More dialogue on membership fees...

At 08:58 PM 10/29/2002 -0800, Vijay Pattisapu wrote:

Instead of fees, assign us tasks according to our ability. We can all keep
it alive while spending time instead of money…plus our input would go as
a labor of love; we'd all play a part in the content and presentation of
Rhizome, and thus the communitarian aspect would be more integral to this.

Vijay

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At 12:47 PM 10/30/2002 -0500, Mark Tribe responded:

this is a wonderful idea (similar to marc of furtherfield's skill swapping
proposal), and it might help us grow, but i'm afraid it wouldn't really
help us out of our bind. much of what we do couldn't really be sourced out
in that way. i'm thinking of administrative things like bookkeeping,
bill-paying and grant reporting, technical things like database
development, and more program-related things like coordinating the
superusers, organizing the commissioning program jury or defining artbase
submission proceedures. i know this sounds old-fashioned in an era of
flexible staffing and virtual workplaces, but some tasks really do require
the concentrated attention of someone who is committed over time, who knows
the organization's history and understands how all the various pieces fit
together. in order for a network of volunteers to really work, we would
need to pay someone to select, train and manage them. we currently have
five volunteers and interns. it's about all we can handle. in order to
maintain forward momentum and do things right, an organization needs a
small core staff. the fact of the matter is that we are already as
streamlined as we can get.

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At 03:19 PM 10/30/2002 -0800, Michael Szpakowski wrote:

There are two seperate strands to this. Yes ,excellent
if people help to raise cash for Rhizome, nice perhaps
if it's possible to supplement the activities of the
core staff ( and I think the superusers thing has been
really good) but personally I'm old fashioned enough
to think we should actually try and defend and
maintain people's jobs.( and as Mark correctly
observes most things simply get done better that way
too).

That's why ultimately I think a membership fee is the
answer.

I'm a bit disappointed in some of the rather
dismissive comments I've read here about the various
elements of Rhizome - there's a whiff of cynicism
about them - call me naive but I think the whole thing
is great.

I've enjoyed enormously the discussions on RAW as well
as regularly browsing through the artbase.Both are an
education.

Michael