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[Thomas Gramstad <thomas.gramstad AT ub.uio.no>]

Hi,

I agree with everything Kacper said (including commas and 
punctuation). I've been holding back, to see other people's 
reaction. But there haven't been any.

Of course, people don't always read their E-mail, and it is 
vacation time. But even so, it has been three weeks and no 
responses.

I have been thinking and feeling all the same issues that Kacper 
comments.

The Swedish organization seems to have deteriorated more, to a 
point nearing paralyzation.

Like Kacper, I believe we could still pull off an FSCONS 2019, 
even if relying only on local resources. But there are two 
problems with that: (1) As things stand, we are looking at fewer 
attendants than in 2017, and (2) when we are so few, the risk of 
burnout of those few will be very high.

I have been hoping for discussion and input from others about the 
issues raised by Kacper.

In particular: Should we postpone? How can we go about 
reorganizing and rebuilding ourselves?

Thomas


On Sat, 29 Jun 2019, comotion AT delta9.pl wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> From the event in 2017 we learned that the conference is doable 
> even when half the organizers fail and drop out, however it 
> requires extraordinary effort from the remainder, and that 
> attendance will suffer because to ensure growing attendence it 
> is not enough to mail out to mailing lists and plaster up 100 
> posters.
>
> Meanwhile, the lack of event in 2018 should have taught us that 
> the organization is not sufficiently strong that we can hope to 
> succeed without a strong process and good communication.
>
> At this juncture I think it's important to call attention to 
> how poor our progress towards organizing this years' conference 
> has been these past 6 months.
>
> In particular, we have failed to invite enough speakers, market 
> the conference and keep critical things like wiki and frab 
> running.
>
> There is nobody to blame, and if anything I blame myself for 
> thinking that a single communication channel ,shoring up 
> meeting discipline and insisting on clear decisions would be 
> enough for us to carry through on our decisions between 
> meetings.
>
> We have a common set of goals and ideals as well as a broad 
> contact base, but a woefully inadequate organization culture. 
> If we are to change this we need to be willing to self-reflect 
> on the negatives.
>
> We lack clear direction and division of labours, methods to 
> keep each other accountable, marketing competence and IT admins 
> that care about the uptime of organization-critical 
> infrastructure.
>
> The most important work required for a successful event falls 
> between chairs and becomes noone's responsibility, and it is 
> rooted in a kind of anti-leadership and a lack of institutional 
> memory.
>
> We have 3.4 months left of the 12 months we set out to organize 
> this conference on. We have 5 speakers booked, an unclear 
> program comittee with no discernable decision structure, no 
> wiki, no promotion of the event, and no frab to enrol speakers 
> in.
>
> It is certainly possible to shore this situation up and land 
> FSCONS in November. Indeed, most of the program in 2017 was 
> booked August and finalized in September. I do not doubt our 
> ability to have enough great volunteers for the actual event to 
> run a smooth conference.
>
> However, most of the organizational work involved fell in 2017 
> on two people and despite a smoothly organized conference with 
> in my opinion quality speakers, attendence wasn't stellar.
>
> In the end, aren't we organizing this conference because we 
> hope it will be relevant as a counterbalance in these times 
> which have a dark outlook for democracy and freedom of 
> expression?
>
> That relevance depends on attendence.
>
> As much as it pains me to suggest this, wouldn't it be better 
> for us to postpone the event to a different year?
> This would allow us to reorganize ourselves and have a chance 
> at success another time.
>
> -Kacper