Note to Secretary - 2008-Apr-01 12:28:01

Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:28:01 -0400   
From: Celia McInnis       
Reply-to: celia@drmath.ca
To: Jane Hammingh (OBC Secretary)
Subject: A request for help...

Hi Jane:

I am asking for your help, since as Secretary, you are to oversee all of the communication media in the club (SECTION 4 POLICIES, Policy 1), and we have some difficulties which would benefit from some overseeing! I have provided a time trial (tt) web site service for a decade - a service which promotes our club objectives(*1*) and which is enjoyed by many members(*2*). It was the only such service in this club from 1998-2002, and though members were very happy with the same-night, accurate, comprehensive service and there were absolutely no complaints relayed to me about it by any member (on or off of the board), a newsletter editor chose to eliminate my tt web service from the club web site and put in one of his own(*3*). There have been problems with the officially published results ever since (six years!) - errors(*4*) and slow postings(*5*). Other members who commented about the problems were told that they should volunteer rather than complain. Meanwhile my offers to volunteer here have been refused.

I have continued to provide a tt web service despite many efforts by that former director and his network to make it more difficult and less pleasant for me to do so(*6*), and I would like the heavy-handed politics to end here and now. In particular, I am requesting:

that the errors in the results which are published on the OBC tt web site be fixed.
that the tt web site service which I have continued to produce for the enjoyment of OBC time trialists be facilitated by the board of directors through the provision to me of:
1. club membership and birth year information for the time trialists,
2. OBC web site access for my service, or at least a better presence of my service on our web site

I have been been riding time trials in the OBC since 1986 - LOTS of them - because I love to do so. I also love numbers and the analysis and reporting of our tt results. It was and is NATURAL that I provide a tt web site service. It remains a LABOUR OF LOVE even after ten years. Despite the large amount of time and energy I've invested, it has never been "work" - It's PLAY! Everybody benefits when people such as myself, Don Moxley, Greg Franks or Paul Lindsay(*0*) donate their skills with passion and integrity towards our objectives. It helps and inspires people and lifts us all up onto a higher level. On the other hand, the petty politics and power ploys, which have arisen here and elsewhere in the OBC, are anything but uplifting. They kill the human spirit, demotivate us and obstruct the pursuit of excellence. Everybody loses - even the "winner"!

Will you help us get the published tt results back in order, and even better, help us to move beyond the "history of 2002" which should long ago have died (if indeed it should have ever lived!)? Sometimes all it takes is one good person to start the ball rolling in the right direction.

Celia

Better to light a candle than curse the darkness. -- Chinese Proverb

(0)	We were all excellent, long-time volunteers (15-25 years) who were unable to function with the OBC board in that troubled year of 2002. Two never returned as volunteers.
(1)	Certainly my performance ratios and event factors were devised with the explicit purpose of encouraging people of all ages, genders and speeds, to participate, enjoy and improve in time trials, as are my event comments.
