruct the old comitee with the same structure. few examples :

  • if there’s five members instead of 9, they’ll feel more involved, discussions should be faster, more work could be done.
  • Some topics require more than 2 years of legitimacy to take any required decisions. we might need some kind of referendum as the one about mixing up the championships.

A good step would be to get feedback from @django and @Mega_shuffle from the last few years, but also from the last board to understand what wasn’t working, what worked just well and construct a structure more adequate.

Anyway, thanks @Danana to put the topic on the table, and propose to work on a transition. <3

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31

few steps to democracy:

  • referencing how many players are in each club , each country
  • finding contact points to each club
  • making having a poloverse account mandatory ( its your voter card) for at least 1 person per club
  • creating a poloverse section with ehbpa , polls and a open forum for all users to be able to question ehbpa about anything ( rather than only a private email adress)
  • when voting time is on , one person from each club will have to run a real life poll during their local pick up, or through their whats app or whatever and give them 1 to 2 weeks to answer the poll / vote , then report the voting results in the appropriate poloverse section.
    voila

step 1 was just made for france in less than 1 month , we have 250 ish players in total , we can help do it for other clubs and country by providing ressources and a procedure to get the info.
if the rest of the french team agree we might be able to share results and data we accumulated through this referencing process

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32

Thank you for that voice, probably it presents what I think better than my own posts.

Maybe my last addition:
Electing a committee in democratic process doesn’t make everything “democractic” just like that. When we elect any government/council/local government we know what we are electing them for and what rights we are giving them (at least it is a theory) and there are many safety-valves that were established through the years. Electing people to committee without strict definition and boundaries that we previously agreed on is pointless.

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33

The problem is always the same. People just don’t come through with their effort/time. People have great ideas, but they end up being nothing more than words. I won’t call out anyone, but just know that it would have been great to see any of their plans come to fruition. Intentions are most of the time noble; it’s the execution that is lackluster.
Of course, from time to time, there’s an influx of motivation by some to try to “shake the system”, particularly if it affects them.
I’m a cynic because I’ve been here for a long time, not because I fear improvement.

Having said all of that. I let you guys decide how to proceed.
Very democratic, very mindful, very demure.

I’ll be busy insulting my friends on other poloverse threads.

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34

I don’t care if I get myself enemies stating the following:
this is BS.
the only democratic thing we can espect from any sort of election is having, again, some loudmouths talking to each other about some BS they care about for personal interests. every effort to involve the community in a democratic process failed over the years, people don’t care. they do not have time/ energies/ drive to follow up such a big process.
it’s a fact that everybody likes to talk an put out there ideas someone else is supposed to realize, i’m tired of that.
last time people asked for a re election of the italian ‘board’ it was pre covid. i was resigning as the head of it, sick tired of pointless arguing. guess what in th end i had been forced to get back with othe 2 people, because nobody wanted to simply do the thing (same 3 BS things someone sooner or later has to take care of: qualifiers for Euros, fit the tourneys on a calendar, make sure everybody gets the latest rules mod.)
IMHO there’s absolutely no need to loose time on democratic election, because if we just ask to the community who’s willing to take the job and do the thing, very few will answer, just get them and say they are the new board. no one will complain, if someone complains they are enrolled straight on the board(this last part’s obviously a joke :) but I hope you got my point)

doers will do talkers will talk.

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35

What is the harm in trying once again after all those years?

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36

no harm but i think his frustration is valid , lets keep it in mind for further developments

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37

Zero harm, it just annoys me :joy:

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38

I will keep focus on effort and time and propositions to actually do something and not just talk.

This post is a great example that not everyone shares the same ideas and thoughts.

Now, how do we find out what the majority of the people in the community would actually prefer?

If someone has the answer to this supported by any data would be great, otherwise, we are just sharing personal opinions between a restricted group of people, which is fine, but doesn’t answer the question.

@OGxBENJI and @coolquentin made some great starting points from which we could extract a simpler proposition, that could help answer this question.

  • Referencing how many clubs and players we have across Europe. (@OGxBENJI )
  • Find a contact person (or more) to each club (@OGxBENJI )
  • Use the contact person to answer the question (“a club rep could easily pass the detailed votes (i.e. 10 peoples YES , 9 people NO, 4 voted BLANK, etc” @coolquentin )

I volunteer to do this research, everyone else who wants to help is welcome.

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39

I share and feel pretty much everything is said here (how diplomatic i’m i or what la team ??).

But yes, i guess the “board” could be very very minimal and could be a good start to not too much overthink and lost time and energy. A dead or barely living board could work. I personnally love minimal approch, you get less disapointed (that what she said™).

For exemple swiss community is not very active (internet wise at least) but we figure out a way to pass information (up and down) to inform and get vote. We don’t meet as a committee, we don’t do anything but sharing information up and down.

Here’s the current club rep for each active club in Switzerland.
I basically email them when something is happening (euro anyone) and up to them to pass the information to their club members.

Swiss clubs rep aka “swiss comitee” :

  • Bex: Joel
  • Zurich: Miguel
  • Basel: Lukas
  • St Gallen: Bassil
  • Bern: Emmet
  • Lausanne: Mario
  • Genf: Quentin

Edit : in other words the EHBA board could be “just” composed of country rep.

Country rep that email > club rep that > inform and collect vote on subject from players.

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40

I think an EHBA <> City Representative relation is too fine grained.
EHBA had an EHBA <> Country Representative relation before and it was the country reps job to convey important information to the clubs.

I still have the list of country reps I have collected for EHBA in 2017 and can use it as a starting point for an updated list.

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