[penguicon-general] Bylaws Committee officially forming.

[Catherine Olanich Raymond]

On Saturday 05 August 2006 6:20 pm, Rob Landley wrote:
[snip]
> Heck, to get the big names you have to ask _more_ than a year in advance.  

Quite true, as Seth Breidbart noted.

[lots of snippage]
[Tracy said:]
>> Rob, I don't enjoy bureaucracy.  But as a visionary, I've come to 
>> conclusion that if I want to leave any legacy at all, I have to actually a) 
> > tell people (preferably in written form) what the vision is, and b) create 
> > structures and processes which will serve some of the purposes I have been 
> > serving within the organization.

[you said:]
>I'm all for documentation, education, workshops, mentoring...  I'm just 
>confused how a mission statement qualifies as documentation, education, or 
>mentoring.

It's a way of educating the people who will, or may, be trying to run the con 
in future about what the point of founding Penguicon really was, and by 
logical implication what sort of con it will be.

I think Tracy's right; if you don't have a written record of what the con was 
originally meant to be, people will lose (or continue to lose) track of how 
it should be done.  I've seen this in action.  Law reviews tend to repeat the 
same organizational mistakes because they have no institutional memory--the 
memory of what has gone before lasts only 2 years on average (the amount of 
time it takes the editors to join the review as members, edit the review for 
a year, and then graduate).

Think of a mission statement for Penguicon as a bit like the notes the guy in 
"Memento" writes all over his body to substitute for his lack of a long-term 
memory, and it may not sound so obnoxious.


-- 
Cathy Raymond <cathy at thyrsus.com>

"A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point
of doubtful sanity."  --Robert Frost