======================= Grand Council Chronicle ======================= Issue #6 -- March 8, 1995 Contents of this issue: John Sternfeld: Intro; Responses to #1 Gareth: Local groups; GC issues Kyle: Intro; GC issues Serwyl: Polling; Decentralization Justin: Decentralization; GC issues This is the Grand Council Chronicle, the proceedings of the Grand Council of the Known World, a body chartered to examine the structure of the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc., and make recommendations of changes. The contents represent the opinions of the contributing authors, and do not necessarily represent the official policies of the SCA, Inc. ---------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 02 Mar 95 11:39:42 EST From: MARCIHAW%INDYMED.BITNET@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU Subject: GC communication from John of Sternfeld Greetings to the members of the Grand Council from the vast reaches of the Middle Kingdom where the clime seems to change by the Hour. Contents of this letter; An introduction of myself Why am I here? Responses to thoughts in issue #1 INTRODUCTION: John of Sternfeld being not the eldest son followed King Richard on Crusade hoping to find if not fame at least a little fortune. There are many accounts of Richard's adventures chasing Saladin in the Holy Lands, we won't recount them here. Wandering toward home at war's end and not finding himself much better for the experience, John found a young Barony in need of a steward. Many years later Barony and John have learned many things about each other, and are doing well. Patience and listening well being prime virtues of a good seneschal has caused John to be summoned to the Crown's privy council to record Their discussions and decisions. When time allows John drags the armor out and attempts to enlighten those new to the art of heavy combat, sometimes daubles in decorative leatherwork and various other artistic and scientific projects. John has been a subject of the Middle Kingdom for 18 1/2 hears, participating at varying levels of activity as time and funds allowed. Currently he has served as seneschal to the Barony of Sternfeld for seven years (hence the name) and as the recording secretary for the Curia Regis of the Midrealm for over four years. A & S interests have varied from judging to the construction of a portable replica norman keep (12' sq x 24' tall). John M. Elmore is a mechanical engineer by way of Purdue University. Is currently employed at the largest automotive electronics company supplying airbag sensors to the largest car manufacturing collective. WHY I'M HERE: The Middle Kingdom is the largest of the Laurel Kingdoms in both population and area. Where the very structure of the Society may change in the recommendation of this Council, the Crown and Curia of the Middle wished the people to have some means of their opinions reaching the Council's discussion. I have seven "sub-delegates" by whom I hope to get imput on the issues discussed on this forum, each of the sub-delegates live and play in different population regions of the MK; Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Ealdomere and Northsield. Depending on how this Council acutally works I may look for only their words or the additional thoughts of those they have discussed the issues with. SOME RESPONSES TO GC CHRONICAL #1: Communication Policies If the Board members and Corp officers are able to post to the GC Chronicle, that will bring the posters up to 50(?), I would suggest no more - the last Chronicle I printed was 20 pages, much more and we won't be able to keep up with the reading ("there's already one Rialto"). No problem with "reality-check" - I have no time to watch "flame-wars". Agreed with no Kibitz'g by the editor - that would give him far more responsibility than I think anyone would care for. Go on publishing conact data; here's mine John M Elmore 5801 Woodside Dr. Indianapolis, IN 46208 USA 317-259-1403 On Discussion Form - I am for some control, weekly issues would help control "flaminge", give people time to consider their answers (less shooting from the hip) and even out access between netted, non-netted, at work & at home, etc... Some organization of letters on the same topic could be possible then (?) - different bits of letters under one heading? - cut down on the reading time? On summaries - I'm okay with Justin's 3 Caveats In Service John Sternfeld ---------------------------------------- Date: 02 Mar 1995 13:03:46 -0000 From: rgathercoal@foxmail.gfc.edu (Roy Gathercoal) Subject: GC-Response to digest #5 I believe that Cariadoc and I share considerable common ground in terms of the desired ends, and less in common in terms of the means to those ends. We both, I believe, want a society in which there is little impediment to the doing of the things we do, and a structure that does more to encourage individuals involved in recreation of the middle ages than in burdening them. We both believe that changes ought to occur in the way things are now done. We both advocate some system that enables a great deal of flexibility for individuals to find or create their own way of participating. We both have reservations about the ability of a large centralized monolithic corporate organization to effectively manage the particulars of the Society at the individual level. I suspect the role of the local group is one area in which we do not agree. I see the local group as a way of providing services and resources to individuals; the activities of some will be more focused on the local group, of others on the principality or kingdom, of still others on the international society-wide structures, and of many, on individual activities. I have grave doubts about the ability and will of some local groups to look out for the interests of all members in the area. I think that Cariadoc believes (please correct me if I don't have this right) that if a local group is not serving the needs of its members, that market forces will drive the group (or at least the leadership) into obscurity and that new groups will spring up to serve the needs