There are four candidates for two positions on the AUGI Board of Directors. The voting page is now open, although it will not go active until voting commences on 29 June. The candidates are (in alphabetical order):
- Mark Kiker – Current AUGI President, runs the CADDManager Blog, one of the candidates in the failed election of 2008. Will remain President until end of 2009, regardless of this election result.
- Kenneth Leary – Prominent contributor on the AUGI Forums (as Augi Doggie), AUGI Training Program Coordinator and AUGI General Survey Manager, runs the autocad power user blog.
- Marv Muston – Former AUGI President (2004)
- Dario Passariello – Educator for Autodesk products, developing a web site for AUGI Italy, runs his own site.
I encourage you to read their profiles (click on the names above) and examine the PDFs of their answers to a fixed set of questions. Also, check out the candidates’ responses in the AUGI Board Candidates Discussion forum.
If you have anything to say about the candidates, their suitability for the position or their responses to questions, feel free to add your comments here. Such discussion is banned on the AUGI forums, but you won’t find any such censorship here. As long as your comments are not actually libellous, I won’t be modifying or deleting anything.
In a comment, R.K. McSwain raises the spectre of people being banned from the AUGI forums for their comments outside it. Having made one Streisand Effect error of judgement on this issue already, I wouldn’t have thought the BoD would be silly enough to immediately repeat that error by getting even more heavy-handed, but you never know. I’m prepared to wear the risk, but if you’re worried about it, you don’t need to use your real name or AUGI forum name here. Even if you did, there’s no way of the BoD proving that the person using that name here is the same person on the AUGI forums. I won’t be handing out any identifying information to anyone, so go for it and say what you like.
I disagree with many of Mr. Passariello’s views. I think that membership to post on a forum is a good thing, I am positive that most, if not all the forums I have come across, require some sort of registration to post. I believe it helps reduce the amount of spam posts that show up. If you are just looking for information, you do not need to register to search the forums, or read other users comments.
I also feel that active participation in AUGI is key to being a quality candidate. Knowledge of Autodesk products is worthless if you are not willing to share that knowledge with others.
Myself and another nominee, both having six years of service on the Board, were deemed unsuitable candidates. I received the lowest possible score on my evaluation from the N&E committee. This election is clearly about maintaining power by oppressing opposing views.
Mr Chris Cowgill,
You have not understood very well what are my intentions. Likely to be an error in my translation. I want to lead innovation.
In a big community must grow with the new systems. I ask you to open a discussion with me just stop the elections.
I think that your intervention may help to understand some important aspects.
Dario, il vostro inglese è molto più meglio del mio italiano.
Thank you for joining the discussion here where we can express ourselves freely. I encourage all of the candidates to do so.
Thanks Steve,
I must be honest with you. I do not know English very well and I help with Google:)
I do not have any problem in explaining better what are my ideas but I do not want to create embarrassment AUGI at this time.
I assure you that we have an opportunity to make a long conversation after the election even if I was not the director.
It could be that I just don’t understand why registration is difficult, it is free and only takes a few moments to register. Registration has other added benefits besides being able to post in the forums. I have used it to receive discounts to CAD camp as well. On a side note, Cad Camps are something I would like to see come back.
Mr Cowgill,
I think there was a misunderstanding in what I wrote.
I have not written that it is difficult to register but I wanted to say that we should give more space for those who are not writing to explain better what is AUGI.
I agree to register.
Registration avoids many problems but you should explain more clearly what are the benefits of registration.
I was not very happy of the block by the application of forum only for members but I would have preferred to have this free.
Currently those who are not registered can not see the forum of the application.
I know many people who have registered to take the nomination but that many have preferred to give up.
It was this that I wanted.
You you have to forgive me but my English is not very good and some concepts in Italian are not clear in English but I’m placing this GAP.
After the elections I will present all the ideas and initiatives that I have prepared even if I had not become a director.
I hope this can help in some ideas on who to BOD in the near future.
I really hope to have explained everything.
********************************************
ITA:
Mr Cowgill,
Io credo che ci sia stato un malinteso in quello che ho scritto.
