Subject:
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Re: A BricksWest Critique?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.events.brickswest
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Date:
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Wed, 10 Jul 2002 18:25:05 GMT
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Viewed:
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1038 times
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WOW Nelly! Before this gets off on a "flame", I want everyone to be clear about
the intentions of this thread. First, I want people to post their observations
and critiques about the event for those that attended. Seth did attend on
Sunday (clearly stated) and his observations are that promises were made that
never materialized. His other observation that the decisions should be made by
more than one individual and made public are in line with mine.
Matthew did a great job! I take nothing away from Matthew, but because he was
an organizing committee of one, he sholdered much of the decision making, the
responsibility and therefore the fortunate or unfortunate blame when things do
not go as planned. Becuase Matthew made a lot of the decisions himself or took
the responsibility for much of the planning, things fell threw the cracks. If
Matthew had deligated more of the responsibility then their would have been
more eyes and ears on the events and planning and less would have been up to
Matthew.
Believe me when I say, one person can only accomplish so much in their personal
time and I was blown away by how much Matthew accomplished. But blaming
everyone else for the stuff that didn't happen is not correct either. Having
someone look after Legoland and their people would have, or should have,
entailed weekly and daily telephone calls. This is the job of one person with
one task not one person with 15 tasks (which Matthew had). Is it his fault that
we didn't have a Luau, not entirely his fault, but something got dropped by
both sides. And yes, Brad Justus bailed out Legoland by working a deal for meal
vouchers which I am certain (based on the size of the meals everyone was
eating, the ones I say, including my own) LEGO more than compensated us. By the
way, the knowledge of Brad's SuperHuman rescue like efforts on our behalf, was
not made know to the whole group and I am certain Seth was unaware of this.
Matthewn took the blame for a lot becuase the how and why things didn't happen
were neither apparent nor communicated to the masses. Matthew made him self the
point man for blame when he took on the responsibility for most of everything.
Had some of that stuff been deligated he could have told complainers and
whiners to go see the person in charge of the event. As it was Matthew was in
charge of everything and therefore had to deal with all of that personally.
After a while a person goes into a defensive self preservation mode and just
succombs to it. I don't know what Matthew said to everyone about the many
different "problems" becuase he either didn't include me in the decision making
process or dealt with it privately.
Mathew placed himself on the hook too, ecomonically. He paid for things out of
his personal bank accounts, credit cards, and cash. There are no receipts and
no means of accounting for what was spent and what contracts were signed,
because Matthew did all of this. This also left him open to financial ruin.
That's why I call for a larger group and a means of isolating the organizers
from greedy companies looking to nickel and dime this growing "community" for
space that is rented and services that are rendered. A small non-profit
organization can remedy the legal and contractual issues that needs to be dealt
with and can prevent great people like Matthew from being ruined from some
disgruntled company or person who thought they were treated wrongly.
Although I myself was an "organizer" of BricksWest, I had very little input
into the decisions that were made. While I would have objected to very few, I
just want it clear that I felt Matthew made most of them on his own, which I
was admittedly fine about.
The point of this exercise is to learn more about what the "community" wants to
see in a gathering of individuals. Do we want it to be about learning, sharing,
or just hanging out and enjoying the park.
Please, resist the temptation to be defensive, even on other people's behalf,
in the effort to bring out what went wrong and what can be improved. I wouldn't
mind the "defensive positioning" if I felt the organization was more open to
the community and not sholdered by a few individuals.
I seek only to repeat the great work Matthew started and build upon his early
susccess. Putting negative opinions or feedback down will not teach us what we
did wrong, only reinforce the same ways to screw up.
Sincerely and respectfully,
Todd
P.S. And Matthew, if you are reading this, make certain your take home message
from all of this is my deep personal concern and respect for you and your
family and wanting to contiue this thing you started without sending you and
your family to the nut house or the poor house.
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: A BricksWest Critique?
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| I think the feelings that most of those that went to BricksWest 2003 have about the Luau and the Hawaiian Shirts were that these were the two big selling points to buy the full package as compared to individual day passes to BricksWest '03. When we (...) (22 years ago, 11-Jul-02, to lugnet.events.brickswest)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: A BricksWest Critique?
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| As a volunteer BricksWest organizer who worked closely with Matt on the event, I feel compelled to answer this post. (...) And these things were outside of the organizers' control. Blaming Matt for what happened is not fair in the least. Thanks to (...) (22 years ago, 10-Jul-02, to lugnet.events.brickswest)
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