(2)	I constantly receive vocal comments from time trialists concerning their enjoyment of my tt web site service. Here are some written ones which I have received over the past few years: "Just wanted to say again that both Mike and I think your TT results are THE best!! They are posted superfast, (like when we're still interested in them), as far as I can tell they are accurate (ours always have been) and there's all those interesting statistics brought out of them. Not merely a results sheet, the figures really tell a story. Very entertaining." "Andrea showed me your website. I was amazed at the amount of detail and information that you provide through your website. Equally amazing to me is the fact that you must invest considerable time and effort to produce and maintain this website absolutely free of charge! You obviously possess a great passion for helping people in the cycling community... We respect and appreciate you for the hard work that has gone into the production and maintenance of your website. We can only hope that you choose to keep up the good work! Thank you!" "I think it would be so great if you were the official keeper of the data, and made one of the social night presentations of how to use your search page for everyone's interest." "I love getting home, having some dinner and then checking your site to see the results and how everyone did. It is so fun to watch people's progress." "Although I do not fall in the category of "love to ride TT's" as a new comer and occasional user, I love the site. In fact I kept track of who was doing what even though I was not riding them regularly. And particularly as a new comer it helped me to understand a lot of things about TT's - unusual things like variations due to specific weather conditions - it's all about relativity on the day. And rates of progress and how to judge progress - as absolute numbers, as relative times, etc." "Well, I pulled std dev of the club, and my 1.07 doesn't look so bad after all. I certainly am not the most consistent rider (that's obvious), but there are many many that are even less consistent than me ! Very interesting statistics. Offers yet one more goal to set - get a better consistent riding - lower my std dev, and don't get psyched out by such things as wind or whatever - just go out there and push for a better consistency. Aim next year for < 1.0. We'll see if I keep that as a goal when I actually get on the bike next year." "I have to tell you that I always love reading your lighthearted commentary on the TT results. You have a sense of humour and you also recognize people's efforts. You have a good spirit. Keep up the good work." "I think your work is fantastic and I think the OBC is very lucky to have you..." "I used your TT Website to look at my performance graphically - neato. Real neat to see it graphically." "Thanks, Celia, for prompt and well-organized results, kicking off another season of TT's." "The results set up you have produced is quite simply the best I have seen..." "I type in my name and leave everything else blank. When all the results come up they are sorted by time. I just scroll down to see the time I'm looking for. If I want to sort by date, I just click on date. You make it so simple for people like me." "Re: New Year's Day TT: It's good to know that not only are there still nuts running around (and cycling) in our world, but that they are having fun. Good, mostly clean, safe fun." "You're a gem, Celia: Your work, easy as it was for you to do!, is very much appreciated and saves me a lot of time." "It is fun to play around with the different options on your site!" "I like the colour presentation of your web-site...". "I love ur website and I think they should let u do the results cuz u are efficient,,,,and they suck!" "I've ridden on and off in the WTT's since 1998, and am looking forward to bringing out a group of women this season new to TTs. I have told them all about what a welcoming and positive group this is and have stressed the importance of the volunteer effort that goes into making it happen. That effort extends to the fabulous website hosted by Celia McInnis. Thanks to Celia for her continued volunteer efforts providing the excellent TT web site service throughout all these years. It's great!" "Thanks for all your hard work. I don't know how you did all that entering and writing and compiling and sent the results by 11:35. I thought you'd be up until the early hours of the a.m." "Thanks for the info, Celia. Always entertaining." I like to compare how I am doing to previous rides and have kept no records from past years, ... and I wanted to see what my competition was. So I played around with the buttons that Celia had provided on the website. I am not a computer freak. In fact, I have a humongous fear of messing up websites. But it was so easy. Then I started to click on other buttons. I wanted to share with you my excitement about the website. It is the most fun. Now (at my own cycling speed) I now have some realistic goals to work towards. "Thank you for posting the times so fast." "Your made an excellent point on OBC BB, now if you could only post TT results...."
(3)	"Why?", you might ask. The trouble arose when I stood up, with integrity, for something which actually IS one of our objectives! The objective at issue in my original dispute with Newsletter Editor Rod Plunkett was "To assist the community at large in the promotion, encouragement and understanding of all aspects of cycling and related activities". As the club webmaster from 1999 until early 2002 when the difficulty with Rod arose, I took exceptional care to ensure that our web pages were not only up to date, but also technically sound so that they worked in the browsers of the people who visited our web site. This meant that I followed the w3C standards and monitored the logs on our web server to verify that there were no problems. When Rod came on the scene, he insisted that he could put up pages which did NOT follow these standards. I informed Rod in private of the technical problems in his pages, indicated specific browsers which couldn't understand the pages, and (always being helpful!) wrote software which he could run on the pages to make them compliant and functional. Rod maintained that the problems were due to people running buggy browsers which THEY should upgrade, and he refused to fix the pages or to allow me to fix them, indicating that he was the director in charge of the web site and hence was the only person authorized to make decisions about the web site. I appreciated the fact that Rod is not a technical person and I tried to work with him slowly and gently, but to no avail. After several months of service roadblocks which were costing me too much volunteer time, I sought public input on the difficulties. What I wanted to avoid was having to mend a bunch of pages in the spring and summer when I'd rather be on my bike! As a technical person, I am used to polling customers and experts alike for feedback, and I did not anticipate that doing so here would be upsetting to Rod. I was merely looking for a solution to keep the web site working for the community at large. But upset he was. Soon I was out as club webmaster, and the elimination didn't stop there - He also refused to allow me to continue with the tt web site. Note that ignoring my advice for the club web site resulted in a site which was unusable for McIntosh users for the whole of the 2002 cycling season - a definite loss of service (There were complaints on our Topica email list about this, but the response was always the same and the problems were unfixed until others stepped in to revamp the site late in the fall.).
