Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin's Totally Unofficial Musings on the Business Side of the SCA
Back in January, as I was watching the video feed from the SCA’s Board of Directors quarterly meeting, my attention was piqued by a discussion of online petitions.
You can find this conversation at the half-way mark of the video recording, starting at 2:22:12: Continue reading “Collecting Petition Signatures Online”
I’ve submitted this question to the “Topical Town Hall Request” form, but it’s obscure enough that I’m not terribly optimistic about seeing it addressed in upcoming meetings:
Continue reading “Why Does IT Report Directly to the Board?”According to the October 19, 2019 organization chart available from sca.org, the Society Webminister is the only officer with kingdom/local counterparts who does not report through the Society President — instead they report to the Manager of Information Technology, who reports directly to the Board.
Why is this reporting structure different than every other role in the organization?
Now that the new Release Forms handbook is in circulation, I’ve realized that it fails to address a long-standing point of confusion about whether written releases are required for images published by the populace on Society official communications platforms.
Wikis are the most salient example of this uncertainty — multiple kingdoms have operated for years under the impression that all photographs uploaded to an official wiki would require signed release forms, and since the logistics of managing that paperwork seemed prohibitive, they decided that wikis had to be “unofficial.” Continue reading “Release Forms for User-Published Content”
In a recent discussion of with webministers from around the Known World, someone asked a question, my answer to which I am re-posting here:
If an [officer] creates a google form […] is that form considered “an official website […]” and is the webministry accountable for making sure it adheres to the elements of a[n official] website required in the handbook?
This is a great question.
My take: No.
Continue reading “[Most] Web Apps are not “Official Websites””The SCA recently transitioned its online membership database from a service run by Members Only to one operated by Neon One.
The Members Only platform had been in use since 2012, but the software had become stagnant and the very small company that offered it appeared to be wrapping up operations. By contrast, the new Neon CRM platform seems much more technically capable and the company appears to be much larger and more dynamic.
As part of the SCA’s announcement, they encouraged people to contact their membership email address with any questions we might have, so I inquired about the interaction of the two privacy policies at sca.org and neonone.com.
Continue reading “Membership Database Privacy Policy”Well, it’s been a long and painful trip, but I’m pleased that the SCA has published a new handbook covering the use of release forms for recording permission to publish photos, creative works, and personal information.
Given that there are only a few areas of substantive policy changes compared with the vintage 2010 status quo, the process was surprisingly arduous. I spent months convincing folks in Society leadership that having an updated guide to this policy would be valuable, and wrote the first draft of all of the handbook text, then sent dozens of follow-up emails chivying it through the process. (It shouldn’t be this hard!) And now that the final document has emerged, I’m pained by the many little details that got mangled along the way.
But all of that is a matter for another day — for today, I’m going to try to bask in satisfaction of having gotten my first piece of Society-wide policy lead-authorship over the finish line.
The ongoing debate about allowing individual events to set masking requirements has been heated, and I think others have done a good job of laying out the argument, but one particular salvo in this dispute caught my eye and seemed worth of note:
The Society’s leadership says that it decided against allowing individual groups to set their own masking policies because “to do so would be cumbersome and problematic for people traveling outside their home groups.”
Continue reading “Limitations on Local Control”As part of last year’s group effort to rewrite the Webminister Handbook, I spent a bunch of time closely reading the privacy policy on the SCA.org website, as it applies to all SCA-controlled websites and online services.
One line in the policy caught my eye and prompted me to write Society leadership for more information; frustratingly, it required three emails over the course of six months to elicit a reply.
Continue reading “Tracking Privacy Policy Changes”Thank you to Countess Honor of Restormel for the shout-out in this quarter’s reports to the SCA BOD — I can’t wait for the Release Forms Handbook to finally be approved and distributed.
Thanks to Mathghamhain Ua Ruadháin (Matthew Cavalletto) for his extensive contributions to the development of the Release Forms Handbook which is submitted for consideration to the Board of Directors this quarter. His diligence and dedication are appreciated.
President’s Board Report November 6 from the Board of Directors’ Meeting held on October 16, 2022
The Charter of Østgarðr sets the length of officers’ terms to two years, with no term limits other than what is specified in kingdom law: a maximum of four years for seneschals or exchequers, with no maximum for other offices.
But as we approach this year’s elections, we reviewed the relevant kingdom documentation and stumbled on what seemed like an overriding provision that was recently added to the policies of the East Kingdom Exchequer’s office. Continue reading “Eastern Branches May Set Their Own Exchequerate Terms”