======================= Grand Council Chronicle ======================= Issue #4 -- February 22, 1995 Contents of this issue: Ghita [fwd]: Budget Compliance Committee Maire [fwd]: GC Structure, & Decentralization Tibor: Territorial Exclusivity Justin, Nathan: Mission Statements Nathan: Introduction 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. ---------------------------------------- >From the Secretary's Desk Greetings unto the Grand Council from Justin du Coeur, Secretary! Two things: First, several people have asked what my deadline for publication is. The answer is a sort of vague "Tuesday". I am putting the issue to bed sometime Tuesday afternoon, doing "pasteup" (that is, making it all readable), and sending it off to Crimthann to assemble the postal version. Then, on Wednesday, he and I send the postal and email versions. In general, I will take email submissions up until I am done with pasteup; when I send the issue to Crimthann, it's effectively laid to bed. Depending on my schedule, that may be any time between 2 and 6 pm Tuesday; anything received after that will go into the next issue. Postal submissions fall under generally the same rules, but note that my mail doesn't come in until after I leave for work. So the effective deadline is "received in Monday's mail". Second, it has been suggested to me that I number the paragraphs in the Chronicle, to provide more solid referents in the discussion. It's a mild nuisance for me, nothing impossible but enough that I'm not going to casually decide to do it. (And I'm not sure I like it aesthetically.) If there seems to be significant demand, though, I'm willing. What do people think? Oh, and one more thing, a question: what do people think about the Contents list at the top of each issue? Do you find it at all useful? I've been crafting the subjects myself mostly, to keep it compact and relevant (many messages come through with useless Subject: lines). Do you object to that? I'm just trying to decide whether to keep up the practice, either as I've been doing it or not... -- Justin ---------------------------------------- [The following was sent directly to me; since it seems of relevance to the GC's bailiwick, and is (mostly) a simple statement of fact, I am authorizing it myself. People should note, however, that I will generally be *quite* reluctant to authorize things myself, both because of the potential timesink if everyone sends to-be-authorized messages to me, and because I am worried about having too much authority myself. If possible, send messages to other members of the Council.] Date: Thu, 16 Feb 1995 11:17:36 -0600 (CST) From: Susan Earley Subject: Re: Grand Council Chronicle #3 Regarding the Audit Committee - I am forming a Budget Compliance Comittee (which will basically BE the audit committee) as a subset of the Finance Committee. I hope to have something in place by Pennsic (taking applications until June 1). This is in response to those who say that the board is refusing to form an audit committee - they're not. These things DO take time, however, and I'm still busy until the end of July being Kingdom Exchequer and writing the new manual. -Ghita ---------------------------------------- [This message, and the next, authorized by Caroline] Subject: GC membership foo Author: horton@dhostwo.convex.com (Patricia Horton) at CCGTWINT Date: 2/8/95 4:20 PM Greetings from Baroness Maire, Ansteorran Kingdom Seneschal. I would like to comment on the last GC communique. There is a discussion in this last issue about Kingdom Appointees. My understanding is the same as yours. The initial 13 Kingdom Appointees were to be the core to get things up and running and these people were not to necessarily to represent the Kingdom. As I was soliciting applications from our membership, gettingup in court to ask that applications be sent to their majesties and the Corporate office, I told the populace just that. I have no idea what our Crown was telling anyone. I also feel if the Kingdom appointee resigns, it need not be another Kingdom appointee that replaces that person, because the Kingdom Appointee was never supposed to be our "representative". I do feel there would be a problem if there were not some demographic representation. Each Kingdom does have cultural differences. What may fly in some Kingdoms may not fly in others. We need to be careful that whatever comes from the GC does not come down as another 'ultimatum' from on high. We don't need another 'we know what's best' situation. You may want to ask Caridoc for a copy of what I just sent to him commenting on his proposal. We acutally have things pretty well together here administrativly in Ansteorra, despite the mess upstairs at Corporate. We took a look at some of the things we were telling Corporate and decided to use what we were proposing at our level to push authority down the food chain. Granted we would love to get some of the Corporate paperwork overhead abolished, but we are pushing the reporting chain closer to home. Also, if you would like some comment on Ansteorran applicants, give me a call. I would much prefer to do that over the phone and not any type of written media. I will be montoring the correspondance from the GC closely and members will probably get a lot of email from me. I wish I felt free enough to be an applicant. I really feel strongly about the mission of the GC, and have a lot of ideas based on previous administrative volunteer jobs in my past. I also have a good managerial background of close to 20 years in business and 10 of that in business/corporate management. I just don't think I can be Kingdom Seneschal AND GC member. Sigh. But, you will be hearing from me a lot. Hope y'all don't mind. I will be at Estrella Saturday and Sunday if you want to sit down and talk. Maire ---------------------------------------- Subject: GC foo again Author: horton@dhostwo.convex.com (Patricia Horton) at CCGTWINT Date: 2/8/95 4:48 PM Sorry, guess I should have read further! Some comments on Original Practical Planning: item 1: does not the Executive Assistant to the Board not do most of this now? I do not like the