of those neglected. I fear that healthy groups are difficult to form, certain beneficial community resources are limited and that without some sort of oversight, it would be too easy for a small group of people to effectively exclude other members >from active participation. We both want a society in which individual members are better able to enjoy and learn from recreations of the middle ages. We both see some structure as beneficial towards this goal. I suspect we differ in our emphasis on the level of primary focus. On membership and participation. It is my understanding that members are expected to participate regularly in this forum. Am I in error on this point? While I am certainly happy to express several (sometimes different) opinions, I am more happy to read diverse opinions from others. How many people are currently signed up and regularly receiving these weekly digests? How many (of the 20 of some weeks ago) still left to go? While I am cautious about matters of access and gatekeeping in electronic communication, it seems that if we start these discussions as continuing and open-ended that someone coming in after several weeks would not be at a significant disadvantage. This should be different than the usual email practice of seeing threads of discussion develop linearly, progress then disappear. It would seem that we are a bit under a time-gun, and we have a lot of territory to cover. Thus we would be well served by starting as quickly and as fully as is possible. ---------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 20:45:56 -0500 From: LSmith5696@aol.com Subject: GRAND COUNCIL Greetings G.C. from Kyle of Kincora. Kyle is a 10th century Irish pirate, a Knight for 6 years, in the SCA for almost 13. I have held some local offices and done some autocrating (mostly cooking) and equesterian activities. Rollie Smith is an instructor (automotive) for AC-Delco, an avid motorsports fan and regional president of the Sports Car Club of America. I will apollogize in advance for not responding as often as I would like for the next few weeks. When selected for the G.C. I was working a straight 8 - 5 job and mildly active in the SCCA, things have changed considerably in the past 3 months. Serwyl ap Morgan is absolutely right, we are getting way ahead of ourselves. We need to put our house in order first. While not answerable to our crowns, kingdom differences will come into play. I would like to see as close to equal numbers from each kingdom as possible and to make the following proposals. 1) Crown appointees be replaced in the same manner while the rest are selected from applicants. 2) SCA membership should be encouraged if not a requirement for G.C. members. Non-members trying to change an organization/society is usually viewed as a hostile takeover or acts of war. 3) A simple polling with a 2/3 or 3/4 majority for proposals to the board with a desenting opinion if someone feels strongly enough. 4) A roster of all G.C. members. 5) An org chart of the current SCA structure with explanations of reporting and responsibilities. Can't start a journey...... 6) Get the G.C. up to full strength. 7) Board and IAC comments welcome, but no voting, all others through G.C. members. >From here we can establish a mission statement and get on with the discussion. There have been some interesting proposals and I am looking foward to being involved in the debate. P.S. how many of you are planning to be at Pennsic ??? ---------------------------------------- Unto the members of the Grand Council from Serwyl ap Morgan, Greetings. Re Polling via computer. We would most certainly be able to compile quick polls from people on the net. Would they be statistically significant? No. There are two reasons for this. First, response is by choice so generally only people who feel strongly about an issue will respond. This tends to skew responses dramatically (note how wild some of the results are in popular magazine polls). Additionally, the medium itself is a factor. People who use computer bulletin boards are not necessarily a random sample of the Society. As Justin pointed out in GC #1, 'the Net *does* seem to breed a particular political slant.' My professor in political statistics used to quote a story about a newspaper that conducted a phone poll just prior to a major election. The poll indicated a wide victory for a particular candidate. The candidate of course lost by a landslide. The reason had to do with sampling error. The election was held early in this century when only a select minority owned phones (I'm sorry I don't recall the particular election or year but memory fails). The upshot is that while we may have the ability to conduct such polls, they lack credibility. Re Cariadoc's rebuttals to my comments on his proposal for decentralizing the structure of the SCA. First, I should point out that I, not Myrddin, made the comments you so fully quoted. I wouldn't want him to take the heat for me :). Anyway, while I wanted to hold off debate while we finalized our working structure, I feel it necessary to reply to your comments. I find your defenses eloquent but unconvincing. You state, in regards to my statements on the SCA vs other clubs: "he seems to suggest that they are somehow more frivolous or less consuming interests than ours." This is not true. I never indicated anything of the sort. And I suggest you stick to what I actually say rather than search for hidden meanings. My contention is simply that we are different from *most* special interest organizations. For one thing our scope is nearly infinite (within the millennium we have chosen to recreate). Yes, I'm sure your horse club acquaintances and bridge club members spend considerable time, finances and effort on their hobbies, but we too incorporate equestrian guilds and people interested in period games. We also incorporate fencing, pottery, weaving, heavy weapons, heraldry, cooking, music, dance and on and on and on (each with its' attendant peculiarities, some of which involve mundane law). I recall attending a lecture at Pennsic XX on the Anthropology of the SCA. Although