If we limit General Assembly membership to e.g. 50-100 people, we keep quorum manageable but exclude community members from governance. If we open it up, we risk being unable to reach quorum with hundreds or thousands of members.
1. Built-in expiry keeps numbers real
Membership automatically expires after two years (Article 21.3) and must be actively renewed. Combined with removal for non-payment of fees after 2 years (Article 26.1.b), we won't accumulate a long tail of inactive members inflating the total count. Our "member" number will closely track actually-engaged people.
2. Second convocation eliminates quorum risk for ordinary business
Article 9.1 provides that on second convocation, the Assembly is valid "regardless of the number of attendees." Elections, budgets, working group oversight, member removal - all of this works fine even if only 10% of members show up. We just need to list both convocation times on the agenda (standard Spanish association practice).
3. People joining now are engaged by definition
Anyone applying for membership right now is doing so because they actively want to participate in building NW26. These aren't passive ticket-buyers - they're people stepping up during a critical period. The risk of mass inactivity is low in the near term.
4. Proxy voting and online meetings further reduce friction
Members can delegate their vote to any attending member (Article 10.3). Assemblies can be fully online with electronic voting (Article 8.2). Both mechanisms count toward quorum. For a geographically distributed community, this dramatically lowers the bar for participation.
Articles 7.1 and 10.4 require half of all members present or represented to amend the statutes, with a 2/3 supermajority of those present voting in favour. This requirement appears to apply regardless of first or second convocation. With 500 members, that means getting 251 to attend or delegate - potentially impractical even online.
While membership is still small (making the current half+1 quorum easy to meet), we should amend the statutes to ensure statute amendments remain achievable as we grow. Options include:
Option A - Second convocation fallback for amendments: Add a provision that on second convocation, statute amendments require a 2/3 supermajority of those present, provided a minimum percentage (e.g. 20-25%) of members attend. This mirrors common practice in Spanish associations.
Option B - Asynchronous electronic voting for amendments: Allow statute amendment votes to remain open for a defined period (e.g. 14 days) via authenticated electronic voting, rather than requiring attendance at a single meeting. This suits an international, online-first association.
Option C - Lower the quorum, keep the supermajority: Reduce the attendance threshold for amendments to e.g. 1/3 or 1/4 of members, while retaining the 2/3 supermajority vote. The high voting threshold still protects against frivolous changes.
These options can be combined. The key point is that we should make this amendment while it's trivially easy to reach quorum, rather than discovering the problem when we've grown to hundreds of members and can no longer change the rules.
There is no operational reason to cap membership. The statutes already handle the quorum challenge for all ordinary business through the second convocation mechanism, automatic membership expiry, proxy voting, and online assemblies. The only gap is statute amendments, which we can and should fix now with a targeted amendment while the membership is small.
I like option B, and can likely facilitate that in Humans in early March.. that makes the quorum bit much less scary to achieve.
also agree with Ben, that doesn't make it a free for all on acceptance to voting. similar to the list we did today, some are yellow (non voting) and most green (voting) in my mind.. but that's honestly about them filling it in well as much as their actual experience.