No spam here, thanks!

Heh. I'm liking the anti-spam sticky Jose just made in the Community Blog (CLOG).

More importantly, AdminAssistant has laid the ThinkWell vision out in the Secretariat forum; well worth repeating here I think (starting with an explanation of the role of the Secretariat):

ThinkWell is a completely open access, free for all in Virtuality, 100% Real Department of Public Health! And as if that wasn't good enough, there ain't no bosses or bureaucracy either. Cheques go into the bank; send cheques out. Keep statements. Kinda simple. We have a volunteer or barely remunerated secretariat to sort out the boring stuff. This is where they hold their meetings; all welcome to attend and contribute. Any questions? Start a thread. This is how ThinkWell works, and why it works well. You humble servants, The Secretariat.

Hi

I've been asked to post a brief explanation of how the ThinkWell financial side of things works and how we propose to let everyone have their say in how any grant monies we win are spent.

We don't have any cash at all right now, bar a few quid for training courses we managed to score. That's being spent on developing existing collaborative research bids (more on these should appear soon in R&D) and communicating with our colleagues in Europe and across the pond, right now.

Most of our grant applications will include one or more "lay" representatives; these will be elected from amongst those in the ThinkWell community who others agree can contribute most to the implementation of the idea (ie actually doing the research); often but not always including the person who made the original suggestion.

Other co-applicants will be individuals with relevant formally recognised expertise, no matter what their relationship to the secretariat. ThinkWell does have an "inner" core consisting of both academics and lay people (the de facto secretariat), but only because someone had to get the ball rolling.

Grant applications will include salaries for full or part-time research assistants. Exactly how that is spent depends on the department which will be physically dealing with the trial (like posting out drugs or receiving DNA spit'n'post packages).

Any and all vacancies and short-term contracts will be advertised on the situations vacant subforum; all ads will make it clear if physical location and/or secure fast internet connection are required. The salaries attached will be included. All other work paid from ThinkWell monies will be posted in the Situations Vacant forum. Privacy issues for other forum users will be considered for data handling posts.

This should allow proper community scrutiny to make sure that the people who have to handle the money can't get frisky with it, and the closest we can ever get to allowing anyone a fair shot at being financially rewarded for their participation in ThinkWell.

As we grow-up as a community and get more experience, procedures will develop to accommodate new situations. This thread will be how they develop. Post as required.