Temper Tantrums, Thrills & Tribulations

I crawled out of my warm and cosy bed at 4.30AM local time to attend the SP2014 emergency board meeting called yesterday at 8PM SLT. Let me assure anyone that doesn't know me well that this was a great sacrifice on my part for my  readers and for the membership of Second Pride.

When I logged in-world I grumbled a little at my sweet brother in-law Dejeritty, checked if what I was wearing was decent enough and then teleported to the Second Pride sim.

The sim which once was beautiful nowadays looks sadly empty and depleted since the two directors that have resigned after the elections have seen fit to remove all the landscaping and buildings that were in their names, with the exception of the magnificent main HQ-building but including the delicately charming Chapel.

The agenda for the meeting was the following,
1. Call to Order
2. Chairman Comments
3. Resignations
4. Call for Candidates
5. Transfer of Second Pride Avatar Account
6. Discussion of Previous Private Meeting Logs
7. Open Discussion/New Business
8. Adjourn Meeting

As should be obvious to most "the dynamite" was contained in #6, as the disgruntled faction of the board have often in statements and comments, on Facebook and various blogs, referred to what had or had not happened at the board's private meeting before the public board meeting on September 8, 2013.

The IT-Director is baffled by the actions of the irate Security Director (my interpretation)

My general observation from this meeting was that it was more than usually messy due to a certain board member and some members of the audience not being able to follow the basic rule of public meetings, i.e. to ask to speak and wait to speak until you are given the right to do so. Instead we - despite the chairs best efforts - got a lot of out-of-order disruptions with blurting out of opinions and copy/pastes filling the screen. This is of course totally unacceptable and I would earnestly suggest that the board considers future measures to warn once and then kick-out offenders who cannot obey the rules, whether they be members of the board or the audience. We need a mutually respectful tone of discussion at the meetings in spite of different opinions on the issues.

When we reached #6 on the agenda the discussion was extremely heated. Among others Mrs. Story Long made an exceptionally moving plea to the board to publish the logs. I support her sentiments and arguments wholeheartedly. Mrs. Long said, "This election and everything that's followed has created drama, not saved the community from it. There is so much distrust right now, so much drama, there needs to be transparency everywhere there can be or the community will shrink away to nothing. The community is very, very, very, unhappy. Pay attention to that. People are calling for facts. so give it to them!"

The board's final vote on the matter ended 3-2, with one abstention, against the publication of the log, which made me extremely disappointed as I can see that the vacuum arising from the non-transparency of what really occurred at that meeting will give further occasion for the disgruntled board member and the two resigned ones to create havoc for Second Pride while they go on working with their new alternative organisation "The Boystown Pride", which has miraculously produced a group and a website in a very short time. Unplanned? Coincidence? I wouldn't be so naive to believe so.

Moving on, the board further decided to send a request to the directors that had resigned requesting that they transfer the buildings that had been removed to the Second Pride avatar. There is of course no way the board can force the two resigned directors to do this, but several voices were heard that believed the two would in fact "do the right and honorable thing". We will simply have to wait and see what happens.

The board also decided to ask the membership for donations for the additional landscaping and building that needed to be done urgently fore upcoming events. I for one am going to support this cause, as I want a Second Pride sim that I can be proud of and that is a safe haven for the  various non-profit organisations we wish to offer offices on the sim.

The board finally decided to appoint Jak Calcutt as an interim building director without voting rights until such a time that a new building director could be found.

I think that is all, well as I remember it, for the complete, unbiased, fair or whatever your wish recount of the meeting please go to the Second Pride website.

If you have any objections concerning my fairness, objectivity or anything else in my reporting please send a letter, in triplicate, to President Bashar al-Assad, The Peoples Palace, Mount Kassioun, Damascus, Syria, and see if he cares because I most certainly do not.

You may now be asking yourselves, "What was the thrilling part of this meeting?" Well, that happened as Ohiomike Lockjaw, who was sitting next to me at the meeting, crashed repeatedly due to a faulty graphic card. It took him a few moments to rez every time he came back so I was thrilled to see this transformation in all its splendor.

Oh, let me just let one final bomb explode. Yesterday I received a copy of the full chat log of the private group meeting the board had on August 28, 2013. I am as yet thinking about how to use it, but stay tuned for further news on this. The group chat log was received from a source outside the board whom I consider highly trustworthy.