(4)	I have pointed out problems with the data to three Newsletter Editors as well as to the Racing Events Director, and yet the errors remain unfixed. Some of the problems which I can detect are here, and here is a note sent to Racing Events Director Bob Hicks in 2005, showing handicapping errors which are still not fixed. I don't know it there's a single person in the right position for the 2003 Personal Handicap TT - Currently (though the pages keep changing which past results should not!) I'm listed in 8th position rather than 36th, the real winner (he got a trophy for a year), Peter Plaunt is listed in 38th place, and so on. There are other errors in the 4 years of OTT results for which I did not have access to the raw data, and if you will help me to get access to the seed/timing/result/spread sheets for 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2007, I will gladly check them and indicate any corrections. Club membership and birth year information is also needed for those years to correct some of that information on the OBC tt site.
(5)	There were slow postings all season in 2007 for the OTT series, with one exception - 2007-Aug-02 - and the results for that one day clearly have errors, with many of us getting TWO different times that day! It took about 4 weeks for each of the September OTT results to be posted. I had offered to do the job this year as I had in 2006. Quite a few riders thanked me for giving same night service in 2006... It's pretty clear that nobody else wants to do the work, so why not accept that fact and just let me do it??? It should be a matter of service rather than politics! Note as well that there were no WTT results posted on the club web site from mid-June until mid-September. Again, I had offered to write software to input from my site to the club web site several times over the previous six years. I think that sharing is good, and working together is even Better! It's bound to be an improvement over the status quo...
(6)	Pardon the length of the following - but there have been MANY attempts by the board to limit my service, and MANY attempts by myself and others to resolve this difficult situation, and here are just enough to give a sense of how difficult the situation was for me to continue doing the good job that I naturally do! I don't understand how a volunteer service which was given with such a degree of love and care and which has ALWAYS been run very well and which members continue to enjoy (see above), could ever have met with anything other than gratitude by the OBC Board, but instead it seems to have become the object of attempted destruction by the OBC Board. I have experienced a deep depression over this, but I have continued to do what I love to do and what I believe is right, and I do believe that what I do is right and good. Here are some of the things which have occurred: In 2002, as newsletter editor, Rod did not let me continue to use the club web site for the tt web service which I had set up. It has cost me approximately $2000 out of my pocket over the past six years to pay for my own personal web hosting. I asked Bob (Racing Events Director for the last ten years!) for help. Bob's response was "I am not going to go against Rod's portfolio"! Before the start of the 2002 tt season, Bob phoned up both Barb Wilson and Jim Glover, the TT coordinators, and told them that they were not to give me the results any more - that I was difficult to work with and disrespectful towards volunteers and hence had been replaced by Randy Plunkett, Rod's twin brother! He told them that they were to bring the results to the club office (overhead for them!). They both disputed his comments, refused to comply and continued to give me the results to enter into my, now unofficial tt web site. Jim commented that Randy didn't even have seed sheets (and in fact when Randy finally started producing them, they were wrong - for several years, and may still be!) On Thursday 2002-May-02, Rosmarie was sent out to collect the results from Jim. Jim insisted upon giving BOTH of us the results. Volunteers expressed surprise at how upset Rosmarie was when Jim did this. In the May 2002, members asked Rod to put a link to my site (which I had resumed on my own personal web space). Rod refused, even though the results were being shown on my site and his brother was taking weeks to copy them into the club web site and was making many errors in the copying. Members complained that there were no results on the club web site for the previous seasons. Rod found an old partial copy of results and put them on the club web site. I indicated that the results were incomplete, and asked him to link to my site instead. He refused. There was a five week outage in the club tt web site during June and July 2002. Members again requested that Rod link to my site where we still had same-night service. Rod refused and both he and Avery responded on the topica public email list, saying that they could not link to my site because MY site was INACCURATE! In addition to making