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MancFurs will now be organised as a committee
12 years ago
Comrades,
Last October Lone had to suddenly leave to take a job abroad. In the intermittent time there’s been something of a leadership vacuum, causing some confusion among staff and spilling over at times into the meets where people were unfairly, yet understandably, mistaking others as being in charge of the whole operation. Fact was these last few weeks there had not been any recognised leadership.
Course this couldn’t go on so the last week we’ve been hammering out new succession that would best move our region forward. So to get to the point we have created a MancFurs committee made up of 3 heads of department and governed by a charter. There will be no one defining leader but a cooperation of staff who will get decisions agreed on by vote.
> Who are the heads of department?
The heads of department are full MancFurs staff in charge of overseeing a certain aspect of the meets get carried out. The founding departments are venue, fursuit and community & communications (one department), handled by SkaPup, Geo Panda and Pizza respectively. Each sit on the committee meetings and each get a vote.
From now on you have a problem with the venue, you speak to SkaPup. You’re a fursuiter who feels the walk should take a different route you talk to Geo and if you’re new and got questions about the meets you talk to Pizza.
> What is this charter?
The MancFurs charter is document that defines MancFurs, what its role is and how it is governed and operated.
> What’s the point of it? Why go to the effort of writing it?
The MancFurs charter was created to dispel myths and ambiguities as well as set a framework for how meets are operated. It is a public document that anyone can read and get informed on how the meets are organised.
> Is the MancFurs charter fixed?
Nope! It’s an evolving document and what you see before you is version 1. Overtime the committee can vote to make amendments to the charter, such as adding new departments or changing how it operates.
> So what happens now?
The intention is to go back to basics. Staff have gotten bog down with distractions too often such as trying to organise activities and events on top of trying to sort out too many conflicts. The charter defines MancFurs as a meet in which people can meet up on an agreed date and location and that is the prime responsibility of the staff. Nobody has the right to expect staff to provide entertainment and if staff do organise activities it is out of the goodness of their own heart rather than duty.
> So does that mean the meets will be just furs in a bar drinking?
It will be if you allow it. From now on, the community has to take responsibility of itself. If people want cinema trips, trips to the bowling alley, meals at a particular restaurant, trips to the museum, do it yourself rather than needing to be spoon fed or held by the paw by the organisers. You tell the community & communications department what you have planned and they can lend a hand promoting your activity across the MancFurs social media network.
> Anything else changing?
The Manchester Main Meet/Great NorthernFur Party organisers have now merged with the MancFurs Committee. We recognise that for you lot it’s hard to understand the fact that the monthly meets and main meets were actually separately organised, so it’s been reunified and will be a join operation again.
If you have concerns, feedback or further questions ask me please in the comments below.
Last October Lone had to suddenly leave to take a job abroad. In the intermittent time there’s been something of a leadership vacuum, causing some confusion among staff and spilling over at times into the meets where people were unfairly, yet understandably, mistaking others as being in charge of the whole operation. Fact was these last few weeks there had not been any recognised leadership.
Course this couldn’t go on so the last week we’ve been hammering out new succession that would best move our region forward. So to get to the point we have created a MancFurs committee made up of 3 heads of department and governed by a charter. There will be no one defining leader but a cooperation of staff who will get decisions agreed on by vote.
> Who are the heads of department?
The heads of department are full MancFurs staff in charge of overseeing a certain aspect of the meets get carried out. The founding departments are venue, fursuit and community & communications (one department), handled by SkaPup, Geo Panda and Pizza respectively. Each sit on the committee meetings and each get a vote.
From now on you have a problem with the venue, you speak to SkaPup. You’re a fursuiter who feels the walk should take a different route you talk to Geo and if you’re new and got questions about the meets you talk to Pizza.
> What is this charter?
The MancFurs charter is document that defines MancFurs, what its role is and how it is governed and operated.
> What’s the point of it? Why go to the effort of writing it?
The MancFurs charter was created to dispel myths and ambiguities as well as set a framework for how meets are operated. It is a public document that anyone can read and get informed on how the meets are organised.
> Is the MancFurs charter fixed?
Nope! It’s an evolving document and what you see before you is version 1. Overtime the committee can vote to make amendments to the charter, such as adding new departments or changing how it operates.
> So what happens now?
