[svlug] The purpose of the Picnic is to Have Fun.

[Heather Stern]

  The subject line that you read there:

	The purpose of a Picnic is to have fun

  ...is the one and only rule of this year's Picnic.  Everything else is gravy.

  I would like to encourage people to come with that in mind.  Duncan
  told me to keep an eye on the basics:  shelter, food, clothing for a
  picnic = pavilions, burgers & veg, sunblock at least, oh yeah, and 
  our pet computers could stand to enjoy some power.

If the motives of people involved are of any interest to you, feel free
to read on.  If not, this is a good place to get on to other things -
see y'all at the picnix - don't forget to RSVP.

If you just wanna see my sig quotes search on the word 'cell' to jump down
to my sig block :)

  I see that a certain cheery soul decided to remind folks of his two
  cents worth on the nature of how picnics work.  It *seems* to be something
  rather soap-box (or maybe soap opera) about how if a certain entity owns
  a piece of something he needs to slam it around.  This is his opinion and
  he's entitled to it, but it's a fundamentally insular attitude, in a
  world that's expecting a community event.  If you take such precision and
  care to define "us" so that it only includes people you control, welll...
  
  That's not how the open source model got to be successful.   Even among
  groups with hotheads (hi Theo!!) the ones who stomp off in an angry huff
  and take their toys with them *do it to some useful purpose*.  Flamewars
  abound, but good projects grow and fork - and good people make things
  work.

  If anyone's bothering to follow these archive links, my opinion on the
  who-owns-what goings on is here:
  http://lists.svlug.org/archives/volunteers/2007q2/000187.html
  But, I'll summarize.  I don't think the Picnic counts as *owned* -
  it counts as *shared*.  If Rick or anyone else insists on thinking its
  pwned or rootkitted because *some* people actually bother to help out -
  well -

  I don't honestly know what to say to that, except maybe stfu, have another
  hot dog.   Or if you prefer reading email I encourage you to look at the
  *whole* archive, think for yourself, and make up your own mind.

  Such anger utterly stumping me, instead I'll quote Duncan. 

	It's a freakin' PICNIC, ok?  Politics don't belong here.
        Frisbees do.    

  I realize that to a guy used to throwing together a small picnic every
  other weekend, it must seem like any sort of core planning for a much
  larger one, goes together like jellyfish and deep space. 

  Maybe they do, if you're an anime fan.  Those of us who've worked in 
  netcenters - or who've tried to deal with blade systems - or pc104 
  cards - know that scaling things up or down can make the answers to
  the very same check-off lists fairly confusing.  Those of us who've
  been involved in conventions of various kinds - a hundred or two people
  here, a 40 person hotel meet there, perhaps 5000 or so at a site needing
  more than merely a major city's central convention center - know that
  scale makes a difference - 

  - if you need to have a lot of detail.  

  If you don't, a child's drawing would do the trick, and Duncan wanted
  back to basics, so that's what we've got.  There'll be some happy extras
  as there seem to be enough interest in the...ooh I'm about to say a
  bad word...  *corporate* entities out there who feel themselves part
  of the Linux and Open Source community too.  Oracle, maybe a couple
  book publishers, stuff like that.

  The fact still comes down that 400+ (burgers|vegpatties|hotdogs) weigh 
  a lot, need to be fresh, ketchups and sauces, etc. and all need to actually
  get there, plus they also cost a smidge more than $0.00.  Thanks Paul for
  offering to help truck stuff in. :D

  Some past ancient year Don Marti played checkbook for the picnic, to
  let these people - yes, that's right people, a corporate entity might
  cut the check, but it's *people* at these corps that have the interest,
  and that some brass among them consider *their entity* to be among
  *our* community.  In other years other people have played checkbook -
  and this year another is - this isn't ownership, any more than the
  one person who plays "Trump The Check and All My Pals Are My ATM"
  at the end of a meal together somehow owns the restaurant or the dishes.

  No more and in fact much less than a particular LA area scifi club owns
  Westercon.  In some fed's filing cabinet, LASFS does. (It's a service
  mark. It has bylaws and backoff bid policies.)  In the real world,
  it changes every year, handled by the 4 to 9 people who drag together
  a promise and a few parties proving they know how to advertise, who
  "win" a bid, draw about 60-100 volunteers, and make several hundred
  people - as SuSE would say - have a lot of fun!

