-Becky : )

here’s just what i wanna say —

LoT has put on some great events in the year or so i’ve been hanging out with this community (introduced to them all by the ubiquitous & talented mr. @donpdonp, my former roomie & tenant & a great pal). i’m very happy they exist, bar camp exists in portland, ignite exists, etc. i would not enjoy or know half the things i needed to help bring up my sagging skill set in web & coding back up to par, after a five year hiatus, if it weren’t for their existence and these events. and i am very grateful for this. and i say this as a person who got his ignite presentation given the beeg ol’ thumbs down. oh well, i can always submit another next time. ;o)

and yes, we all need to work together, not overly criticize what’s done is done, to make sure there is still are many, many more next times, that there is still a legion of tech or whatever form it takes, and that this and other burgeoning tech community creative, informative & fun events (hello? steven walling championing a TED PDX?) continue and gain momentum, despite set backs like this. or, as raven & adam have indicated, that they are learned from and actually make the board and wider community stronger for it.

to raven, adam, chris, etc., i agree & stand with you on this.

i personally appreciate this “spirit of openness” they are attempting here. we can all “monday morning quarterback” until we’re bloody blue in the face about when it should have been done, how it should have been done, how much more privacy should have been employed, etc. personally, i’m trusting they followed the advice of their legal counsel, and didn’t say a word until it was ok to do so. personally, this is what i want to see. trust me, i’ve been there (more on that in a bit). i’ve been a big, hyooooge corporations and start-ups where just the sort of private, behind-closed-doors skullduggery and “keeping it private for legal” or “keeping it private to save a person’s feelings/reputation” is given as an excuse to a bunch of people who are directly effected by the outcome anyway. we may wish that we don’t live in the social media facebook/twitterverse, amongst the twitteratti, as i call them, any more. guess what? that genie don’t fit so easily back in the bottle (neither does barbara eden, but no matter). even before social media, twitter, blogs, etc., word would still get out. and then, at these companies, you heard it through gossip — which always makes you look over your shoulder and question if you’ve really gotten the whole true story. LoT is not a big corporation. i have no idea if they ever filed for 501c(3), or the like. but they are a group of dedicated volunteers who love tech & this community & want to see it grow. until the case of this one person making this breach of trust, who has been removed and is being dealt with by their legal counsel, i have never had any reason to doubt their motivations or what they do for this community. in fact, this spirit of openness, now that the situation is dealt with, makes me trust them all the more. they are not, in any way, beholden to any of some of the very corporatesque standards & suggestions people seem to want to hold them to about what should be private when. this is the new way of doing things — the new openness. i like this better. the openness. yeah, i like it a lot.

as the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

as for rick & silicon florist — he’s doing his job. he reports on portland/nw tech scene and has an angle of encouraging it to flourish. jokingly, i call rick my “newman” or “arch-nemesis” just to have a laugh with him at gatherings & such about how much we can over-market & hype anything, especially in tech. but i know his aim here is true. it was a story that was out there on a blog, about something that effects the tech scene here in a big way. he reported on it and gave us his view. that’s just doing his job, not creating “hoo-hah” (wotevah dat is).

now, on a more personal note — i have a very personal sort of feeling & somewhat of a connection to this situation, because i have been in the position, in the past, of the person who took the money & hid what they were doing. yes, that’s right, i’m coming clean about this. in the 90s, i worked for a very big software company, kind of well-known. while working in one department dealing with corporate clients, i was given a card to make long-distance calls to call back important clients on evenings & weekends. when i moved to another department, i just very purposefully neglected to mention i still had the card. i ran up about $2300 in long-distance charges on that card over the next 2 years. when it was found out by a manager, i got fired, had to re-pay back the money charged on the phone card, and lost a career i had built up over 6 years. i was lucky — they could have also called the cops. and i paid a price in reputation, especially as a fledgling zen buddhist at the time.

so i’m not excusing what this person has done in any way — anymore than i’m excusing what i did way back in the day (a decade ago, now). both were a breach of trust, wrong and just very dumb ass. but i’m saying i understand, maybe better than a lot of people, how he or she feels right now. our tendency, as we try to come off as all so hip, superior, witty & snarky in the blogosphere/twitterverse, would be to vilify and ‘erect gallows.’ [note: someone actually said that on the silicon florist blog comments, i'm just quoting.] i’m hoping, as someone who has been through this, maybe not. yes, this person will need to bear the brunt of people’s hurt feelings & abused trust for a while. maybe a long while. the best thing they can do is to hear people’s hurt & anger, and say, “you’re right, i did that, and it was horribly wrong and i will never do that again” (and of course, back that up with action). and previous status & responsibilities entrusted with this person are not going to happen now. but i’m hoping restitution and real amends (which is different from “i’m sorry,” amends is actual changed behavior), over time, they can begin to re-integrated in the community.

that’s what i hope, at least. as someone who has been there.

and i don’t think LoT has anything to apologize for here. that is way too much ‘blame the victim’ for me. they have my support, in this trying time. as they should from anyone who has benefitted from what they’ve done here in portland tech.

if anything, we should re-double efforts to help get them sponsors for events like ignite, now that their dealing with a very obvious short-fall.

my $0.02, plain.

I’m glad to hear an attorney is involved. The one consistent complaint I’ve heard expressed about Legion of Tech (amidst lots of praise) is the perception that the group/board is comprised exclusively of people who are friends…kind of an insider group thing. To recover from this, and gain or regain the confidence of people who have supported the organization’s efforts financially or otherwise, I think it’s really important to demonstrate that you are treating this seriously, ensuring that the money is repaid and justice is served, and taking steps to ensure it can’t happen again. Having a larger board, including “outsiders”, might help with the perception mentioned above. Making this public is an important first step.