such a false (libellous?) statement, they also wrote (on the public topica list) that I was arrogant, acerbic, acrimonious, aggressive, etc. - and that was just the A's... Other member complaints about the general state of the web site (tt and otherwise) were either ignored entirely or met with excuses (that the board had been left in a "difficult situation"), or that these complainers should volunteer - Interestingly, one who wanted to volunteer officially (me) was not allowed to... Members were also told not to issue such complaints or requests publicly on the topica email list - a la "divide and conquer"? Sometime in the summer, Bob made a motion at a board meeting that a link be added from the club web site to my tt site, but he did not in any way try to convince the others of why this was appropriate or not. All but two of those at the meeting voted against adding a link, so no link was added. At the end of August 2002, Michael Coldwell formed a petition requesting that the club link to my tt web site for the time trial results (he wanted to make the petition much stronger, but by this point, I was so distrustful of the board, that I urged him to limit the scope to something that they might actually do!). He brought the petition to the last five time trials and got almost 100 signatures - more than half of all the OBC time trialists that year and virtually 100% of those who were at those last 5 time trials. President Avery Burdett spoke out at one of these time trials that members should not sign because there were things that they did not know underlying the problem! When Michael brought the petition to the board in October 2002, the Vice President (Bruce Lowe) stated that he didn't believe in petitions, and indeed the board did not do the small, simple thing which the petition, asked for, even though it wouldn't have hurt anybody to do what so many members had requested and would have increased service. In October 2002, Bob offered to mediate between Rod and I. I was thrilled, though Barb, remembering Bob's phone call in the spring, told me to bring along someone who was "on my side"! I brought along Peter James, but Bob did not bring along Rod(!), and it was quickly clear that Bob was not there to mediate. He again asserted the model of supreme dominance by the board, regardless of the service ramifications. He would not go against what he believed was Rod's portfolio. The problems with the "Captain in the Engine Room" model are well known. When the captain tries to both micromanage and guide the work, often neither job is done well. Service suffers and there's no accountability for the lack of service. Surely this is what we've run into with the tt results for the past six years. In April 2003, Rod told Barb that if she didn't have someone enter the results into the club database, the WTT results would not get into the newsletter. I volunteered to enter the results into the club database as well as into mine. There were MANY problems with the club input form, and eventually, Lucy Cole took on the job of trying to fix the form and enter the WTT results into the club database from my online results. She thanked me for some technical advice in this area. There were similar problems with the OTT result entry. At first there were a few people trying to enter them, but eventually Kevin Feenan, a board member who was now running the OTT series, ended up entering all the results as well as running the series. Kevin also wrote a seeding program, since members kept complaining about the incorrect seedings that Randy generated. Kevin had the tt data in spreadsheets on his computer, so it would have been a trivial job to write a piece of software to input them automatically into the club database. I offered to do so, but instead he continued to type the stuff in manually! There were many errors in club membership, some in birth years, and I don't know how many other problems. Understandably, it sometimes took quite a while to get our OTT results posted, and eventually (Aug 2005) Kevin resigned. On 2004-May-04, Trish Murray, the new newsletter editor arrived at the WTT event and told Barb that we were going to do things her way - She would take the results and have them entered in the club database from which I could get them. Barb and I were surprised and let her take them away that week. There's still an error on the officially posted results for that day - Lucie's time. The error was reported but never fixed. I noticed the error immediately, since it was nowhere near the normal riding speed of the rider, and I fixed it from the material which Trish faxed back to me. Anyway, Trish wasn't back until late in the season, and I resumed entering the WTT results into my database. I sent a note to newsletter editor Trish early in 2005 requesting a link from the club tt web site to mine - I had a reciprocal link on my site. Several months later, having received no response I phoned her. She phoned back after speaking with Perry and indicated that there would be no link since my site