  I told Duncan when he volunteered to me to stand at the big target
  marked X, he was in for a lot of fire, and he said, nah I've been
  wanting to get back in things, 6 years and my arm's still awful,
  but it will get me out more, I'll go to the groups, it'll be fun.
  I know he went to a few;  he drove me to PenLUG... I don't know how
  many he made it to - I'm not his mom.

  You can't take The Corporate Entity out for a burger, can you?    

  Rick made an eloquent note at some point in the past, defending my
  personal good will and honour because I've been a good volunteer
  to SVLUG.  This was about some pasky DNS thing after some pesky
  vote thing.  He addressed a question of my motives with the fact that
  I've consistently done the Right Thing, that needed doing.  He decided
  that this argument wasn't strong enough, and continued on to give an
  example of the wrong thing he felt I'd stood in the place of.  His facts
  regarding me were fine and true - I do what I can for SVLUG - and his
  facts regarding others were not - I saw, with my own eyes and ears,
  friends trying and failing to make the contacts they needed and lots
  of bad blood around, and then with my own good cheer and a respected
  and respectful attitude ran into some of the real roadblocks - damn
  registrars are NO fun to deal with, no wonder nerves were frazzled.
  That the cheer was better didn't make it not roadblocks, and didn't
  really make it less frustrating, except in the sense that having a good
  stereo in your car makes 2.4hrs of rush "hour" pass more comfortably.

  If action truly is the only thing worth measuring then to be quite blunt,
  nobody among any of the past years' checkbook-managers lined their pockets
  that I know of, and having a formal org do it leads to useful things like
  accountability many years up the road, numbers to look at when mere humans
  fail.  Reality wins, doesn't it?

  The actual question raised, however, was to my *motives* and I do thank
  Rick for his confidence in me, but he really has no authority to speak
  on anyone's motives but his own.  No validity exists for his speaking
  of mine, and even less validity regarding the motives of people that
  we know he detests.

  The fact is that I was raised by my Dad's PDP-11/60 and the family cat.
  I think like a geek, it's in my blood.

  My motive is that my spirit shreds if I see friends getting at each 
  other's throats.  (If you don't know how I can manage to be friends with
  people who are so clearly incompatible to each other, ask the PDP-11/60.
  I don't know either - I'm just me.)  

  The fact *and* the feeling was it was long past time to just do something. 

  THe *fact* is that I chose to stand in the place where I knew lightning
  would strike, because it was the right thing to serve a great many of
  my friends - you know who you are, many dozens of you.  In so doing I
  discovered that the Gordian Knot wasn't even that easy to slash open
  and had to actually unravel the pesky DNS transit myself.  In the end I
  had to do things a rather communistic way, take it all into "my" hands,
  (oooh I'm such a wicked tyrant.  down with the queen!  off with her head.
  Oh I assure you my lords, that axe is sharp, the executioner skilled, and
  my neck so very slender.  I'll be no trouble to you) and get it into a 
  registrar where things could be shared by several core volunteers and 
  more importantly, *any* SVLUG member can renew it.

  This is the techie's answer to what had been an absolutely wretched
  social problem.

  My *motive* in SVLUG overall is that a few dozen of my friends and a
  couple hundred acquaintances have a good website.  It's a get together
  every month, the pizza's good, sometimes the speaker is good, there's
  good company to chat with.  *That* kind of company, is the kind of
  "company" you should be thinking of, if you have any sort of fannish
  group make an organization of things.

  It only meant that *I* could do something to make things work, and I did.
  It meant that *I* could do something to reduce pain for my friends, and I
  did - I think - and I tried very hard to do my best by the closest of them.

  I've seen the science fiction community shred itself asunder and put
  parts of itself back together over these pesky matters of defining
  an org and drawing up corporate papers, over games of who owns what,
  over bitterness, and over both hype and hope.  I've seen a lot of
  "its so easy so you must be lame" from people who aren't standing
  in the lightning as early as when I was a child young enough to be
  ignored while people actually said these things of each other.

