[amsat-bb] Why we are having this big unpleasant argument on your satellite mailing list

Tue Jul 14 05:20:08 UTC 2020

Bruce,

How is electing more new blood going to resolve anything, from a
practical standpoint?  That's like saying "well, just throw 4 new
engineers at a problem and that will help us solve it in the next few
months".  Engineering problems don't scale that way, and interpersonal
ones, definitely don't (ref: marriage).  Maybe there will be more
people that will be agreeable and provide a positive perception but
that can't be confused with organizational competence and
productivity.  And don't get me wrong here, i'm not saying anyone is
innocent or guilty of any particular action in the past, because I
didn't sit in meetings where anything that has been discussed on this
thread had actually occurred, but I know that throwing new people at a
problem isn't necessarily the best answer (democracy or not).

That being said, the whole 'us vs them' talking point, seems like a
recent development per my personal experience and it actually makes my
blood boil a little.  Maybe others have had different experiences, but
being co-located near several AMSAT members and having developed
personal relationships with several of them, both locally and abroad ,
this really hurts.  And it hurts a lot.  Because I witnessed almost 0
'us vs them' over anything through the ARISSat days (2008 - 2011) and
tapering off through 2018.  No-one I knew was bickering about anything
except awkward bb-posts, shipping dates, machining, assembling,
testing and maybe putting together a teach-in... The technical /
development emails I was on were full of interactions of software
devs, hardware devs, etc... From crimping and soldering pins, to
literally building a vacuum chamber and hermetically sealed
feed-throughs for it.  I remember even sending one engineer some gyros
I had around my shack because they had a hard time procuring some.
Oh, and these may not be found on any AMSAT invoice because I didn't
charge AMSAT for them (or the shipping!), just did it to help the team
out because the people were awesome.  They invested their free time
and worked so damn hard for the love of the game, it's insane really.
I witnessed the polar opposite characterization of AMSAT and the
board.  To me, it was always the best and brightest, incredibly
active, caring and hard-working group of people that spent most of
their free cycles volunteering to the development of the craft or
mentoring others.  I saw nothing but good people, absolutely amazing
engineers and role models.  I have nothing but good to say of the
organization, I feel indebted to it in many ways and really would like
to see it flourish in the ways that I was able to benefit from it.  In
fact, so-much-so, that I became a life member in 2018.  That may not
be a huge financial decision to others but it sure was to me at the
time.

I can't speak to the good-old-days of AMSAT, because I wasn't alive at
the time.  I am really more of a recent, modern, techie, transient, in
terms of HAM/AMSAT history.  But from my observations, the results of
ARISSat-1 and AMSAT-Fox(es) are reasonably incredible, given the
logistics, individual life circumstances and all the rest.  The
architecture, the modularity of the stack, the coordination for the
launches, the people making it happen, and Getting It Done.  Maybe i'm
just easily impressed by simple engineering things but it's really
hard to argue with Results.  And with so many satellite failures out
there, it is rather impressive!

Maybe there are interpersonal problems, but if you're going to sit
here any bash the board... really?  They, and everyone underneath them
(who likely didn't have
every-single-cent-approved-for-every-single-receipt), are just getting
stuff done.  When it comes to organizations like this, as a wise man
once told me at an AMSAT Symposium "it takes all kinds".  And though,
you may not necessarily agree with those kinds in the moment, most of
them really just want to hack and produce something cool.
Unfortunately, the world doesn't always make that easy and they need
to operate within their provided constraints.  And also unfortunately,
the world will only ever focus on the bad and ignore all the good.

Joseph Armbruster
KJ4JIO

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 6:19 PM Bruce Perens via AMSAT-BB
<amsat-bb at amsat.org> wrote:
>
> Most of you are members of AMSAT. IMO the organization has some serious
> problems, and as members it is your duty to steer the organization with
> your votes. That means that you should remain aware of what is going on and
> you should make an informed vote. The satellite discussions go on, mostly
> uninterrupted, all year. A short break for politics is not unreasonable,
> and acrimonious discussion is to be expected when we take that break.
>
> Organisations are run by people who would not be doing the work if they did
> not have strong emotions about it. And they all have their own failings.
> Unfortunately, volunteer non-profit directors (and many public ones in big
> corporations) never learn a critical skill of democracy: *how to deal
> properly with opposition. *That is the root of what we are arguing about
> now. Opposition are not the enemy! Yet, they are clearly being treated as
> such. They are simply people who would reform the organization or take it
> in a different direction from the incumbents.
>
> In this case, Michelle and Patrick, before they were elected, were the
> loyal opposition - dedicated to a better organization, and deeply troubled
> by the decisions and conduct of the incumbent board. The incumbent's
> response was not to work with the opposition, but to hunker down and use
> lawyers. To the incumbent's great distress, the very same people got sent
> to the board by the membership! Leading to more lawyers. IMO the incumbents
> should have read this as a signal from the membership, rather than doubling
> down their resistance.
>
> The sad reality is that the newly-elected directors have never been allowed
> to function as directors. You should be concerned, since they are the
> people whom you elected to represent you. The main means used to disable
> your elected representatives has been refusal by the incumbents to hold
> board meetings. This refusal is almost total, with exactly *one* meeting
> being held after the organization's annual convention.
>
> The second means used to disenfranchise the newly-elected directors was
> that the incumbents withheld information which a director would generally
> be expected to have access to. As it happened, this information was at
> least in part discussion of those very same people, and contracting of
> legal counsel in a process against them.
>
> Every board has the right to legal counsel. But it's expensive, and must be
> used wisely. This was not a wise use. A wise use would have been to engage
> the opposition rather than to hunker down.
>
> One very large cause of all of this is that the same people have been
> running AMSAT for a very long time, and it becomes an echo chamber after a
> while - the us-vs-them mentality of the board vs. the opposition - but
> really the board vs. everyone else - becomes self-reinforcing.
>
> This is obviously wrong for the organization. The solution is simple, and
> every organization needs it: *regular turn-over of the people in the
> organization's leadership. *Not the stratification that we currently have.
>
> You can fix this by electing more new blood to the board.
>
>     Thanks
>
>     Bruce
>
> --
> Bruce Perens - CEO at stealth startup. I'll tell you what it is eventually
> :-)
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