DUPLICATED the club's official service - a rather bizarre thing to say to the creator of the service who had been copied from extensively (both data and web page layout ideas!). I indicated that my site provided a lot more functionality than the club tt web site, some of which was used specifically for the WTT awards, and had a lot more data (the ABC results and 9 more years of WTT results). I indicated that I wished to make a presentation at the next board meeting. Again various people wrote notes on my behalf to Trish, and I got a link in the bowels of the OBC web site (where nobody could find it!) along with a set of conditions that would have been more typical of Stalinist Russia - gag orders, and result handling procedures which had nothing to do with the link request and which were not required of other link holders or result handlers. When members wrote to her and advised her to drop the heavy handed conditions and just put in a link (as had been petitioned for 2.5 years earlier), she referred to me as a "third party" - an odd label for a 20+ year member and volunteer of the OBC. Another TT season passed and the OTT result handling in 2005 was really slow and there were lots of member complaints. I phoned up Perry to discuss. I also indicated that nobody could find the link which Trish had put in place in the spring. Perry said that he would do something that would make everybody happy. At the 2006 GF TT, Perry showed up with his non-negotiable offer - I would do all the work of typing in the results into my database and Rod would suck them in from my site into the club site. Rod's site would remain official with no possibility of change in the foreseeable future. I would continue to have a link where Trish had put it (with the "third party" people). This was certainly a rather disrespectful offer. Can you imagine him switching Rod and I in the offer? I tried to negotiate with Perry - say, perhaps using my site officially for the WTT and ATT results and Rod's for the open, but NOPE, NO NEGOTIATION - No Sharing! It took whoever did The GF results a few weeks to get them up, so, not wanting another season of slow postings, I phoned up Perry and accepted his awful offer. Apart from two weeks of interference from "the network" (who I guess felt that Perry's offer was too good for me!) early in the season, I had access to the raw data and entered it on the evening of the event for the rest of the 2006 season. Time Trialists were happy with the quick availability of results. A link to my web site was finally added in the Tools area of the club's tt web pages in the summer 2006, but when members used it, there was a 10 second delay and a rather ominous warning that people were leaving the OBC web site and that the OBC had "no control over the accuracy or currency of the material" - Thank goodness, considering the ongoing OBC data management problems! There were no such warnings or delays for other external sites which the OBC linked to (eg., the Grand Prix results on sportsstats or the cyclocross results on the site run by Ian Austen and Bob Woods. Several months later, Perry had the odious comment modified, but the delay remains to this day and should be removed. I held up my end of the bargain in 2006, but Rod still had trouble with the data - His input software seemed to be buggy. There were several instances of members' results missing for some unknown reason from the club web site (Peter James was one such person who phoned up both Perry and Bob when his result wasn't there after one time trial), and there were many cases of the club and category information being wrong. At the end of the season, I wrote Perry a note indicating the member satisfaction at having same night service again, but also indicated that we still had problems with the data which was making its way into the club database and asked for a re-evaluation of our method. I offered to help fix the problems. Perry indicated that he had no time to consider any changes. Though being thanked at the 2006 AGM for doing the 2006 results by Bob and Perry, I ran into a closed door when I suggested that we (read Rod) would do better by integrating the tt database with the club membership/birth-year database. I'm not sure who wrote up the minutes of that AGM, but their summary wasn't accurate... (Can we try to get the AGM minutes right after the AGM in the future? None of us even had time to read them before last year's were approved at the AGM this year.) I asked that the tt database be discussed at the November 2006 board meeting and I arrived to discuss on 2006-Nov-06. I suggested that Rod and I join forces on this. I indicated that the problems which Rod was having with club information and birth years could be largely addressed by revisiting the club's data model, and I offered to help with this. Bob, though, said that he would do the job and didn't need my help. He said that if he didn't get back to me after 3 months, I should contact him. (It would only take me about half an hour to do a data model for this...). Perry