When we all got together to form our little GPS tracking group we had to decide a little bit on the appropriate structure under which we should organize. In fact, we were faced with questions even before we became an official group, though none of use would have thought about it that way at the time.

You see, whenever a group of people get together for some common goal there is always a political element to it. Politics simply defined is social relations involving authority or power, and we certainly were having social relations and our group created power that needed to be wielded well. So even without thinking about it we had already entered into politics when it came to our group and we didn’t even know it. Just by getting our head together and wanting to make something happen in educating consumers about GPS tracking we had create power that need to be fashioned and purposed correctly.

At first our de facto organization was a form of democracy. All the original founding members would be polled about whether or not we would want to do some activity X when it came to GPS. Often times we would end up doing nothing for one of many different reasons. Sometimes a member would be busy with previously arranged activities. Other times the idea only appealed to a small minority of the group who could not sway undecided and indifferent participants to their side.

As a result, our group began to fragment into several different factions. Most of these factions were based solely on personalities and close personal ties. It was much each for members from the same city to be a part of the same faction because they had met face-to-face than it was for people from different regions. Personalities dominated the group during this period, but we still did not get very much done as a group.

You see, no single faction could yield a majority to compel the action of the entire GPS Tracking group. Loyalty to the faction began to overcome membership in the greater group and for a few weeks it did not look good for the future of this group. There was a good chance that we were going to splinter into all sorts of smaller, less useful groups.

But some of factions began to realize this as tensions began to mount and they formed an alliance together to create a majority of the members in the group. This allowed them to push through some motions that sought to reshape the way that the group goes about doing its business and make things much more effective.

As a result of these changes we are more of a representative republic, built on the model of the United States in its early days. We hold elections every year to give members a chance for vote people into our governing body – the GTGS, the GPS Tracking Group Senate. The Senate is in charge of all major decisions and appointing the Executive Committee. This EC runs the day-to-day operations of the group, which isn’t very much. For example, this website falls under the jurisdiction of the EC.

Well, I hope that this little history lesson has faithfully recorded the history of the structure of our GPS tracking group. If there are any questions or comments please feel free to mention them below and I will do my best to get them answered.