Practical Nuts and Bolts Commonsense (A Case Study)

Philip Coates's picture
Submitted by Philip Coates on Fri, 2007-05-04 21:14.

I posted somewhere on this website a complaint about the Stakhanovite lecture schedule at Oist summer conferences (I had referred to TOC, but ARI has a very similar schedule): too much formal course material for an 8 AM often till past 9 PM schedule for much or all of a week: and too little opportunity for other activities, other modes of interaction, and for other needs.

3/4 of the conference walking around in exhaustion after the week is halfway through because of poor planning and a lack of common sense by the conference organizers.

Half? the attendees never come back or one never sees at a subsequent event or conference because the organization didn't have time or cognitive focus to spare for nuts and bolts unimportant little things . . . like audience retention and membership growth

Not that scheduling is the only issue. It's simply the most obvious and unanswerable. [Therefore this post and the ideas in it will be ignored by ARI, TOC, and the like.] In browsing the web for summer professional development courses to take, here's an example of a more sane, more cognizant of human nature professional educators' summer conference daily schedule I just saw:

07:15 am Continental Breakfast
08:00 - noon General Session
noon - 02:30pm Lunch
02:30 - 03:20pm General Session
03:20 - 03:40pm Break
03:40 - 06:00pm General Session
06:00pm - no classes

Note that this is still a lot of hours and learning intensively for an entire 7 or 8 hours takes considerably more focus than does the amount of new material one absorbs in a normal nine-to-five workday. And that, even though there are a lot of hours above, it is divided into 4 hour and 3.5 hour blocks widely spaced and with evenings free so can socialize, attend organized events, study, discuss, and recharge.

My only purpose with this (somewhat trivial or specialized) example is not to suggest it's -the- way to schedule an event...or even that that is the most important issue in advancing one's ideas or presenting material, but to show that all kinds of groups and intellectual movements have solved the problems of how to organize, how to teach, how to administer.

Objectivist groups and entities need to learn from them, but seem slow to do so. Singularly so, compared to all the companies and non-profits and schools I've worked at.

[Do I need to go over again the lack of air-conditioning year after year at the height of summer TOC mistake, even though they were losing paying attendees because of it...and even though I for one pointed it out on the annual conference questionnaire?]

I could probably list well into the double figures of more examples from business and professional experience of things both ARI and TOC -- and others who want to spread ideas, teach, jumpstart a movement or develop Objectivism practically -- could learn a great deal from.

A word to you theoretical, ivory-tower eggheads or you people who would love it if people would pay you to spend one hundred percent of your time debating politics or the transcendental psychoepistemology of the artistic process:

Details *matter*.

Nuts and bolts in the freakin' real world *matter*.

Else the beautiful polished complex advanced philosophical machine falls apart. And you just end up on the side of the road holding your ass in your hands.

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> I would prefer message

Philip Coates's picture
Submitted by Philip Coates on Sun, 2007-05-06 06:30.

> I would prefer message boards similar to the ones you dismissed in your post [Luke]

I wouldn't dismiss the concept of one, just flaws in current implementation. Obviously one gets -some- value if one participates, but the things I mentioned are damaging and offputting nonetheless. One should always feel free to criticize and not be a lockstep supporter.


The Atlasphere

Luke Setzer's picture
Submitted by Luke Setzer on Sun, 2007-05-06 02:03.

Phil expounded:

The one Oist-oriented operation that does not depend on contributions which is growing right now is the Atlasphere. It's clear than Joshua Zader thought out many of the nuts and bolts beforehand, conferred with people, studied previous efforts.

I registered at http://www.theatlasphere.com but almost never go there.  Why?  It offers me no real opportunity to interact with other Objectivists in a simple and transparent fashion.  I could submit a column for publication, but unless someone e-mails me privately about it, I will get no feedback.  It has a dating section, but as a married man not looking, that does me no good.  I could start pestering people in the Florida directory via private e-mail, but I would prefer message boards similar to the ones you dismissed in your post.

The Atlasphere may not rely on contributions, but I would not equate that quality with "success" as a Web site for Objectivists and Ayn Rand fans.

The short lives of Objectivist message boards really do not bother me, Phil.  I would prefer to hop from board to board as each expires than struggle to interact with other Objectivists via a site that offers no such boards.  My interactions with others via such boards have contributed enormously to my learning in spite of the emotions, etc. that flare into the transactions.

Luke Setzer -- Global Organizer -- PROPEL(TM)
http://www.PropelObjectivism.com


More Objectivist Mistakes . . .

Philip Coates's picture
Submitted by Philip Coates on Sat, 2007-05-05 17:26.

The lack of willingness to attend (adequately) to the nuts and bolts of accomplishing projects is not limited to 'think tanks' like ARI or TOC.

It applies to individual "intellectual entrepreneurs" starting Objectivist-oriented publications, websites, and clubs: They tend to last a few months or issues and then fold or slip away silently. Examples include dozens of small Oist magazines from several decades ago, websites like "The Daily Objectivist", Carolyn Ray's "Enlightenment" project, the Aristos magazine, the Michigan based interview newsletter (I'm forgetting its name)...attempts at nationwide "clubs' or social networks. Every single Objectivist-oriented business or newsletter that has ever been tried...And on and on.

Failure after failure.

One reason is they apparently never carefully did the simplest and most basic thing of all -- a market survey or a business plan. How many actual potential customers exist? How large is the Objectivist market? What competition do they face - from both inside the movement and outside?

Can you build an undertaking on a handful of people or on a non-paying basis? What's your growth plan? If you are a publisher, what's your "pipeline" plan (will you run out of material, fall behind, or will the topics become stale or repetitious)?

Nor have they figured out how to avoid idiots from swamping the boards and driving away better contributions. (One way would be study what non-Oist forums do to resolve this.)

.....

The one Oist-oriented operation that does not depend on contributioins which is growing right now is the Atlasphere. It's clear than Joshua Zader thought out many of the nuts and bolts beforehand, conferred with people, studied previous efforts.

The other Oist-oriented websites or, more exactly "discussion boards", with which I am familar are all pretty much failing (RoR, SoloP, Noodlefood, ObjectivistLiving):

Acrimony and Ad Hominem. Emotionalism. Anti-Objectivism. Trolls and rednecks. The heat and acrimony to light and insight ratio. . . . And people 'voting with their feet' - the dwindling away of participants to microscopic numbers. Out of the hundreds of thousands out there seriously interested in Objectivism, the number of active participants in these flaky discussions numbers in the *dozens*.

Pitiful, absolutely pitiful. When so much more could be acconplished.


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