As those of you who have been interested know, the Board put the PMP on the agenda of the January Meeting of the Board of Directors. It was put on the agenda of both the Friday meeting (the "talk-it-over" session of the Board) and on the official meeting on Saturday. At that meeting several of the Directors felt that they could not send out the PMP as such, but wanted to send out the *idea* of the PMP to see if it had support. While I was disappointed, I agreed and offered to help write the wording of the announcement. The idea was to get the wording done before Estrella War and publicize it soon thereafter, allowing plenty of time for comment before the July meeting of the Board. This agreement was witnessed by about 50 persons present in the room (to some astonishment at the cooperation) and was posted in the President's Report on the Meeting. [go to text]

Paul Foster (a Director) and I then hashed out, over the period of two weeks, a draft wording for the announcement. The text we came up with was acceptable to both of us and was presented to the Board for consideration at a conference call meeting. [go to text]

Two weeks passed, then three. Finally I got word from Paul that the rest of the Board had wanted it watered-down and phrased as questions and had come up with another wording. I looked at it and suggested addition of half a line, (shown in purple, below [go to text]). The note I got back from Paul was that this was acceptable. This was in early March. Comments in the News section of this website reflected this scheduling.

Time passes -- I am occasionally in touch with Paul, who notes that there are some Directors who are not happy with the idea and who want to send out a general call for comments on possible ways to restructure the SCA. I write back that this is all very well and good, but has nothing to do with the PMP, and in addition that such a general set of questions will either generate almost no usuable response or that it will be so obvioiusly directred towards a desired answer that it will be useless either way. Apparently there is a good deal of debate within the Board about the matter, but they do not have the courtesy to include me in questions about my proposal and its philosophy.

Finally, yesterday, April 10, 2003. I got a note from Paul saying that the Board is not going to put the PMP out for comment after all. Whereupon I get to work and here we are.

Late April -- SCA -Announce has an announcement that the BoD is going to do a general survey of the membership about membership and finance issues. I still have not been directly contacted by the Board.

May Day -- The President's Report for the April Meeting is out. No mention whatsoever of the PMP, their promise in January or even of the Survey, which I know from other people's notes of the meeting was discussed. I am more and more irritated at the actions of the Board. Modifying various of my pages to reflect the new information.

14 July -- Well I put up the call for comment and publicized it and a few people wrote and a few more complained. As of this date, that call is being removed from the front page and relegated to this history. You can see it here As far as I'm concerned at the moment the Board of Directors has collectively shown that they don't even want to look at "not-invented-here" proposals. Note that I never said that I expected them to adopt my proposal without consultation or anything like that. Ohwell.

[Click here to go to the PMP front page.]
[Click here to go to the PMP Table of Contents.]

"New Business

1. A proposal to radically change the structure of membership and funding of the SCA was presented to the board by Flieg Hollander (Duke Frederick of Holland). The Board directed that a simplified version of the proposal be placed before the membership for comment. The question will concern the members' feelings about the SCA going in this direction, leaving specifics on implementation for the future, should such a proposal be agreed to in principle."
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At the January 2003 Meeting of the Board of Directors of the SCA Inc., Duke Frederick of Holland (Flieg Hollander) submitted a proposal to radically change our membership structure and funding. His efforts demonstrate that there are ways of accomplishing such a change in our organization and the commentary already received shows a strong interest. The Board would like to know the membership's opinion on these concepts independent of the specific implementation proposed by Duke Frederick.

YOUR PARTICIPATION IS VITAL!!! There are over 25,000 members in the SCA. On issues of this type, the Board typically receives less than 500 responses. If you care how your corporation is to be run, send in a comment. Otherwise the vocal minority will be the ones to set the future of this corporation.

Please comment on each of the ideas below:

1) Membership in the SCA should be based on activity in groups and participation at events, not on payment of an annual membership fee.

2) The corporation should be financed primarily through fees charged to events instead of membership fees.

3) The services offered by the corporation should be cut to the absolute minimum necessary for SCA-wide operations.

All comments should be sent to <insert proper email here>

To review the original proposal from Duke Frederick go to <insert url here>

This poll is a joint effort of the Board of Directors and Duke Frederick. We look forward to your responses. Thank you.
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At the January 2003 Meeting of the Board of Directors of the SCA Inc., Duke Frederick of Holland (Flieg Hollander) submitted a proposal to radically change our membership structure and funding. His efforts demonstrate that there may be other options available for the way the national organization operates, and commentary already received shows a strong interest. The Board would like to know the membership's opinion on these concepts independent of the specific implementation proposed by Duke Frederick.

