Hi Folks<br><br> Here are a few of my thoughts on the discussion so far. I will be summarizing my take on what has been said on this list. If I misrepresent any one's position I apologize. <br><br> Robin and Willow maintain that things were better when we had a college of bards. I was an active bard then and I agree. I'm not sure that things were better BECAUSE we had a CoB but I wouldn't say they weren't either. Robin has said that he believes it was because of the CoB that things were better, and that he believes that having one now would be a good thing. He can't specify exactly how it will make things better but he believes that it will. I have a lot of respect for Robin's opinion. Barring evidence to the contrary I'm willing to accept that having a CoB could be a good thing.
<br><br> I was around for the demise of the Queens College of Bards. I was not involved in the leadership of the QCoB but I was an active bard who was interested in what was going on. From my point of view the ending of the QCoB was an unpleasant thing with some people getting pretty upset. I have no particular desire to go through that again. So I am concerned that we not repeat the mistakes that caused the QCoB to fail. The problem is that I don't really understand what went wrong the last time. The people who do know don't want to discuss it on an open list and feel that it is best discussed in person. I completely agree with that.
<br><br> So I accept because Robin and Willow say so that having a CoB could be a good thing. I know from experience that having a CoB can lead to badness. The question is whether or not the potential benefits out weigh the potential badness. I can't answer that for myself without having a much better idea of what it will be and what it will do. I'm still on the fence here.
<br><br> Some on the list want to define what the CoB will be, what it will do and how it will do it. Robin doesn't like the idea of having the CoB defined by just the bards who are reading this list. He wants to take the discussion on the road and get a lot more input from bards throughout the kingdom before trying to tie down the details. I like specifics, I want more details, but I think I agree with Robin on this one. I think we need face to face discussion to determine if we want this thing at all, and if so what we want it to do. Once we know what we want it to do THEN we can design the best structure to accomplish that.
<br><br> If a CoB is formed should the Bardic Deputy of A & S and the Kingdom Bard be officers? I say no. The CoB has no authority over either of these positions and if they are not serving our needs there is really nothing we can do about it. Having the Kingdom Bard be the spokesperson for the CoB doesn't really work if the person who wins Eisteddfod happens to be a person who wants nothing to do with the CoB.
<br><br> We did have an attempt several years back to start a new CoB. There were meetings and we even wrote up a charter. A few good things came out of that attempt. This mailing list and a Bardic web page. Other than that it was pretty much a waste of time. This is not meant a a slight on the people who were behind the attempt, I was one of them, but it just never amounted to anything. We were so successful at making sure the CoB had no authority to do anything that we created a CoB that didn't do anything.
<br> One of the problems was getting a charter that people would agree to. Any attempt to put in anything specific in was objected to by someone. In the end we had something so vague, all inclusive, and watered down as to be useless. I'm not convinced we will do any better this time but I'm willing to make the attempt if it seems worthwhile.
<br><br> I can see a lot of drawbacks to having a CoB: I can't see it having any authority to do anything. As soon as we set any standards someone is going to think it's a good idea to try and get people to follow those standards, and then we will have problems. Some people will get their nose out of joint about having a structure that is not answerable to either the Crown or the Corporate structure. It could become a political football with different people trying to pull it in different directions and others trying to do away with it entirely. Or we could put a lot of effort into it and have it turn out to be a useless waste of time. All of this has happened in the past, and might well happen again.
<br> The benefits to having a CoB are pretty vague and undefined at this time. Almost everything that the CoB could do we can do anyway without a CoB. It's been argued that while we could do these things without a CoB we don't, and with a CoB we would be more likely to. I think that's probably true.
<br> I'm not convinced that the benefits are worth the trouble, but I'm willing to take part in the discussion and be convinced. <br><br>Robert Fitzmorgan<br> <br clear="all"><br>-- <br>"If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day." John A. Wheeler
<br><br><a href="mailto:Fitzmorgan@gmail.com">Fitzmorgan@gmail.com</a><br>Yahoo IM: robert_fitzmorgan