We’re really happy to announce that the IGDA Scotland Board of Directors, in concert with the IGDA’s Executive Director Kate Edwards, ratified a set of Bylaws that will govern our chapter.
We’re indebted to our sister chapter IGDA Boston who drafted the model Bylaws that we used as a starting point, and to Kate for working with us and supplying insight.
What will this change?
Fundamentally, nothing will change. What it means is that we have a clear set of guidelines as to what members should expect from the board, and how the board should operate. However, there are no sweeping changes, and we’ve tailored the model Bylaws to more closely match the way things have been working in IGDA Scotland. We’ve also used some of the items that the model addressed to tighten up those processes, using the experiences that Boston in particular, but other chapters as well, to make our chapter stronger.
Why is this important?
As we run up to the end of the first “term” of the Board, and especially now that we’re getting much more established as a chapter, we need to set down how things are going to work – for instance, without the Bylaws, we don’t even have a length of time written down that the Board members are supposed to serve for! Laying out a framework ensures that the chapter has a solid foundation for the future, which is vital.
Additionally, being a body that actively serves and represents Game Developers in Scotland, having this kind of approach provides clarity and transparency to the community, aspects that are very important for an organisation to have any sort of legitimacy to its members.
Why has it taken 2 years if it’s so important?
We’ve been working on a lot of other things, and among the Board, we all previously had an understanding that the “model” Bylaws provided by the IGDA were a good template, so we worked according to those. It wasn’t a priority until we got close to holding elections, since the Bylaws set out expectations and even determine the election process we’ll be using (in so much as they force us to adopt one). These are all things that we could let slide previously but are going to be critically important going forward, and for this reason it’s not been a priority until now.
You can read IGDA Scotland’s Bylaws here.