The intention is to go back to basics. Staff have gotten bog down with distractions too often such as trying to organise activities and events on top of trying to sort out too many conflicts. The charter defines MancFurs as a meet in which people can meet up on an agreed date and location and that is the prime responsibility of the staff. Nobody has the right to expect staff to provide entertainment and if staff do organise activities it is out of the goodness of their own heart rather than duty.
> So does that mean the meets will be just furs in a bar drinking?
It will be if you allow it. From now on, the community has to take responsibility of itself. If people want cinema trips, trips to the bowling alley, meals at a particular restaurant, trips to the museum, do it yourself rather than needing to be spoon fed or held by the paw by the organisers. You tell the community & communications department what you have planned and they can lend a hand promoting your activity across the MancFurs social media network.
> Anything else changing?
The Manchester Main Meet/Great NorthernFur Party organisers have now merged with the MancFurs Committee. We recognise that for you lot it’s hard to understand the fact that the monthly meets and main meets were actually separately organised, so it’s been reunified and will be a join operation again.
If you have concerns, feedback or further questions ask me please in the comments below.
What is important from my point of view is that people communicate effectively to avoid confusion. Speaking as someone who is easily confuzzled x.x
Though speaking critically, the lack of a 'leader' who doesn't hold a roll in any other area concerns me, it may be me being old fashioned, but just to keep things moving smoothly, but I can understand that requires said leader not to have an ego as big as the sun. It was also good in the regard that it meant people did have someone who was fixed in case they muddled up responsibilities and was happy to redirect things behind the scenes.
But perhaps I'm being old fashioned and looking too much on how I ran things before I quit back over a year ago. Good luck (again) regardless!
Maybe there was a committee structure, but truth be told I’ve forgotten about those days and I can’t remember what that committee structure was or why it disappeared, the thing was the word “committee” faded from the language of how the organisation structure was described.
I agree that normally I would prefer there being a “leader” or one person who has the ultimate say in decisions and is able to lay down a vision for where to take the meets. However I felt things have gotten too excessive in MancFurs, too many ambitious projects, too much overreaching our combined personnel resources. I wanted to scale that back and one way to ensure MancFurs went back to its roots of organising a meet was to make it so each department was working as a component towards arranging the meets, but no leader could drag the meet resources off course now. I think in a way I wanted to create an atmosphere of consent rather than one where it can be dictated and departments felt they had no choice but to follow the party line.
Finally the committee just makes it easy to sack people without complete destabilisation. If one head of department goes all the other departments can still operate their own functions whilst a new person is recruited to take over. If it was a leadership the whole thing would and has in fact destabilised because each department wouldn’t do anything as they didn’t have orders and none of them felt they had any authority to make a move on things themselves.
I’m realistically grounded though in expectations and I cannot ignore the chance that a committee structure might fail, however since we’re not running the country but just a meet, I’m willing to actually sacrifice everyone’s enjoyment of the meet for the sakes of an experiment. I’m better on the payoff of having more efficient departments rather than departments getting strangled by needing constant consent of the leader.
I stopped going to the meets because they were boring, nothing but sitting around in a pub and people actually criticised you for even trying to organise something to do because "it's a meet, not a con."
I'm not saying thing will be that bad and deathly boring again, but I really liked that you had listened to the criticisms and started trying to arrange activities to make things fun and it's one of the main reasons I gave it another go after so many years and came back to a meet the other month.
Also, intentional or not it risks going back to giving people the impression that you only care about the fursuiters as you are specifically working on stuff for them and that's it
I'm thinking my best chance at this is probably Confuzzled, lately, so I'm seeing that as my big furry social gathering for next year. But I may pop to a few meets, too.
As for cliques, well that always happens in large numbers of people, some people will happily bounce person to person, some are just there to see friends they don't normally see.
Cons are prohibitively expensive things that only happen once a year, the meets are monthly so in a much better position for meeting new people.
The meets need at least a few organised activities that people can choose to do or ignore as an icebreaker. We are all furs but what does that really give us to talk about as a way to kick things off? It's much to broad and ill-defined.
With activities those who choose to do them will find themselves in a group of other people doing the same things and much more easily find shared interests and things to talk to allowing far more socialisation.
I brought it to the Manchester Meet in September and Lone and Stuart otterson have seen it, but Lone is the one to have faved it on here!
I've only been to the Manchester Meet once, so that might not make me new(it doesn't make me regular as well)!