Lesson to All - Coke/New Coke, BeiMac Version
Lesson to All - Coke/New Coke, BeiMac Version
- Subject: Lesson to All - Coke/New Coke, BeiMac Version
- From: David Feng (Yan Feng/馮巖) <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2004 20:56:44 +0800
Dear List People,
May you enjoy this free lesson from the Beijing Mac group.
Best,
David Feng (Yan Feng)
President
Beijing Macintosh User Group
---
Moral: THE COKE/NEW COKE STORY APPLIES TO YOUR GROUP TOO.
The Beijing group started as the Beijing Macintosh User Group (BeiMac
group) on March 2, 2002, and has kept it that way until April 3, 2004.
In a move by the President, David Feng, after some "tensions with
another Beijing group (local)", the old BeiMac group, contaminated only
by an organisational reshuffle in September 2003, became the Beijing
Macintosh Union (BeiMac union).
This was, supposedly, "quick medicine" at the aging BeiMac group. The
group, after suffering some inter-group wars of words in late August
2003 with another local group (mainly due to executives from both clubs
not seeing eye to eye, and the President of this group pointing at the
other group as "undemocratic" and with the constituents of the other
group lambasting the BeiMac head honcho as an "emperor" and a "Great
President for Nothing"), recreated the Executives Board. Out went the
loose, free-flowing Executives Board organisation; in came a
centralist, Sovietique (in name) Central Executives Committee, with
enough bureaucracy in weight to be considered transportable on a
freight train. "To defend against aggression", a Standing Committee was
created (think BeiMac gestapo -- really, folks, looking back on these
times, it was ba-a-ad.). It was great at the outset -- we had a shield
to protect ourselves. "Evil outsiders would be contaminated." Sadly, as
we learnt it, poison -- from that shield -- would also contaminate us.
Bureaucracy exploded. Our Constitution was manipulated. Ties with the
local group stood at zero degrees -- Fahrenheit. "Committee Members"
dealt the CEC name quite a joke; the President spotted one "Committee
member" IM'ing another "Committee member" using the word "we shall open
a CEC meeting" when all was meant was "we shall meet". Bureaucracy
became the hated octopus of the group. It had to be contained.
In November 2003, a "semi-secret" meeting between our group and the
newly created Peking University Mac group (the campus group, and the
first one so far for Beijing) revealed our bureaucracy. Just as the
Chinese have come to depend on rice for survival, our group
communications (read: propaganda) had all the titles -- used like about
a zillion times through each news listing. We were not far from
becoming like the guys that ruled our nation -- bureaucracy-wise.
Autumn is when the temperatures sink. If things aren't sorted out, they
freeze for the winter. Before winter grabbed us cold, we retermed our
executive group to the Group Administrative Division, and in February
2004, again as the Organisational Department. Nice moves -- but the
house, or the group's structure, rather -- froze when the CEC was
created. Despite two good meetings under CEC tutelage (Oct and Nov 03
meetings), the Dec 03 meeting did us in -- only four came. The future
of BeiMac was under intense doubt. Add to that a stellar presenting
event (by me, the President) on December 5th, and interest shifted from
the Presidency to the podium, leaving BeiMac in the deep chill.
In 2004, things didn't really pick up. An hour-long call by a long-time
member in February 2004 got our group together with the university
group again. All that was agreed was that BeiMac should be restarted.
We created the BeiMac union on April 3, 2004, after I personally
thought the old group -- locked up in bureaucracy -- was dead meat.
Greet the new BeiMac union dead meat then! Our first Constitution for
the union was 70 articles long (compared with the group's 30-odd
something). The Constitution was expanded to 90 articles by April/May,
and a multi-hundred article version was scheduled for approval by
September 2004. Then one of our Executive Department people yelled at
me -- and the Constitution was shrunk to 30 articles in July 2004.
Good moves indeed -- this was followed by a public apology to the other
group we came to detest from late last year. Their response was vivace
-- positive-wise. "Apology accepted" and "you're excused" messages
flowed immediately in response to the BeiMac apology. Our August 2004
meeting was stellar indeed -- the largest one for the group so far.
In September 2004, we initiated our "BeiMac is Back" campaign. (Being
on "Wired", we felt we had to restart our semi-Antarctic group.)
Bureaucracy was no longer on the board, but confess honestly -- after
living in a Mac world for twelve years, you're already in the spirit.
For us, some of us were already in the "spirit" of a dead BeiMac --
plus bureaucracy. The September 2004 meeting was attended by two
executives and just one member, once again throwing BeiMac into the
Republic of Doubts.
On October 14, 2004, this aging President threw the union the towel.
Declaring a full resumption of the old group on October 15, 2004
(keeping only the members and the model of the union), he stated that
"we have seen better times with the group". And one of the most
important things: get a society started!
On October 15, 2004, the Beijing Macintosh Union underwent a
retransformation into the Beijing Macintosh User Group. The "interim
Constitution" was only six articles long and could be read taking like
5% of breakfast time.
Moral: Take the group as Coke, and the union as New Coke. Before you
change your group -- fundamentally -- consider the consequences. New
Coke was supposed to be better than Coke. It wasn't. We wanted our
BeiMac union to become (in bureaucratese "a democratic federation of
all Macintosh people in Beijing". We had our union implode into itself,
to the extent that we had to throw it the towel.
Moral 2: A good, vivace group is better than a group with 5,006
regulations nobody even has the time to read about. That's not a red
alert for all groups to dump their Constitutions and Bylaws. But one
has to know when to apply the red-tape brakes.
David Feng.
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