asked me how many errors there were in the 2006 published results, and I indicated that I would get back to him with the precise answer. I sent Perry the number of errors in the OBC's published 2006 tt data on 2006-Nov-14 - By the end of the season, there were 170 errors out of 1366 OTT finishes (5 incorrect times, 63 wrong categories and 102 wrong club markings). This was a 12% error rate! There were also many problems during the season - missing results and errors which took weeks or months to fix. I don't think that Rod was reading the tt BB or the ttadmin email messages, since messages from members were sent there about the errors... Riders also sent emails to Trish Murray and Bob Hicks about errors, but months went by without fixes. A week or so before the 2006 Awards banquet, Bob sent me a pdf file of the awards which he had determined from the club web site and he asked me to verify. There were 6 incorrect awards listed on his page(!), and other errors in times listed for the awards. Though he could have easily read the correct award listing from any of my result pages, I assisted him by indicating the errors and giving helpful diagnosis so that the appropriate fixes could be done in the club database and software. There were three contributors to the errors - Having the same person listed more than once in the database (with the rider's times divided between the entries), the wrong birth years stored in the club tt database, and the wrong club membership information in the club database. Bob's reaction to my note was unpleasantly critical and curt - He said that I gave him more information than he wanted, and I felt as if I was being held responsible for Rod's result handling problems. In fact Jocelyne did get the impression from Bob that I had caused the problems in Rod's results by changing results, though she accepted blame for misinterpreting what he had said to her when I indicated the falsehood. I sent three other requests to the board asking that the tt result problems be fixed and offering my help, at monthly intervals (2006-Dec-02 and 2007-Jan-12, 2007-Feb-05), but received no responses until Perry indicated that the subject was closed (even though the results remain unfixed) and told me that I was not to send further emails. It was not clear to me how to deal with the OBC Board concerning the tt web site errors, which I believe should be fixed. In 2002, I was told that the newsletter editor was supreme, and then in 2007 (and still now?), it seemed that the board was/is deferring to the Racing Events Director, and none of the peole in those positions since 2002 were fixing the errors which I had pointed out. Nobody seemed to be accountable. I decided it would be helpful to read our Constitution. I sent a note to Jeffrey Furry on 2007-Feb-14 asking if our Constitution could be posted on the club web site, and he forwarded my request to the board of directors. No response to that note was ever received. On 2007-Mar-05 I sent a note to Bob to see if he had finished with his data model investigation, since more than 3 months had passed and he had not contacted me. He indicated that there was a problem with having only the current year of club membership on line. He said that this may have contributed to the ongoing problems with the birth year and club membership information. He indicated that "they" were looking at improving the situation. Since the problems continued through the 2007 season, I suspect that that work has not yet been done. Again, I offered to help but didn't even receive an acknowledgement of my offer. I indicated to Bob that I would still continue entering the OTT results in 2007 as per my open-ended agreement with Perry and also offered to write some software to import them correctly into the club database, but when I arrived at the GFTT, Gunther indicated that Bob had told him to bring them to the club office. The results were not posted until 2007-Apr-28, more than three weeks after the time trial. The result reporting was very slow all season and the errors continued... Members who complained were told that they should volunteer, and yet, my offer to volunteer had been flatly refused... On 2007-Oct-04, still not having received any response to my request for the Constitution to appear on the web site, I sent a note to Newsletter Editor Andre Gauthier and President Perry KcKenna. Andre replied that he didn't know if there was an electronic copy available and Perry replied "The constitution will not go on the website. If you wish to get a copy please do so by coming to the OBC board office.". When I asked when/how I could pick up or make a copy, I was then told by Perry that "We don't have a photocopy machine at the office and Rosmarie will not be going out on her own time to do photocopies." I brought the issue up on the BBS asking if anybody had a photocopier or scanner that I could borrow to make the copy myself, and apart from Rod all expressed surprise at the obstacles I was running into in trying to get a copy of the constitution. On 