[Board] Re: [penguicon-general] Bylaws Committee officially forming.

[Matt Arnold]

Rob,

I agree with you on this:

> Conflating the bylaws (a state of Michigan legal requirement) and the Big Book
> of Penguicon strikes me as a bad idea.  How to run con suite should not be
> filed with the state.  Documentation is "we did this and it worked".  That's
> not the same as "This is how it should be done in future", let alone how it
> _must_ be done.
>
Yeah. Maybe Tracy can explain it better, and I intend to hold out the
benefit of the doubt until she explains. But I'm unaware what problems
exist which amended bylaws would solve. If we need any committee at
all to document ourselves, an EncycloPenguicon wiki committee.

> I like most of the people _on_
> the board but when you start having Matt Arnold telling me I'm being
> hypocritical for not liking closed lists yet being _on_ a closed list that I
> didn't close...

Can you forward me the email where I said this?

There are several places where your account is verifiably inaccurate
about me according to the email record. I understand that you were
really keen on getting Tamora Pierce, and put a lot of effort into it.
Thank you for that. You were understandably disappointed when she had
to turn us down with such reluctance on her part, especially since she
expressed so much excitement to join us in a future year. I'm
sincerely sorry that happened to you, but you didn't get what you
want, OK? All of that emotion can skew your perceptions, and I'm sure
that's all that happened here. I'm going to cut you some slack for
that, but I would like to set a few things straight. (I'm not setting
the record straight, since the record already supports this.)

I did not oppose your invitation of Tamora Pierce to the 2007
Penguicon. I supported it at concom meetings and on the email
discussion.

I did not oppose getting her for any year, as a Nifty Guest.

I didn't even oppose getting her as a full GoH for the first year
she's available (2009), I just asked that if we're going to be making
major decisions about a Penguicon three years away, which doesn't even
have a date or a hotel or a conchair yet, that we take the opportunity
to re-evaluate the situation based on whether we still want her as a
full GoH then. It looked like significant factors were going to change
that between now and future years. We had a rare luxury of time in
which to-- at the least-- have a conversation or two about it first.
That's all.

I enjoy making decisions by talking a lot to my friends. I read your
essays about three waves with great interest. The problem is when the
commandos have a difference, and I feel torn between them. In this
case, you were a commando for Penguicon 2007. I was hearing another
commando-type person (an individual who has won my complete trust and
respect) talk about being chair in a future year. You were taking over
the decisions for that year in a way which I knew that commando would
politely feel different about.

I suggested that it be discussed, and you blew this tepid "resistance"
to your executive fiat completely out of proportion. If I'm
understanding this passage correctly, it gives a clue as to why you
don't feel the need to discuss with anyone:

> If you don't understand why a Volkswagen Beetle with a license plate that
> says 'Feature' is inherently cool, you haven't got the fire to be a computer
> geek.  And if you read the first sentence of Wen Spencer's "Tinker" (which
> is "The wargs chased the elf over Pittsburgh Scrap and Salvage's tall
> chain-link fence shortly after the hyper-phase gate powered down.") and can't
> tell whether or not it's likely to hook its intended audience, no amount of
> teaching will clue you in.

You sincerely do not expect there to be many people reading your above
paragraph and saying to themselves "hey, I'm a geek/fan, but I don't
get it"? I'll bet you there are. Are you arrogant enough to think
we're all like you, and that you can make cowboy decisions based on
your own tastes, running roughshod over everybody else's fandoms
because those who don't share yours aren't true geeks and fen? This
arrogance demonstrates one of many ways in which you and I are really
amazingly similar. If there are some geeks and fen who can't get into
young adult authors, you don't seem to see them as true geeks or fen.
Similarly, I sometimes have trouble getting it through my head that
there are a lot of geeks and fen who yawn over Cory Doctorow and
Charlie Stross.

But I and most of the rest of us possess the art of compromise and
accommodation which is necessary to hold together such a welcoming and
diverse convention. I actively welcome fans of things that I'm not a
fan of. This means going to my friends and asking them about stuff
they're a fan of which I don't grok. That's compromise and
accommodation between incompatible parties who don't understand each
other. My style works by talking a lot to my friends. If that
constitutes third wave red-tape, then Penguicon has functioned as an
inherently "red-tape" organization (by that standard) for all the
years I've known it.

And if that isn't what Penguicon is about, maybe we're confused and
that's what Tracy is calling a committee to talk about.

-Matt