YOUR PARTICIPATION IS VITAL!!! There are over 25,000 members in the SCA. On issues of this type, the Board typically receives less than 500 responses. If you care how your corporation is to be run, send in a comment. Otherwise the vocal minority will be the ones to set the future of this corporation.

Please comment on each of the ideas below:

1) Currently, while participation in most SCA activities is open to all, payment of an annual membership fee entitles people to certain additional privileges. Instead of this model, should all membership privileges be based on attendance at local group meetings and SCA events?

2) Currently, the corporation is financed primarily through membership fees. Should it instead be financed primarily through fees charged to events?

3) Currently, there are a variety of services handled by the corporation on an SCA-wide level. If the organization were to be financed primarily by fees charged at events, should these corporate services be cut to the absolute minimum necessary for SCA-wide operations in order to keep these fees as low as possible?

All comments should be sent to comments@sca.org.

To review the original proposal from Duke Frederick go to http://xray.cchem.berkeley.edu/flieg2/allmember

This poll is a joint effort of the Board of Directors and Duke Frederick. We look forward to your responses. Thank you.
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My call for comment as originally published on my webpage (now an historical document): Do not respond to this call. It is only, at this point, history. (Please note: All links have been disabled.

If you have come here from an announcement in an SCA-related e-mail list about the PMP and request for comments you have come to the right place. If you came from anywhere else, you've come to the right place, too. If you want to see what else I am up to, you can visit my home page.

For those of you who have visited before, I had the PMP put on the agenda of the January Board meeting and they discussed it at that time. They were unwilling to put the plan as presented before the populace because while they felt that the overall idea might have some merit, they were disturbed by some aspects of the proposal as written (different aspects for different Board members and none of them well-articulated). Instead they decided, and I agreed to help them, to put forth the basic philosophy of my proposal.

Since then, the Board has reneged on that decision. [Details here.] As far as I am concerned, the deal is still on, and I am publicising the presence of this website and asking all of you who come here to comment on the following:

Please comment on each of the ideas below:

1) Currently, while participation in most SCA activities is open to all, payment of an annual membership fee entitles people to certain additional privileges. Instead of this model, should all membership privileges be based on attendance at local group meetings and SCA events?

2) Currently, the corporation is financed primarily through membership fees. Should it instead be financed primarily through fees charged to events?

3) Currently, there are a variety of services handled by the corporation on an SCA-wide level. If the organization were to be financed primarily by fees charged at events, should these corporate services be cut to the absolute minimum necessary for SCA-wide operations in order to keep these fees as low as possible?

All comments should be sent to comments@sca.org.

Introduction to the questions about the PMP (11 April, 2003)

These questions about the basics of the PMP are concise, and therefore not as complete as some of the commentary herein. They ignore, for instance, my feeling that Kingdom control of the Newsletters is central to the success of any plan based on the PMP. The Board sees it as a consequence. In order to get the ideas out and to show my good faith to the Board, I have not changed the wording above from what I negotiated with them. The call for commentary above asks you to comment on each of three points. I feel that they must be all or none -- that they are not truly separable. You might want to add a discussion of that to your commentary.

I am hoping to convince the Board that the people of the Known World like the basic ideas behind the PMP while not committing them to act or respond to a particular implementation. The PMP as put before the Board in January is accessible here (PMPToc.html). This is my original proposal. I still think it is workable and it most certainly is complete. However, in order to show the flexibility of the basic philosophy of the PMP, I have also devised a Plan B, which is far more abbreviated in its development, but which I feel has the same basic advantages of simplicity, inclusiveness and some of the efficiency.

I ask all of you who come to this site to read all the material contained herein. I do NOT speak for the Board - all of the words here are my personal opinion and what I believe are facts. I urge all of you who read this to comment to the board at comments@sca.org. Please comment only on the overall philosophy; that's what the Board said it wanted. Please also let them know what aspects of the SCA, Inc. organization you feel are essential to be maintained if a change is made.

Even if you have already written in support (or opposition) to the PMP, please write again in response to this call for comments; the Board will not necessarily count your earlier correspondence. If you really wish to comment on either the original PMP or on Plan B, please put those words in the title of the message so that they can filter the messages appropriately.

Guidelines for writing to the Board:
1) Keep it brief. If, as I desire, they get thousands of comments, they aren't going to want to wade through a page and a half of words in each one. Don't say just "yes" or "no", but do keep the comments short and cogent. (I'm really bad at this one; I try to keep things cogent, but they are rarely short.)
2) Put the conclusion in the first line.
3) Be polite. We are a Society based in courtesy; we can disagree without being insulting.

Thank you for visiting, please come again. I will be updating and changing the site on a regular basis.

To write to me, click here.

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