2007-Oct-13 I went to the club office with Rosella Mac Neil to scan in a copy of the Constitution. Rosella (a former OBC newsletter editor) indicated that she could lend me her scanner and lap top to copy the document and bring me to the club office, since it's kind of difficult to carry such equipment on a bicycle (and not good for the equipment). When I arrived, Rosmarie, who was on the phone with Perry, said "What do you think you are doing! What are you up to now?". I said that I was going to make a copy of the constitution (which she already knew, since I had sent her a note indicating that I was coming). She said that I could NOT do so, and though I pointed her to legislation that allowed me to do so, I did not push my right any further, but sat down to try to read it amidst constant criticisms from Rosmarie (we're on good terms again now). Soon it was closing time and Rosmarie told me to let her know when I wanted to come back for another read. She offered to come in on her own time... Being far too busy to sit and read in the club office, I sent another note to the BBS and Michael DeKelver contacted me and made a copy for me of the constitution and other operating documents which I picked up from him and read. At the AGM on 2007-Oct-30, the issue of the Constitution was raised by Don Montag, one of the former Board members who had been involved with the original constitution. He tried to make a motion to have it posted on the web site, but was informed that he could not make such a motion at the AGM. Michael DeKelver said that he would bring the issue up at the next board meeting. Also at the AGM, Ingrid Coney tried to add an item to the agenda to discuss the problems which were seen with the tt result service in the 2007 season, but Perry immediately indicated that the board had discussed the issue and it was closed, and he would not permit a discussion of this at the AGM. Bob gave an opportunity for Ingrid's complaint after talking about his portfolio, but Ingrid indicated afterwards that she was too uncomfortable to say anything. We all were, but I finally added a simple one sentence offer of help with the the results for next year. Bob thanked me but gave no affirmation. After the AGM, Bob called Ingrid over and I joined them. Bob indicated that he knew that the service was bad in 2007, and that he wanted to rectify the problems. He indicated that he wanted my software skills but called me a "liability" in terms of my dealings with volunteers! (By the way, Bob also spoke out against having Don Moxley back - so there may be a problematical pattern in Bob's biases. Don does as good a job with the youth coaching as I do with the tt results!). She indicated her impression that the club was in serious need of conflict management. Bob asked her if she could fulfil that role, and she indicated that she would give it a try... On 2007-Nov-01, I received a registered letter signed by Perry McKenna (and postmarked 2007-Oct-31, the day after his presidency ended) threatening me with expulsion from the club if I repeated behaviour such as whatever I did when I went to the club office to try to copy the constitution. A phone call to the new president indicated that I had apparently been "threatening" to Rosmarie. I was quite surprised at this charge, as was my witness, Rosella, and certainly Rosmarie gave no sign of being threatened - In fact she offered to come in on her own time to allow me to finish reading the document during the coming week! I merely came to do what the law permitted me to do, cited the legal reference which allowed me to so, and then sat down to try to make the best of the situation when it became clear that the law was not going to be followed that day. As a law abiding citizen, I found this action by the (now former) President of the OBC to be deeply disturbing. I would like an official letter apology from the club for Perry's behaviour and letter, with a copy of this letter added to the club archives. I would also like a letter, with a Cc to myself to be sent to Perry McKenna and added to the club archives indicating that his behaviour on that day was not only unlawful within a "Not for Profit Organization" such as the OBC, but was also unfitting of the position of trust he held in the club as President. Ingrid scheduled one meeting between Bob and I on 2007-Nov-21. She indicated that the sole purpose of this meeting was for me to demonstrate my tt input software - Just one half hour with no other issues dealt with. Bob and Ingrid came to my house and I demonstrated my software and how it allowed easy checking of the times against the tape and summary sheets, easy avoidance of the duplicate name problem, and how only a small amount of material needed to be typed in of the person's name. This was all that the meeting was supposed to be about, but Bob extended the meeting to double the scheduled time, telling me that my software was too slow - That he wanted the software to only involve typing numbers on the keypad, and he suggested that AJAX be considered to