ED/Society Seneschal setup, having worked under it. Gees, I kept getting caught in the middle of a stupid power struggle and I needed information or decisions, not petty power struggles. I do enjoy the current situation much more. It is much more comfortable. item 3: I like it. It can't be any slower that submitting it to the Society Seneschal. and it is one less piece of minor administrivia burdening the S.S. I know we are real happy witht the change in bylaws allowing us to deal with things below a Baronial level! item 4: Right now this is the Society Seneschal, and it seems to work. I say keep it this way. Having a faster review is nice in some cases, but for most of what I need an "emergency" decision on, 2 weeks or 3 months is not going to make a difference. item 5: Amen! item 6: Even as a Kingdom Seneschal, I never understood the ombudsman process. Emergencies go to the Society Seneschal. Anything else that goes to the Board for business has to go through the office.... As to philosophy: Well, I am an Ansteorran. De-Centralize! This not only comes from my Ansteorran background, but also in my experience with the Girl Scouts, 4-H, United Way, SUNY Student Government organization, and company business in general. I do believe there is a need for some central organization so we can play with one another in a reasonable manner on a national scale, but that is the medival side of things. The business should be Regional. Laws differ from region to region. We here in Ansteorra are pretty lucky, TX and OK state law are close enough that we don't find many problems with enforcement. We have a real problem with the current waiver system because of TX and OK law. Business law down here is a little weird too, but again the two states are close. I would rather handle memberships at a Regional level with some stipend going to the national office to handle their (minimal) affairs. I would rather see insurance handled at a regional level, I know we can get better insurance for a much better rate per member, Ansteorra Inc has looked into this. You can't tell me the international situation would not be handled better by allowing the regions to handle their own business! The central body can help us keep things like Heraldry, awards, base martial standards etc so we can continue to act as a national, sorry international, group. The 4-H and Girl Scouts recognize this, through their badge and recognition system. But this is NOT business, the stuff the central organization does is help us meet our charter and help us play together nicely by having a BASE set of standards. Maire ---------------------------------------- From: Mark Schuldenfrei Subject: GC: The Gem and Mineral Model, a question Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 13:21:11 -0500 (EST) Greetings from Tibor. Cariadoc wrote (two weeks ago) about the structure of the Society, and a specific counter-example of a structure he found superior: the Gem and Mineral Society's decentralized structure. Cariadoc provided a clear description of the model, but deigned to discuss how it could be applied to the SCA Incorporated. (A wise choice.) However, one of his points is one that I have often wondered about: Individual clubs have no territorial monopoly; I am free to form a club in the same city in which one already exists. Regional Federations do have a defined territory. They cannot solicit clubs outside their territory, but can accept clubs from outside their territory that ask to join. A club can, end a few do, belong to more than one regional federation. I am loathe to require people to associate with people they do not choose to. Also, I do think that our territorial restrictions can occasionally require people to choose to knuckle under, or leave the Society. On the same score, however, I have seen frequent clashes within our social structure. Frequently, those clashes are handled in immature fashions. (Well, the mature ones don't get noticed.) Local groups are sometimes fissured, and problems are only resolved because local groups are required to work together. Plus, we have a very active social culture, that would be damaged if we allowed or encouraged schisms. I think that, on the balance, we are sufficiently well served by geographical exclusivity, that despite its occasional shortcomings, we should keep it. I think that would be even more true if we re-organized the Society so that rather than our officers having the illusion of power and control over our re-creation, they were given the responsibility to facilitate our re-creations. Not power, but service. I think that at some point, we will have to visit the notion of geographical exclusivity in the Society. Perhaps we need not discuss it now, or perhaps we should. But it will be an important touchstone for us to consider. How would we be better or worse off, and what are the likely consequences? Tibor ---------------------------------------- Greetings unto the Grand Council from Justin du Coeur! I've been looking over the messages that have been going around so far, and I think that, while we're not exactly mired in detail yet, we're looking at things from a bit too concrete a viewpoint. Most people are talking about How We Should Change the Corporation, in one way or another. I think that we need to step back a bit, and ask a more fundamental question first: What Is the Corporation For? I mean, this really cuts to the heart of the problem: no one really knows what the SCA, Inc. *is*, or how it relates to day-to-day life in the SCA. No one knows exactly *why* we have a Corporation. (Or, perhaps more accurately, everyone knows why we have a Corporation, but no one *agrees* on the subject.) The result is that the Corporation tends to have its fingers in everything, leading to an excess of bureaucracy, and a Board that is buried under work, because *every* buck stops there. I think that, before we do *anything* else, we need to craft some sort of Corporate Mission Statement. We need to come to some sort of consensus about what sort of problems the Corporation should be solving, and which ones it shouldn't be solving (and, maybe, who should