EnthusiastiKa
& I:
DervMan’s
Stance
Foreword
This page all stems from the pig headed arrogance of the Ka Klub founder, Steve Stunt.
Stunt instigated a policy of harassment, officially supported by the Klub or otherwise, which also included harassment, bullying
and intimidation. All very flawed
because the Ka Klub knew about my involvement with EnthusiastiKa long before it was released and they should
have done something before it was released.
Actually, that would have required thought and planning, heh.
After being booted out, quite a few KKK members past and present have
expressed their displeasure at what happened to me.
I could remove this article but hopefully this will help prevent it from
happening to anybody else.
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F |
ollowing the successful launch of
the magazine, I was criticised and questioned regarding my involvement with the
magazine given that I was, at that time, the North East Regional Representative
for the Ka Klub of
In short, I had carefully
considered my support for the new magazine several weeks before it was
launched, including the possible “conflict of interest” aspect.
My Involvement With
EnthusiastiKa
My involvement with the first EnthusiastiKa magazine was three fold.
One, I promoted the magazine. This was by active and passive marketing in
forums, Usenet, and of course this website.
Two, I wrote one article and
co-wrote another.
Three, I handing the information
technology aspect of the magazine, which encompassed the email lists, hosting,
conversion to PDF, and some of the other web funkiness that nobody much sees
but Charlie want to know about.
The EnthusiastiKa
website is currently piggybacked on to my own site. In due course, it will get its own website
and given the chunky bandwidth required, perhaps separate hosting too. The web-based side of the project was not as
transparent as I would like because of “dervman”
being in the URL, but the site has its own individuality.
My Support For
EnthusiastiKa
From some perspectives my support
of EnthusiastiKa could have been considered a
conflict of interest with the Ka Klub, but I believe
dismissing my support for the magazine like this is flawed thinking, and here’s
why.
A conflict of interest may be
defined as deemed to be officially supporting one project, but then supporting
other projects that may represent competition for the first project. Putting this into context, does this make my
promotion of the non-Klub, independent Ka magazine, EnthusiastiKa, a conflict of interest because the magazine
is a competitor to the Ka Klub?
Yes, I suppose it does in the way
that anybody else promoting anything else Ka related is. An example could be a banner linking to an
individual’s own web site on the Ford Ka, rather than to the Ka Klub website, or a sticker on a Ka for ones own personal Ka
website.
A forum banner is a means of
establishing identity, but if it’s promoting another website, does this
represent both competition and a conflict of interest? If the answer to this is “it depends on what
information the website contains,” then I throw this website into the equation,
because I’ve displayed a banner illustrating my website since the year
dot. If having my own forum and
stacks of Ka information isn’t competing with the Ka Klub
website, then I don’t know what is!
In addition to a forum member
promoting their own website, what about promoting other Ka websites and forums
- such as other Regional Representatives promoting a rival forum as a source of
information?
The above is on the assumption
that EnthusiastiKa is, indeed, competition for the Ka
Klub. It is
not, it cannot, because the Ka Klub includes a whole
bundle of things over and above a magazine.
These include forum access, the opportunity to show on the Klub stand, discounts off goods and services, and
merchandise. With the independent
magazine, you only get the magazine and nothing else. No forum, no EnthusiastiKa
stand at shows, no subscription and no special promotions, no discount
arrangements and no merchandise. There’s
nothing tangible to the magazine, unless somebody prints it off.
How can a magazine be a competitor
for the entire Klub, with all of the associated
services that come along with it? After
all, the Ka Klub is “so much more than a PHP Board,”
as the Ka Klub founding member says.
Is promoting something within the
Ka Klub forum that fee-paying members could receive a
conflict of interest? Is promoting a
free source of information and articles, containing pictures, opinions and
views on some Ka Klub aspects, a conflict of
interest?
If the answer is yes, then I’m
guilty of a conflict of interest as soon as I took on the position of the North
East Regional Representative, because of my website which is older than my
membership of the Ka Klub, and it’s older than my
stint at the North East Regional Representative.
Charlie has had a number of
articles and other material submitted for EnthusiastiKa
from around the world. The EnthusiastiKa site and magazine make it perfectly clear
that it’s an independent magazine, and that it is not associated with any other
club, group or similar. It’s her email
address that receives the articles and I don’t get to see them until I’m
compiling the magazine into PDF format.