speed things up. I found this to be a rather rude way to treat a volunteer - not even a thanks, and goodness me, what I have works really well for me. Even when there were close to 100 OTT riders out, I could enter and check all the results within 20 minutes - I take a lot more time writing those event comments! Anyway, I indicated that Bob already could type id numbers rather than names for people if he preferred (I don't since I'd make more errors and I don't even have a keypad on the laptop where I usually type in results). I also indicated that I'd look into whether AJAX made sense, but indicated that since I provided service to two other clubs, I would only use it if it worked for the ther clubs too. At this point Bob started pushing his model of having a whole bunch of different people who don't currently volunteer entering the results (though I guess that those who couldn't run AJAX would be off the hook!). I asked Bob to consider the following: the extra overhead of lining up and training volunteers to do this. the security issues - how do you protect the results and yet allow arbitrary volunteers to enter and fix errors that they make? the skills needed to fix errors which are made inadvertently. how the unskilled data enterers would deal with the kinds of anomalies which arise upon occasion. accountability for the results. whether the club has any right to force unwilling people to "volunteer". whether unwilling "volunteers" will put the necessary care into the entering of the results I believe that we should have a few people able to enter the results, but that they must have the database skills and accesses necessary to fix any problems which they inadvertently create. I made a few improvements to my software and played around a bit with AJAX to see if it was appropriate for here. I found it to be SLOWER than what I was currently doing, and being browser dependent, it would be a life-long maintenance headache. As such, I do not see it as being appropriate for this task. Even before I reported this back to Bob, he decided that the result project was closed - He told Ingrid that we were "too far apart". Actually, I think that we share the same goal of having correct results available soon after the time trials, and I hope that we both believe that how the goal is achieved is irrelevant, as long as the volunteers are happy enough to make it happen. Hey, I know a thing or two about volunteer work and tt result entry, and have a long history of accommodating all kinds of people and requests and successfully making things happen with happiness. My service is always good, and, who knows, perhaps Bob could benefit from some of my ideas and experiences. At my request, Ingrid asked Bob for a meeting to discuss our different perspectives, but he refused. I guess we'll see if Rod manages to put together some input program that works. The good news is that Bob will likely accept anything from Rod, whereas unfortunately he'll accept nothing from me, no matter how well it works... The latest attempt to eliminate my service is the privacy legislation issue. As Pippa Lawson, a lawyer (professor) with legal expertise in this area, indicated, there is absolutely no problem with me continuing to handle the WTT results as before (or the OTT results). She offered to provide the club with free legal advice with regard to this legislation. Note in particular that the service losses for the WTT would be considerable if I was not allowed to manage these results. My specialized software is used to calculate our awards. Also, our WTT awards have never yet appeared on the club web site. As well, shouldn't women run this series??? I think that we're capable!

P.S.: I hope that you can and will help us move beyond this continued problem. Jane. I'd rather put all of my energies towards fun things and better service. The tt web service I provide IS precisely that - a SERVICE - and it is one that members of the OBC and other clubs continue to enjoy. It is not about portfolios or politics or directors. It is about and for cycling and cyclists - time trials and time trialists. My service goals are, as they were a decade ago, and I believe that I have been successful in achieving these goals:

to provide results on the day of the event.
to allow people easy access to previous results.
to encourage people to ride time trials.
to help people enjoy riding time trials.
to allow riders to track and measure their personal improvement.
to allow riders to compare their performances against themselves and others.

I joined this club because I love to cycle, and I thought that this club was about cycling. I created this tt web site service service because I love to time trial and to share that pleasure with others. The unique functionality of the tt web site service which I have provided for the past decade has always promoted the objectives of the OBC, and members have repeatedly indicated their enjoyment of it. I am requesting that the board of directors encourage and enable this service, as surely it should do.