IGDA Bylaws updated

At today’s Board of Directors meeting we made several amendments to the IGDA’s Bylaws. These revisions were mostly centered around the processes surrounding special meetings and should clarify the requirements for members to call a special meeting, and how that special meeting will be held should one be called. Our overall goal for this was to make sure that while there is still a heavy burden on the membership to call a special meeting, it is still possible for our members to enact change with the current makeup of our organization.

You can see the amended Bylaws here: http://www.igda.org/sites/default/files/IGDA_Bylaws.pdf

The changes made are summarized as follows:

• Article III. Section 4 – Reduced the % of membership requirements to call a Special Meeting down from 10% to 5%
• Article III. Section 4 – Added language clarifying the process of a special meeting to include 4 parts: Notice, Discussion, Meeting and vote
• Article III. Section 5 – Reduced the quorum required for membership action to 20% for the removal of a member of the Board of Directors and 1/3rd of the membership for all other membership actions
• Article IV. Section 8 – Clarified language around removal of a member from the Board of Directors

In any organization like the IGDA it is critical that the members have the ability to make changes through special meetings. While this process should not be easy, it should be possible. The original intent of the Bylaws embraced this, but the current realities of our organization set the bar too high to realistically ever allow a membership enacted change. Our amendments today keep a high bar in place but set it at a level that is possible for our membership to meet. While we hope that this process will never need to be used, we are glad that we have been able to make these changes and are thus able to give this power back to our membership.

IGDA Members Attend White House Meeting on Childhood Obesity

On February 3rd, IGDA Chair Tobi Saulnier, and Vice-Chair Mark DeLoura, were part of a meeting at the White House with the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture to talk about how games and technology can be used to engage children and young adults in a manner that increases their activity and informs them about the value and means for proper nutrition.

Tobi and Mark were joined by Susan Gold, chair of the Education SIG and organizer of the Global Game Jam, Ben Sawyer, the co-founder of the Games for Health Project and the Serious Games Initiative, and a number of other prominent IGDA members. A full list of participants can be found on the White House website.

This meeting may lead to further development in the field, and was the start of some exciting discussions about engaging the Game Industry in a whole new way in terms of educating, engaging and interaction with the youth of the U.S. and ultimately the world.  A write up of the event can be found on the White House blog, and your comments are invited.