ANST - Second-Guessing

James Crouchet jtc at io.com
Thu Apr 29 06:53:55 PDT 1999


On 27 Apr 99,, Gunnora Hallakarva wrote:

> Viscount Galen of Bristol said:
> 
[snip]
> > At this point, the great mass of people
> > who are interested in passing, but who are
> > not sufficiently committed to attend meetings
> > or serve in decision-making offices, step
> > forward with all their revisions.
> 
<snip>
> > Sometimes, this input can have positive effect.
> > But not usually.
> 

> I think that this is completely wrong.  Galen, I usually don't
> disagree with you this strongly, but obviously somebody got a hot
> button for you and I don't think you considered parts of your post
> carefully. Certainly your comments are a hot button for me. 
> 
> Input is not only desirable, it is necessary.  This is a volunteer
> organization whose members pay site fees and make donations to
> enhance their recreation time.  If a bad decision is made that
> lots of people object to strongly, they withdraw their financial
> support from the organization.  The SCA Inc. fiasco above is a
> prime example of that. 
> 
> You have to solicit advice and listen to advice anytime you
> propose to take money in the organization and use it for a major
> purchase.  Every Ansteorran is entitled to have, and voice, and
> opinion.  And our leadership, the Crown and Great Officers, would
> only be wise to listen to the voice of their people -- you cannot
> lead them if they will not follow. 

I will take this a step further and say that the "collective project" 
is the proper way for a volunteer organization to operate. There are 
two areas where we are getting it wrong. They are:

1. - Many project coordinators do not design their projects to be 
able to accept and utilize this input in an effective way. If fact, 
some see it only as insults and personal criticism .

2. - Those providing input often do not know how to do so in a 
positive way. They must learn to be constructive and avoid the 
personal.

The input must be public. Only in that way can idea build on idea and 
suggestions be subject to the same review and "debugging" as the 
original concept. 

Most of you will probably ignore my next suggestion, but perhaps a 
few will check it out. There is a paper that does a wonderful job of 
describing this method of project development. It concentrates on 
software development, but I found it easy enough to read past that 
and see it as a model for any volunteer project where you can get 
enough input to make it work. Galen, from your comments I would say 
that getting enough input is not a problem ;-)

Anyway, the paper is called The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric 
Raymond. The URL is

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/

As Gunnora pointed out, the project should be open to those who will 
be affected by it. If you are considering coordinating a project, 
whether it is hosting an event, writing rules, putting on an A&S 
competition, or anything else that requires the cooperation of many 
people, take a moment to read this paper and consider this method.

Don Christian Doré

PS - The suggestion, above is not at all the same as questioning 
leadership. That too needs to be done sometimes, just as Gunnora 
said. However, it does not always need to be public and usually 
should NOT be.
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