Bourbaki
Nicholas Bourbaki
Ok, Bourbaki is not a student group, it is the collective of parent volunteers working behind the scenes to do all the things that make the positive and challenging math experiences at SDMC possible. In this respect they are much like the mathematician Nicholas Bourbaki who was not a single real person, but a pseudonym for a collective of French mathematicians who collaborated in relative anonymity to improve mathematics education in France, and in the process had enduring influence upon the development of mathematics in the 20th century.
Like Bourbaki himself, what follows is also somewhat fictional since at the present time this is more of an organizational plan than an existing structure. A priority for the 2013-2014 season is to populate this plan with volunteers who have the right motivations and appropriate expertise.
The heart of the organizational plan is to identify a number of project areas that can be managed relatively autonomously by small clusters of individuals (teams) who have expertise appropriate to particular areas and who are well-disposed to collaborate. In preparation for such developments, steps have been taken over the last couple of years to move some aspects of SDMC task management to "the cloud", which will support the ability of such teams to function and for different teams to share needed information effectively. Your experience with our GoogleDocs based registration process is an example of this.
Since our Bourbaki volunteers need their own space for occasional meetings, present intentions are to schedule Bourbaki space routinely, just as we do for our student groups. As fits the needs of the various teams, this space will then be allocated to support face-tp-face collaboration during the same time that students are having their activities. Bourbaki will appear on the SDMC events schedule like our other student groups to help our volunteers plan their time.
The major project areas where we need functioning teams are:
Parent Leadership. The majority of SDMC parents will not be strongly involved with any of the defined project teams, but will help on an ad hoc basis in various supporting roles such as supervising student activities, contest proctoring, chaperoning, etc. It is always best to have a couple of parents from each ability group identified as Parent Coordinators who help provide leadership to other parents, and this cluster of Parent Coordinators constitutes our Parent Leadership Team. Our primary need for these Parent Coordinators is know (or learn) how things work, stay well informed, communicate personally with other parents, and be responsive to needs that arise.
Information Technology. SDMC needs a stable IT team that will manage the SDMC website, manage our cloud-based information, and develop IT solutions for the particular needs that arise. Not all IT needs require high levels of expertise - for example, content management can handled with a lesser skill set than web development - but we do need professional expertise as a part of this team.
Contest Management. SDMC stages numerous math and science challenge events that require attention throughout the year. While the content of each contest is different, there are common operational aspects to the staging of such events so that after a little experience, repeating the common steps is rather straightforward. Volunteers need not have any special expertise in mathematics or science to be effective in contest management. Where expert assistance is needed, we can obtain that on an ad hoc basis.
Membership and Signup Management. Analogous to Human Resources, this involves managing the database of information we maintain on members and annual flux in this information as student membership turns over from year. This activity overlaps significantly with similar activity needed to manage signups for SDMC events.
Back Office Administration. This includes the core administrative necessities of managing operational finances (expenses, reimbursements, donations), fundraising, and with the eventual inception of our 501(c)(3) status, maintaining IRS compliance through appropriate accounting and reporting. This is an area where expertise in the related accounting and legal areas is needed at least episodically.
ARML Team Management. Though many of our more experienced students participate in ARML, ARML is really a distinct activity and "ARML season" traditionally occupies a distinct segment of our year following the end of SDMC's regular calendar of activities at the end of March. ARML team management is a distinct project area that can be handled by its own set of volunteers largely independently of other activities. Though some effort must be given to ARML planning before ARML season, most effort will usually fall in the months of April and May.