I know that there is going to be a
Ka Klub magazine, but there’s been no canvassing for
articles or submissions in the forum, no release date and very little official
news. Anybody sending me an article for
submission into a magazine will likely be asked, “what
magazine?” but it hasn’t happened yet. I
don’t think it’s realistic to expect it to happen, either.
How Was I A Ka Klub
Representative?
Then there’s how I promote the Klub. I don’t “do”
the active promotion, I generally don’t walk up to
somebody and tell them to join the Ka Klub. Instead, somebody visits my website, sees the
link to the Ka Klub, clicks... and here he or she
is. However, the Klub
website only gets three or four hits from my website a month.
Or, somebody sees an article on my
website, they email me a question, I email back, I mention the Ka Klub, here we are...
This is indirect marketing. I’ve
promoted the Klub even he or she came to me wanting
to know about something else. I don’t
know how many people have joined up via this route, but I get stacks more email
from the website than it produces hits to the Ka Klub
site.
This is how I have always worked,
even before I was the North East Regional Representative. I don’t check to see what region they’re
from, so perhaps this makes me a bad North East representative, but does it
make me a bad representative of the Klub per se?
The new independent magazine is already
proving to be an excellent way to indirectly promote the Ka Klub
and this is the cornerstone as to why I agreed to support and sponsor it. People expect a club’s magazine to promote
that club, but they may not be expecting an independent magazine to be
promoting the club, directly or otherwise, and it gets people aware about it,
about what we do, how, where and when we do it.
And this is why I agreed to
support it, because this is how I have always supported the Klub. The magazine may well be something that will
encourage people to visit another website, but this will result in “quality
leads” (using a bit of office jargon).
Those people who then go on to enquire about the Klub
via the Klub website will have already been prepped,
they’ll know what it’s all about, and they’ll already know that they want to
join. It’s usually a case of going
through the motions.
In summary, the EnthusiastiKa magazine is an indirect furtherance of the Ka
cause. I’m supporting it because it’s
going to produce lots of people interested in the Klub
via an indirect way.
What Happened Next?
So what did happen next? I was emailed once more, although I didn’t
read the email until after the Meanwhile bit below. This email essentially told me that the Ka Klub expected its representatives to support only the Ka Klub and nothing else.
It also required that if I were to continue being the North East
Regional Representative, I should remove all banners / signatures detailing EnthusiastiKa from all forum postings that I make. Furthermore, that I should
stop asking Ka Klub members to submit material to the
new magazine.
Dropping the EnthusiastiKa bit from my Ka Klub
logo, maybe. Dropping it from any non-Klub
forms? No.
Meanwhile
Then somebody from the Ka Klub kicked off about the magazine, and the “conflict of
interest,” in another forum.
The initial posting said that EnthusiastiKa was “born solely because the wife of the
producer of it couldn’t put together a half decent Klub
magazine.”
I’m going to largely ignore this
argument for the time being because, the feedback Charlie’s had says that her
last Klub0 (the one that was never published) was well
liked. I know that she’s gotten over
Klub0, got over it pretty quickly actually, and has moved on.
In any event, it’s factually incorrect. Charlie was always going to do a Ka fanzine,
with or without the support of the Ka Klub. It’s her project and not mine. It is not about the Ka Klub,
Klub0 or revenge.
It went on to say, “a magazine
that takes cheap swipes at the Klub, has nothing in the way of content and whose producers prey
on Klub members, putting them in an awkward position
by asking covertly for pictures and articles.”
That’s quite funny. EnthusiastiKa has
damn sight more content than the Ka Klub magazine!
Cheap swipes? Where? And why are Ka Klub
members too afraid to admit that they’re supporting anything outside of the Klub?
In Summary
I’m disappointed that the Ka Klub has taken this dim view of EnthusiastiKa. I have committed a lot of time, effort and energy
to the Ka cause, mostly in direct and indirect support of the Ka Klub.
I’m more disappointed with the
conduct of one particular individual.
Still, this individual now has the result that I guess was wanted all
along. But the means of achieving this
result are unprofessional and certainly not becoming of a representative of the
Ka Klub. Oh
and they want to keep it quiet from the Ka Klub.
What Happens Now?
During the above, Charlie has tied
up EnthusiastiKa with another free, independent Ka
website and forum.
So I’m promoting another Ka site,
www.myka.org.