  The reason I have no conflict of interest seems to be that I gain no
  special thrill from conflict, only from seeing things turn out right.

  If to own means to be a responsible soul, great, let me own myself. My
  motives in The South Bay Community Network, Incorporated are *precisely*
  the same as here - to do the best I can by all my friends, in good cheer
  as I always have before.  I said in my step up to _its_ plate that the job
  would occasionally be fun and occasionally earn me tomatoes for lunch and
  other times earn me being tomatoed as target, and some things I would do
  would be the Right Thing To Do but by all means earn me no thanks and much
  smoke and ash from the flamage.  I accept it all.  Same tomatoes to be quite
  honest.  Pass the salt.

  *Sbay's* motives are its bylaws, and the core of its decisions are that
  no volunteers to a task - no members to a group - should be unwilling.

  Willing hands and good cheer are not a bad thing in the open source 
  community - they are what, in the end, makes the best projects thrive
  and grow.  Sbay's a nonprofit - has no profit motive - because the 
  profit is in *this* sort of pay, the coin of the open source realm:
        http://linuxgazette.net/issue64/lg_answer64.html

  Sbay has no interest at all whatsoever in SVLUG, dropped it like a hot 
  potato, when SVLUG held its vote and was done.  Zero dollars and no sense.
  Finito.

  It definitely *does* have interest in Linux, and this is because one
  of its active subgroups is a bunch of wireless geeks who babble about
  things like Knoppix kiosks in red cross shelters and APRS dots scattered
  across open source maps.  We all dig Tux.  It's Tux's birthday party,
  so there's a picnic.  Same one as we Tux fans - whether we all like
  each other or not - have had every year since his 10th.

  If you do, or don't, like what Sbay is up to, meet a few of its members
  somewhere around the Picnic.  There's about 50 or so.  You won't easily
  meet all of us;  some of us don't live around here, and probably won't
  make it.  If the thing you don't like is our mailing list policies -
  that we close the bathroom door when we go to The Little Room, well,
  different people have different standards of privacy.  

  Join others you can share with.  They need not be like you.

  I've stood on the other end of "oh *those* people, ew" matters many,
  many times in the past.  "Those sci fi fans" - not the practical ones
  who not only wonder how things work but make new things of the old,
  but those people with no life who dress up in costumes and daydream
  of other centuries.  In *my* world these are not opposite concepts;
  I dressed for the 24th century for worldcon, ran an utterly practical
  internet lounge (and was run into the ground by other folks' poor
  planning) while speaking with the brass of a young space-rocket company.
  
         Aleta (their VP iirc): It's so nice to see star trek fans with
                                a practical interest in space.
         Me: Is there some way that we will ever get to the 24th century
             without passing through the 22nd?  We're still stuck in the
             21st until we make all those things ourselves.

  "Oh girls don't *do* that" - sure they don't, when never given the
  chance or a second look.  "Those ham radio people" whom I might have
  numbered among 20 years sooner if it weren't for the previous point.
  The ARRL section manager for this region wears Tux on his t-shirt;
  welcome to the Silicon Valley.  "Those punks on IRC and their silly chat
  rooms" who collaborate internationally and share virtual beers as well.
  "Those southern californians".  "Those geeks".  And "those consultants".
  All these "them" attitude wars make a point of painting the world as
  boolean - and it's a much broader and richer world than that.

  The time of "us vs. them" and bad blood is over.  Flames to
  /dev/marshmallow.   I believe I offered to eat my red hat, with ketchup,
  if everything adds up to complete suckage at the end of the day.
  That offer stands.

  But the day remains 11 August, and I'll be there.  Will you?

  . | .    Heather Stern          |     (408) 374-7623 land
--->*<---  star at starshine.org   - * -   (408) 761-4912 cell
  ' | `    KG6ZYC                 |    

  Since English is a mess, it maps well onto the problem space,
  which is also a mess, which we call reality.     - Larry Wall

  I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his
  own eyes.  What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks
  of himself.  To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.
                -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Remember that there is an outside world to see and enjoy.
                -- Hans Liepmann