[Elfsea] Cosolidation of Meetings

Timothy Rayburn timothy_of_glastonbury at yahoo.com
Fri Aug 10 10:41:19 PDT 2001


Greetings,

Last night at Business Meeting, Siobhan brought up the idea that she
would like us to consider and discuss consolidating our meeting days.
Her idea was to put both Moot and Business Meeting on the same day of
the week, to consolidate guild meetings to certain days (like
Tuesdays), etc.

As the current Chronicler, I obviously have a clear picture that the
calendar is indeed rather full.  We have many active guilds, a couple
of meetings, and several fighter practices in Elfsea 'proper' alone.
My personal opinion is that even with this fact, this idea is a poor
one.  Let me start by addressing our general meetings.

Moot and Business Meeting currently are one different days of the week.
 While I appreciate that symmetry of days allows the calendar to look
neat, it also means that people with a problem with a particular dar
(such as Mondays) would have a problem with both meetings.  By having
them broken up, even if an officer cannot report at Moot because
Mondays they always work the night shift, they can report at Business
Meeting instead.  I truly feel that consolidation could limit the pool
of candidates we could draw from for officers, which I consider a Bad
Thing (tm).

Even worse in my opinion is that idea of limiting guilds to a day or
two on the calendar.  Guilds are usually organized around a Principal
who opens their home to their friends.  To tell someone they may only
open their home to their friends on a certain night seems extreme.
While I realize that in fact we would be saying that it would only go
on the calendar if they were on a certain day, it is still
authoritarian and discourages people sharing their skills and
interests.  In a group that has a primary purpose educating, this is a
Very Bad Thing (tm).

A Guild is a group of people with common interests, who gather to share
that interest with others.  At the current time Elfsea has many guilds
including : Glass Beads, Clothiers, Heralds, A&S Nights, The Gryphon
Consort, and Scribes & Illuminators with more potentially coming
including a Cooks guild.  This does not even begin to count those that
our Cantons and Colleges have such as Loch Ruadh's Woodworkers Guild,
and Dragonsfire Forge in the Tor.  Even counting only Elfsea 'proper'
Guilds, we already have 6 active guilds and one in the forming stages
that we are aware of.  This already forces more than 'one day a week'
to be used for them within any given month.  And I hope to see
continued growth of new guilds (in fact I was thinking of starting
another myself the other day).  The idea that was thrown out of using
Tuesdays and Mondays that didn't have 'business' meetings would already
be filled in a 4 week month.

Then there is the idea of Fighter Practices.  I am a strong advocate of
keeping Sunday practices as a combination Heavy and Light practice at
one location, I'd even love to see Archery there to.  This practice
gives a weekly chance for Community within Elfsea.  But our weekday
practices currently are divided with Rapier on Wednesday, and Armored
on Thursday.  There is good logic behind this system.  We put our
Armored practice on Thursday because there was no other practice in the
Metroplex on that night, this encourages attendance and doesn't make
someone choose between practices.  Rapier Practice is on Wednesday
night because there already is a highly successful and long running
practice in the Steppes on Thursday night that several of our fighters
attend.

To sum up all of the above my point is this :  Our calendar of
activities has developed to serve well the communities that already are
interested in them.  Serving the community that is interested in them
is the point of all of these activities, first and foremost.  I would
suggest that to justify forcing scheduling changes, you would have to
come up with something that is of greater import than 'serving the
community'.  In this volunteer organization, I don't believe you will.

That is my 1 pound sterling's worth,

Timothy of Glastonbury
Chronicler of Elfsea

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