Io non ho scritto che è difficile la registrazione ma io intendevo dire che si dovrebbe dare maggiore spazio per chi non è iscritto per spiegare meglio cosa è AUGI.
Io sono daccordo alla registrazione.
La registrazione evita tantissimi problemi ma è necessario spiegare in maniera più chiara quali sono i vantaggi della registrazione.
Io non sono stato molto felice del blocco del forum dalla candidatura per i soli iscritti ma io avrei preferito avere questo libero.
Attualmente chi non è registrato non può vedere il forum della candidatura.
Io conosco molte persone che si sono iscritte per seguire la candidatura ma molte che hanno preferito rinunciare.
Era questo che io intendevo.
Tu mi devi perdonare ma il mio inglese non è molto buono ed alcuni concetti in italiano non sono chiari in inglese ma io sto sistemando questo GAP.
Al termine delle elezioni io presenterò tutte le idee e le iniziative che io ho preparato anche se io non dovessi diventare direttore.
Spero che questo può aiutare in alcune idee chi sarà nel BOD per il prossimo futuro.
Io spero davvero di avere chiarito tutto.
Ciao
Dario Passariello
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Mr Cowgill,
I think there was a misunderstanding in what I wrote.
I have not written that it is difficult to register but I wanted to say that we should give more space for those who are not registered to explain better what is AUGI.
I agree to register.
Registration avoids many problems but you should explain more clearly what are the benefits of registration.
I was not very happy of the block of forum for not members but I would have preferred to have this free (readonly).
Currently those who are not registered can not see the forum of BOD.
I know many people who have registered to take the nomination but that many have preferred to give up.
It was this that I wanted.
You you have to forgive me but my English is not very good and some concepts in Italian are not clear in English but I’m placing this GAP.
After the elections I will present all the ideas and initiatives that I have prepared even if I had not become a director.
I hope this can help in some ideas on who to BOD in the near future.
I really hope to have explained everything.
Sorry 🙂
As much as we would all like to believe that AUGI is an altruistic organization and that volunteers can do anything, such is not the case. It simply takes money to pay for the specific skills required to crank out a magazine, CAD Camps, web site, ATP courses, sponsorship sales, business administration, etc.
There is an old saying: You cannot make 9 women have a baby in one month. Extrapolating that to apply to AUGI’s issues, you cannot throw 1,000 volunteers on a problem and expect to get it solved. Could your firm complete its designs by having 1,000 designers work 4 hours a week on a project? How many of those people will blow off their 4 hours? There is a place for volunteerism, but its role is smaller than some people realize.
On any sponsor revenue based web site, the number of registered users in the database is the measurement used to set the rates that can be charged. Companies like Autodesk, HP and Lenovo were willing to sponsor AUGI in excess of $200k per year based on the fact that AUGI gave them access to 140k members, most of whom needed to buy their most expensive products. Sorry, the simple truth is: it is all about advertising.
Any talk about allowing people to participate in AUGI without registration is folly and is not based on experience with sponsorship sales.
I Rant sometimes…
This BoD has repeatedly used the lack of website updates as a major reason for terminating the SV agreement. Illiac, contracted by SV as the original and current developer of augi.com, is completely capable of updating the site, including many of the technologies addressed by Dario. What Dario may not know is that the BoD has never submitted a workable specification for an update, or secured a sponsor to pay for it. The BoD did talk about an update in very broad terms and were told that their ideas would ultimately reduce valuable advertising revenue. As they have done with every other piece of advice they have been given in the last two years, they ignored it or spun it. As they are now learning, post SV, advertising revenue is king. We had tons of it, now we do not.
By anybody’s standard, this BoD is an abject failure. Virtually everything AUGI is now either crippled, broken or terminated. Even Mr. Kiker has indicated that CAD Camps are not likely to return for some time.
If the BoD had permitted me to pose a direct question to a candidate, I would have asked Mr. Kiker: Reviewing your track record as President, and the current condition of AUGI finances and services, what will you say to encourage a member to vote for your continued leadership?
I fear that uninformed voters will simply vote for Mr. Kiker based on name recognition, without the realization that under his leadership, the health and viability of the organization has declined drastically.