Subj: Ddavisfeels It Would Be Ill-Advised to Participate

Subj: Ddavisfeels It Would Be Ill-Advised to Participate

Subj: DDavisFeels it Would be Ill-Advised to Participate

Doctor Black,

I fear that it would be ill-advised for me to participate further in the ACM-OC effort.

You will have a full plate and should not have your effort hobbled by someone who is as out of step as I seem to be.

I think one of the most important communications devices available will be the web site. I fear your webmaster is just the sort of programmer I was warning about. After volunteering for the task his first two questions were “What are the tools that are available to me?” and “What budget do I get?”

In my view the first two questions should have been:

  1. “What do we want to communicate by means of the web site?”
  2. “What tone do we want the page to set and for what audience?”

Further, I was open to the mandate to help in the Programs area only to find my first two suggestions to be over-ridden:

  1. I suggested that the proximity of seven of the nation’s finest universities would provide many good speakers.

This was met with the comment that academics were too dry

and not germane and that we should invite industry people,

a group with whom I am not intimately familiar.

  1. I then offered to write the code for an on-line survey to ascertain what the prospective members would find attractive.

This evoked direction to me to use Survey Monkey instead,

a direction that was reiterated several times, over my protests.

While typically open to suggestions and habitually committed to obeying direction, these issues strongly reflected my being dramatically out of step.

I am more concerned with your being able to operate without having to second guess my every move than I am with trying to convince you of the validity of my positions on these matters.

It seems likely that my creating a calendar for the web site might be taken by the webmaster as an intrusion into his domain, so perhaps you should offer that task to him.

I guess I am too old to be ashamed of my opinions, too weary to strive to see them prevail, and too crotchety to just roll on ahead as if everything were going the way I am convinced that it should.

Hope my presence at lunch was not disruptive, my contribution to the mission statement was useful, and that finding a new Programs person will not be too onerous upon you (I am convinced that it will be less onerous than arguing with me over the use of Survey Monkey. )

Thanks again for your hospitality.

Dan M. Davis

Commander, USNR-Ret

eMail:

Cell Phone No: 310 909-3487

Web:

Top View