I make no pretense of expertise in this area, I agreed with the lecturers contention that the SCA is becoming a definable and self sustaining sub culture. A person can be born into an SCA family, grow up in an SCA household, be married within the Society, and yes, even die in it. And each of these events is associated with rites and traditions completely different from our host society. This is of course a gross simplification of a complex topic, but I hope you see the point. As to your statement that "Obviously every hobby is different, but are you really saying anything more than that our hobby seems complex because you are in it and see all the complications? At a distance, most things look simple." This statement seems to assume that I have no experience outside the SCA. In fact, I have been involved with numerous special interest organizations (often on an administrative as well as participatory level), ranging in type >from a bead society to professional organizations to a political action committee. The opinion I expressed was just that, my opinion. Any other comments I have on structure I hope to save until we are more organized. We might do well to heed Roy Gathercoal on p.6 of GC #5. Too much decentralization could cause us to lose that which makes us special by allowing us to spin off in wildly different directions. One good thing about the Corporate structure, as much as we may malign it: It keeps us pulling in the same basic direction. As I close, I wish to apologize if my comments to you seem a bit on the sharp side. GC #5 arrived only Monday afternoon and I had to bang this out in time to E-mail it on Tuesday morning. If I took longer, I might have softened it a bit (yes, this is another plug for bi-monthly commentary). I also didn't fully comment on all the points you made, but I hope to at some future date. For now, we may just have to agree to disagree. ---------------------------------------- Greetings unto the Council from Justin du Coeur! I have a variety of comments on last week's Chronicle. In rough order... Gareth makes a few points that I have to take issue with, on the subject of emphasizing the local groups over the global one. First, he points out that if "membership" comes through the local group, people who don't have a local group can't be "members". I have to ask: so what? What is the meaning of "membership" here? I mean, that's true in the *real* sense already -- *participation* in the Society *is* dependent on whether there is a local group for you to play with, and that seems to be the important definition of "membership". If you're concerned about people without a local group not being able to receive, eg, TI, I'm sure we would be able to construct things to accomodate such cases -- that's pretty easy, really. But the real definition of membership in the Society is participation, and that is, and will always be, dependent on having people around to play with... I'm afraid I can't see what you're getting at with the second point. You note that the SCA is "substantially different" from most other hobby-clubs (a point I don't necessarily accept in itself -- I don't think you offer much reason to believe it). You seem to say that a club with a minimal central organization would be incapable of pulling off our sort of large-scale event, which is flatly and demonstrably untrue -- indeed, it's hard to think of a hobby of more than trivial size that *doesn't* have an event comparable to Pennsic these days, regardless of whether the club is centrally organized or not. (And I mean this literally -- I'm thinking of all the games I play, from folk dance to fandom, and every single one has something or somethings comparable.) And you say that the sense of community would cease to exist, which is also clearly untrue, with easy counter-examples. The only way I can make this paragraph make sense is if you're only talking about your example: >It could be that some of us might form an academic study group >focussed on some aspect of the Middle Ages But what does this have to do with the problem at hand? No one is proposing such a group, and it certainly isn't implied in any sort of decentralist scheme. If this is the point, then it's just a strawman. I'd really like to understand what you're trying to get at here, but I don't see the point... I think the heart of my disagreement is here, though: >However, the answer can not be to break the connected whole >into loosely connected parts--the structural biases will still be there, but >will be multiplied a thousandfold as the leadership in each local group finds >itself unencumbered by common values. Many would probably not sacrifice the >values important to us, but many would. This would not be a service to the >many members being served by these groups. Which is *precisely* why it wouldn't happen. Look, the standard argument for why we have to be centrally organized is that, if we aren't, nasty people will go changing the game willy-nilly, no one will be able to play together, and we'll all be unhappy. Why in God's name would anyone do that? I mean this seriously -- how and why do you see this happening? If a group goes and changes itself so that it is no longer compatible with the rest of the Society on a fundamental level, the very first thing that happens is that no one else can play with them; they are immediately isolated. Can you really see anyone doing that? On the contrary, even if some King *did* declare that, for instance, the Kingdom of Foobar would no longer permit combat with rattan swords, it's a near certainty that the next King would change things back within five seconds of ascending the throne. Look, there *are* clubs that exist on an international level without a central organization dictating to them. I'm involved in several; my standard example is Freemasonry. This group has a *zillion* sovereign jurisdictions, something like a hundred of them. Yes, they vary somewhat from region to region. But, on the whole, the club is considerably *more* homogeneous than the SCA. And the reason is that, without that central organization dictating