SCN: Meeting: "It's not a dumb lawsuit."

[Kurt Cockrum]

jj reported: 
>The next question was from Kurt:  what is the positive outcome
>[to SCN] to be had from this suit?  After going off into some
>other directions, Rich finally stated that this "does not
>actually affect the organization's coffers".

<Correction>
It was clear that there wasn't going to be much in the way
of positive outcome for SCN in this.  What I was asking was
how Rich saw a positive outcome for himself in this, and how
that could weigh against a large collection of outcomes
extremely adverse to Rich.  I was hoping to get some insight
as to Rich's motivations.
</Correction>

In all of this I have not been able to detect any trace of evil or
wrongdoing in Rich, and this keeps me from dropping a bomb on him, so
to speak.  I can't yet think of him as not-a-friend, although I admit
he's getting close to the boundary if I were to let my emotions get the
better of me (no danger of that, really).  In fact I hope things can be
repaired, but it's going to have to require smarts on the parts of *both*
Rich and the SCN Board.  Just one group having smarts won't do.

I do think Rich is being foolish and wrongheaded, though.  And he told
me after the meeting he was *stuck* and couldn't think of any other way
to do it but sue.  Well, OK, that's honest, and just maybe provides the
nucleus that a solution can crystallize around.  What do you do with
somebody who's stuck?  You try to help them.

So somehow Rich has to be convinced that there exist better solutions to
the problems between him and the board than litigating a tort-in-a-court
(homage to Dr. Seuss :) or other hardline solutions.

I can't dump this all on Rich, though.  It's seemed to me there have
plenty of times where the Board has had to get a get a whack on the
head to get *its* attention.  Delve into the archives of this list if you
don't believe me.  And Rich's suit qualifies as a pretty big whack on
the head!  And 86'ing him from the e-mail training slot frankly was a
colossal blunder that the Board ought to cop to, so it can get about
the business of fixing it.

And the realm, e-mail training, is one where there ought to be *plenty*
of room for a wide variety of philosophies and theories and experiments,
and that battles over which way (as with the schools, for example)
is best are stupid and counterproductive.  Where possible, multiple
experiments should be running, a la Charlie Barb's e-mail experiments
that run concurrently with the conventional training methods.

IMO what should've been done at the cusp of the Rich/BOD conflict is for
there to fork off another e-mail training experiment, and that's something
that ought to still be possible to pick up, if it's worth doing at all.
(no, I don't want to hear a flood of objections why that can't be done;
 I won't get sucked into that "why-don't-you/yes-but" game).

That's the best use of the system, IMO.  Let a hundred flowers bloom.

So this is a live and functional test of the quality of the board, too.
A smashing-type victory, where one adversary crushes the
other, would probably prove very unsatisfactory in the long run, and would
demonstrate the board's unfitness, hopefully to be remedied at the next
election.
--kurt
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