be solving the latter). Without some agreement on that broad philosophical question, I really doubt that we're ever going to come to any sort of consensus about how the Corporation should work, because we're going to be playing The Blind Men and the Elephant, not quite sure what the thing we're working on really is. Now, this is the sort of thing that often dies because no one wants to start. So, just to get the debate rolling, here's a strawman. I don't claim that it's perfect (indeed, it's essentially off the top of my head). I want critique, counter-proposals, and general hammering on. Let's see if we can come up with a Mission Statement that makes sense within the next month or so, to serve as a foundation for the practical details that will be the bulk of our focus. (And yes, there are a *bunch* of controversial things said in (or left out of) this draft. In particular, a great deal is deliberately left out here, because I don't think the Corporation should be involved in everything. If you think you agree with everything I say here, you're either a radical decentralist, or you're not reading it carefully. Heck, I'm not sure that *I* agree with everything in here...) A Mission Statement for the SCA, Inc. ------------------------------------- The purpose of the SCA, Incorporated is to serve as a resource for historical groups re-creating aspects of the culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It serves as an interface between those groups and the "modern world". In general, the SCA, Inc provides services to these regional groups. As a guideline, the SCA, Inc should provide such services as it can in a cost-effective manner, that are most efficiently handled by a centralized organization. It should aim at providing economies of scale when possible. It may act as a co-ordinating body for these regional groups, but with the understanding that much co-ordination occurs through other routes. In particular, many (most? all?) details about the recreation itself should be left to more appropriate venues. -- Justin ---------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 16:08:49 -0600 (CST) From: Nathan Clarenburg Subject: GC: Introduction and Initial Policy suggestion INTRODUCTION I'm Nathan Adelaar, and have been since May of 1978 when I attended my first event in the Midrealm's newly-made Region of Calontir. I authorized that day and fought actively for about twelve years before incurring a wrist injury that healed only partially, and have fought only occasionally since then. I've been active in period cookery - starting a kingdom guild and working on improving the way A&S competitions and judging are done. I've also been responsible for feeding folks at a couple dozen feasts and shindigs, including the first three of Calontir's Known World Parties at Pennsic. I am a Knight and a Laurel, and have been appointed as Calontir's Grand Council rep. Outside the Society I have training as a clinical psychologist and a few years experience starting and running a small computer consulting firm. I'm now pursuing a mid-life PhD in Computer Science. PROPOSAL I think we need to help define what the SCA should be like when it grows up. In my opinion, only _after_ defining a guiding purpose and specific goals should we create mechanisms for change -- because only then will we know what we want to achieve instead of simply what's dysfunctional in the current system. Organizational psych savants say that a healthy organization should have a "statement of corporate culture" which accurately describes the group's nature and purpose. From this policy we can come up with goals (preferably ones that can be measured, so we can document the success or failure of our efforts to achieve them). And then we can finally fashion policies and programs to attempt to achieve those goals. Fixing these elements in thought and on paper also enhances the accountability and the mission of our governing bodies. As a simple example of what I mean: Do we want the Society to grow? How much over the next five years? What are the dangers of growing too quickly? How will we know? What kind of people do we want to target (college students, elderly, affluent, etc.)? How will events and other SCA activities change in response to larger population? How will that growth impact our bureaucratic structure and insurance? But we can't address questions like this one in a vacuum - first we need to understand the context of what the SCA is about to determine how growth may help or hurt our goals as an organization (statement of corporate culture). And only after this growth goal has been thought through within that context would it become meaningful to plan HOW to make the Society grow. Before seriously discussing outsourcing, decentralization, or any other proposal for change, we should have a pretty clear idea of what we want to change into instead of just what we want to change away from. I'd expect we could work out ideas on this within 1-2 months, and then start to find programs that would help to implement our clearly-identified goals. In the meantime, it would be appropriate to consult both the Board and the membership to get commentary on how close to the mark our ideas are. Very simplified examples of Goals for us to evaluate and attempt to promote might include: GROWTH in terms of number of members, number of groups, or the demographics of our membership; HOMOGENAEITY in terms of Martial rules, scope (time, activities), awards, across international boundaries. SAFETY for fighting, providing first aid or medical coverage, feasts. GROUP IDENTIFICATION as geographic groups (shires, kingdoms, etc), households, guilds, special interest groups. FINANCIAL SUCCESS as continued solvency for local groups or the international group, financial growth, ownership of lands and facilities, insurance, minimization of liability. ACCESSIBILITY as publicizing or marketing SCA either internally or to the outside world, barriers (financial, clothes, etc), dues, etc. FUN AND MINIMIZED BUREAUCRACY which tend to go hand-in-hand. Nathan Adelaar, Calontir rep. ----------------------------------------