I'm curious about some things. Mike, Jake, and others have said that
automation is a low priority for Bookshare staff. Does anyone here
know what their high priority is? I'm not clear on what their
primary focus is right now. Maybe if we understood that, some of
their decisions would make more sense. If we're striving for very
different things, maybe knowing what they're striving for would help.
Does anyone know how old Gustavo is? I'm asking for a reason. I believe he uses an autocratic or centralized management style that was quite common for managers to use if they were trained in the seventies. From my point of view, the lion's share of problems regarding Bookshare processes stem from Gustavo's inability to delegate tasks appropriately to his paid staff and to set measurable performance evaluations to make sure goals are met on time and on target. What I don't know is if this inability is by his working style or if it is dictated by the board at Benetech. Knowing the answers to these questions may help us find a way to break the continual stalemate we find ourselves in. This is evidenced by two situations I had run into recently.
The first is that I asked John if it was ok to post a message on the Bookshare Discuss list explaining what a volunteer does and how to sign up to become one. I asked him as a courtesy since he would be doing the processing of volunteer applications. He was not able to approve of my post after reading it because he had to get approval from his superiors. After 30 days, he still didn't have an answer from them to what should have been a trivial issue.
Monica Willyard
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