Hey folks.  The GMs of Intercon Mid-Atlantic still need reg.  We've had a few new reg, but we really need to push the free crash space, the other deals.  Please push information about the Intercon Economic Incentive package out as far and wide as you can.  I wouldn't ask for myself, but the people who have bid games deserve good full audiences, and there are some events really hurting.  You can help.  You can offer to drive people.  With $10 crash space and $25 food, people can afford Intercon if they can get there.  Help me with that. 

Today I'm starting a modular release of my White Paper on Leadership in LARP groups.  You can read the whole paper at LARPWriting.org, but for people who want small, digestible bits, we're going to serialize it here.  While it was unashamedly written for the Threads of Damocles group, it has a larger significance.

Since it was released the most common response I've had is for someone to describe a basic business management model, and suggest that maybe instead of this hare-brained amateurish stuff we try doing it like the "real" folks do it.  It may be worth explaining that we began with a straight business model for LARP back in the 1990s and have evolved to this level of specialization.  I summed up the differences by saying: 

<i>Volunteer management and leadership on an NPO level does not work like real business leadership
Volunteer management on the organized suburban community/soccer mom level does not work like real NPO leadership
Volunteer management on the gamer-geek/LARP level does not work like organized suburban soccer mom leadership...

So once you pass through that filter...really the model we need is DRAMATICALLY different from a real business model. I've seen groups apply that model and seen them fail. Where they have worked it is only because people have carried out the pretense of that structure as an elaborate LARP while actually running on a much less sophisticated model. Where they have failed that structure typically shot the group in the foot, became a huge stumbling block it could not work around.

It's a great ideal to break the project down into blocks, etc., but that MUST happen along organic lines driven largely by the volunteers and personalities involved. If it doesn't, it's going to be a resounding failure.

What most business people want to build is a business structure that works if you fill it with people. That will, in no uncertain terms, fail. <i>

I - Introduction

This White Paper is intended to kick off a planned discussion on the future of leadership in Threads. It is long. I have tried not to repeat myself or use too many big words, but this is a big subject. If it seems I’m writing too much about it, consider the hours that many groups have spent miserable because of failed choices about leadership and ask…”is it too much to spend an hour reading to avoid weeks of misery and a failed campaign?” I figure it will take about two hours to read through the 45 pages of this discussion.

It isn't just a blueprint of leadership. It is a detailed discussion of every challenge and problem facing us. It presents a new model for production based on a "Free Market of Ideas."

Despite jokes that are made at my expense and which I may indulge because I'm good natured. I do not write or talk because I like to hear my own voice. This has been hard work, and I have put a great deal of thought into it. I collected and in some cases invented the ideas and principles here because I think that the players and volunteers of this group deserve well thought out and reasoned leadership. I could have done many of these things unilaterally, but I chose to write them down for two reasons.

First I think that our group is made up of intelligent, educated, people who can easily read fifty pages, and understand it. The ideas in it are an attempt to crystalize much of what I have learned and observed into a form that others can benefit from.

And that leads to the second reason. I think the ideas and concepts presented in this document could benefit many campaigns and many writers, and as much as I want these ideas to benefit our group, I want our group to serve more than it already does as a model for other worthwhile endeavors in the future.

Our group is fortunate enough to have an influx of younger LARPers who are active, and have the interest and background to do significant work. It is not necessary for them to spend twenty years learning the same lessons I have learned when I can write them down in summary so they can spend the next twenty years learning new things. LARP has too much "reinventing the wheel" because no-one has any impetus to write down lessons learned.

I've said jokingly that when people begin bitching at about Threads in the coming year I am going to ask if they have read this paper, and that if they have not I think they should be limited to two and a half hours of bitching, cumulative, for the year.

Joking aside, how much time do we waste reading flame wars or bitching when a group's leadership slowly fails, or we grapple with problems.? More than two hours. Much more. Some people are not interested in the leadership of the group. They pay their money and play and accept what comes. This is fine. Just remember that this was your chance to learn, respond, discuss and have input, so if you don’t like the leadership you get, don’t complain about it. I have no doubt there will be “summaries” of this information posted. Remember that when you read the summary, you lose the detail.

We are not at a crisis point of leadership.  We do not need to have this discussion now.  But right now we can have it at a time when we are not in crisis.  If we wait for a crisis, emotions will be high and endurance stretched to the breaking point, and some of us will be approaching the table with a list of grievances and a will to do harm.  We have the luxury of being affable and relatively detached now.  So this is the best time to have this discussion.

This is also not a coup, or an attempt to overturn the existing leadership.  I have said that the current leadership is “broken” but that is not because the people leading, including myself, have done badly. It is because our group has grown both in size and knowledge.  To risk a historical analogy, we have had the Articles of Confederation, and it is now time to have the Constitution.  But this is a constructive change brought about by growth, not a negative one brought about by bad management.

Finally I want to point out that the group is not in anarchy and does not lack leadership.  The model that we currently have has served well.  We have an Executive Producer (myself) who handles money and overall direction, and we have the Continuity Staff (Kate Bunting, Adrienne Gammons, Eric Johnson, John Kammer, Lawrence Lee, Stephanie Olmstead-Dean, Colin Sandel) who either as writers or Administrators have worked very hard to produce this campaign.  None of those people will be excluded or marginalized under this plan…but we will bring more new voices into the mix.

next:

II - Background – How Things Have Been and Are Now