Re: [Harp-L] Re: SPAH award nominations--who's nominated, and how is the winner chosen?

[The Iceman <icemanle@xxxxxxx>]

>From someone who was intimately involved w/SPAH from 1995 - 2000 (BOD, Convention Director, etc), the awards at that time were decided amongst the 4 BOD members and the Sgt. at Arms.


One reason was the poor response from the members in regards to nominations. 


When the time came to choose who was to receive the awards, we would have maybe 6 - 10 responses from members with all different names, so we would have to make a decision in house.


As to the secret clique-y aspect, both Bob Williams and I worked hard and successfully to break the cliques up that used to direct the convention. This was the entrepreneur based philosophy and it worked pretty well and also really closed the gap between diatonic/ chromatic (young and old).


However, when Tate took over in 2001, he successfully undid all the improvements made in the previous 5 years within one year of his presidency, reforming this organization in his own image and ushering in a new era of politics, spin doctoring, secrecy and insider cliques.


His legacy still lives on, even though there is currently some effort to undo this bad energy.


While Winslow has his heart in the right place, he is saddled with this political based philosophy and has to deal with people in place (BOD, etc) who are following their own agendas and hampering the transparency that the members seem to want these days, as well as other aspects of this organization and it's convention.


I can only hope that eventually things will get back to less politics and more advancement of the harmonica.



-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Hines <billhines4@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: harp-l <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tue, Jul 30, 2013 2:43 pm
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] Re: SPAH award nominations--who's nominated, and how is the winner chosen?


I just want to throw my two cents in because hopefully the talk about
changing SPAH to make it more personable and transparent is meaningful and
that's what the organization is trying to do. I was a member for about a
year but dropped it because of stuff like this, it came off as kind of a
secret clique-y thing and not very open/transparent/friendly and just not
very visible in terms of the web site presence, newsletters, things like
that. I know those things are changing. But if you really want to make
members feel like they are part of what is going on, things like this
should change. I agree with Richard and probably lots of others. At least
for those not chosen, it might be nice to see they were nominated, that
much is an honor. FWIW, Bill


On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 1:49 PM, Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> A little over two weeks ago, I sent the following message:
> >
> >About a month ago we were all reminded that the deadline for SPAH awards
> (June 30) was fast approaching.  Presumably the nominations are now all in,
> but I haven't seen any comments anywhere, including SPAH's website,
> regarding who was nominated for what.
> >
> >So who was nominated for what?  While we're on the topic, how are the
> winners chosen?  I don't see anything on SPAH's site that describes the
> process.
> >
>
> There's been input from SPAH since then on the second topic--how winners
> are chosen. The answer is essentially that the SPAH leadership votes,
> privately.  There's been no comment on the first question: who was
> nominated for what?
>
> There's also been no reply to my follow-up question: what's the (good)
> reason for keeping nominations a secret?
>
> Secret nominations and a secret vote: to me, the process sounds less
> transparent than a Nigerian election.  That's not a standard to which any
> elected body, such as SPAH leadership, should aspire.
>
> So I'll repeat my original and followup requests for information: who was
> nominated for what, and failing an answer to that, what's the rationale for
> secret nominations?
>
> Thanks, Richard Hunter
>
>
> author, "Jazz Harp"
> latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://hunterharp.com
> Myspace http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp
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>