the game, everyone is *very* conscious of the fact that the only thing holding everybody together is the desire to *stay* together. That's a very powerful force, far more so than our rules and regulations. (Indeed, I'd say that the SCA's central body tends to act as a force for making the organization *less* homogeneous, simply because of the contrarian nature of many SCAdians -- if the Board tells them they *have* to do something, they'll do the opposite just out of spite.) Indeed, I will make this assertion: the central organization has had *no* success in dictating the game to the Kingdoms. None. When people have felt like something was an important common point, they're stayed together; when they haven't, they've drifted. When people have felt like drifting, and the Corporation tried to stop them, it's generally been ignored. It hasn't killed us -- the Society is flexible enough to tolerate a good deal of local variation, within the broad parameters of the game. I simply can't buy the argument that, without someone in the center telling us how we *must* play the game, we'd all drift apart. Yes, variations would crop up -- they do so today, and have done so since the beginning, despite the often frantic attempts of the Board to stop them. But where it's important, on the fundamental levels of the Game, we will stay together simply because everyone *wants* to stay together; because we value the community. If we didn't, no Board would stand the slightest chance of holding us together. And since we do, no one, not the most tyrranical and foolish of Monarchs, is going to manage to drive us too far apart. In a later message, Gareth makes the (entirely valid) point that my proposed mission statement is very broad, perhaps excessively so, in defining the group that is to be served by the Corporation. Could be; this *was* intended to be a moderately extreme example. It's not an insuperable problem, though -- it just requires defining the parameters of the game. Again, I have to harken back to the Masonic example. Masonry holds itself together, in part, through agreement on a common set of "Landmarks". This is a brief, concise list of characteristics of the game, such that any organization that does *not* meet those characteristics is clearly not playing the same game. A *truly* decentralized SCA might need such a list; indeed, I suspect that even our current, highly centralized organization might be a little stronger for one. No, it's not simple to come up with; on the other hand, I don't think it's impossible, either. In fact, there's an informal group that's working on the problem right now, trying to hammer out the commonalities that underlie the Society. I expect that discussion to hit the Rialto fairly soon; it'll be interesting to see what comes out... Anyway, the point is that an organization can survive, even thrive, *with* diversity and *without* a central body dictating its form. It just requires the willingness to establish broadly what the club is about, and to then tolerate the fact that within those parameters it *will* vary. That isn't the only model possible for the SCA, but it's one that would work, probably better than the way we've done so far... Finally, opinions on a couple of the points that Serwyl makes: -- I don't see that new members of the Council are going to be all *that* lost when they come in, so I don't see this as a reason to avoid discussing real issues now. We're not generating reams of paper here; the total volume of the GC discussion to date equals maybe a *day's* output of the Rialto. I wouldn't want to insist that someone catch up with a year's worth of such discussion, but a month or two won't kill anybody. Further, most of the candidates under discussion have *been* following the Chronicle from the beginning. (And some of them apparently thinking about it more than some of the people who *have* been appointed -- I'm rather disappointed that some people still haven't even introduced themselves.) -- Decision making: shooting for consensus probably *is* a good idea, but I'm not certain I'm convinced that the super-majority votes Serwyl proposes are necessary. If we actually had power to legislate, then I think I'd agree; since we're just making suggestions (and the minority, by charter, has the right to publish a dissent), I'm less sure. I don't violently disagree, I'm just not sure we need it... -- The Chronicle: I understand your problems with the schedule; indeed, I'm not entirely surprised by them. But I am *extremely* reluctant to slow things down any further. As it is, I think that we are in real danger of never getting enough momentum to go anywhere, and that the two-year schedule is genuinely challenging. If we went to biweekly, I think our chances of complete failure increase considerably. The current weekly schedule is a classic compromise: it gores everyone's ox a bit. It's painfully slow for those of us on the Net, and rather challengingly quick for those not. But I think it's workable (especially if we accept that there are and will always be some responses that don't get into the immediate next Chronicle), and better than going even slower... -- Serwyl asks if we can have a mailing list printed. I'd like to; indeed, I was planning on it. That's part of why I'm annoyed that some people haven't surfaced at all yet. I think I may have to do this by fiat. So: if you are on the Council (as of the beginning of March), and you do *not* tell me otherwise within the next couple of weeks, I will print your mailing address in issue 8. I will also include the phone numbers and email addresses of those members who have volunteered them. Again, my contact info, if you need to get in touch with me about this, is: Justin du Coeur c/o Mark Waks 82 Montclair Ave. Waltham, MA 02154 617-891-3057 justin@inmet.com I don't like doing this by fiat, but part of the job of being on the Council *is* being available for people to talk with you about these issues, and I think it's important to get together a list of the available members for people to talk to... -- Justin ----------------------------------------