[Board] A reply to Michelle

[Mike McGinty]

Chiming in because I don't like how this has gone and the likely-permanent
loss of good faith. I think it's too late to fix, but the M17 board is
not of one mind on this. 

> These decisions and judgments clearly did happen.

Confirmed. Steve says we made no "official decision" which is 100% true
- it never went to a vote or anything with the full board. 

However, the original group of people that worked on the first grant
proposal (Me, Woj, Steve), all the people that had bank access (Me,
Ed), and Wojciech himself (project founder) were all pretty darn clear
on this topic.
I can see where Steve is indignant here, because he's not
wrong to say there was no official decision, but I also see where it's
utterly baffling to hear the claim that M17 hadn't made any decisions
or taken any action. 

I've written an outline for one grant, a draft for another, and we've been
talking about it for months and we came to a decision at least between
the four of us. But why should it matter when it's just the four of us?

We (Me, Woj, Steve, Ed) are the ones most active on a day-to-day basis -
DB9MAT is fairly new to the board and doesn't chime in on everything,
N7TAE pops up mostly for reflector discussions, WX9O is mostly-absent
due to his day job, AD8DP hasn't been around much for a while. None of
these gentlemen were involved in the original grant proposal, or active
for these discussions. OpenRTX might or might not be on the M17 board,
but they've always considered themselves separate but well-aligned. So
when we four are talking about something and making decisions, it's
pretty clear internally and externally that it's the M17 board making a
decision. The others could certainly chime in, but they both tend to go
with the flow and focus exclusively on the technical side.

This is not a subtle or hidden group operating in the shadows - anyone
active on Discord can see this very clearly. Anyone in the board chat
room, even more so.

We four were definitely writing the grant proposals and openly talking
about what group would replace ORI. So when Michelle says that M17 made
decisions, I think that's perfectly accurate, and easily articulated as
you can see above.

We took it for granted that we could not use ORI, and ORI was clearly
understood to be easily replaced. It was also taken for granted that
(paraphrasing) since it's ARDC's money, it's their decision and their
right to do so. 

In short, ORI was treated and understood to be just-a-bank-account. Some
significant part of this, I think, is honestly just not knowing and
understanding everything ORI did for us. The rest I'm not sure is
defensible except potentially through raw ignorance and myopia (good
word!).

I can think of at least one example in chat of everything Michelle mentions
here. There do appear to be some genuine communication issues, but
the underlying problems are not lessened by that. The ongoing ARDCvORI
issue was merely a trigger that exposed the M17 issues.


> I think it's time for M17 to own up to the fact that you really did get
> distracted with a second round of funding from ARDC. You really did start
> in on a proposal. You really did accept the condition of dumping ORI to get
> more money.

Yep. We did. Still do, apparently, which I'm not happy about, 
because in the 'pick a side' ARDC put us in, we chose ... poorly.

I think our relationship with ORI is damaged beyond repair, so I'll be
supporting M17 moving away from ORI sooner rather than later to try and rip
the band-aid off and get it over with.

But we fucked up. Hard.

I'm sorry.

Mike McGinty 




P.S, from back in the IRC logs:
2020-10-29 07:37:07     tarxvf  I worry about money changing the project

Looking back, I don't know that it changed the project so much as
exposed problems that weren't such a big deal when there was no money
involved. 
I liked it better back then.





On Sat, Jun 18, 2022 at 10:39:42AM -0700, Michelle Thompson wrote:
> Yes, major changes were proposed and acted upon.
> 
> There's written proof of this.
> 
> I expressed disappointment and pointed out that rumors of "IRS issues" were
> damaging and confusing. I still have no idea where this came from, but M17
> and ARDC cannot both be telling me the truth.
> 
> There were *no replies* to these statements that were shared with everyone
> on #dordroom.
> 
> I reached out to Woj in direct messages. No reply to repeated attempts.
> 
> The "zero trust" discussions were in writing. Active discussions about ORI
> being fungible were in writing.
> 
> These decisions and judgments clearly did happen.
> 
> ORI has no issue with additional fiscal sponsors. Most of us in leadership
> have done this before. If we'd been included, it would already be done.
> 
> What we do have an issue with is ARDC showing up with an unsolicited offer
> of another round of funding, with a condition - that M17 dumps ORI as a
> fiscal sponsor. This is unheard of, especially when the first grant isn't
> complete and the sponsor has delivered quality service and has made a clear
> long-term commitment.
> 
> It looks like a bribe, motivated by people with an agenda. The ARDC
> president probably wants to cover up sexual harassment that was reported to
> ARDC and ORI at the time it occurred, and has caused ORI an enormous amount
> of drama and me a lot of unnecessary pain. We don't have time for this, so
> we've adjusted and exited ham radio work. M17 was the only project we
> thought worth doing.
> 
> Discussions about Demonstration Labs happened at HamCation and were also
> brought up on the M17 Discord. I reminded you all about the deadline
> several times. It would have been no problem to subsidize the trip if M17
> appeared in a way that promoted the project.
> 
> Travel expenses can rapidly eat up a budget. ORI has never paid for DEFCON
> travel for anyone, ever, including for board meetings and Village staffing.
> Villages activity is not a justification for paying for travel. This is not
> controversial or unusual or different from any other project. It's not an
> insult or a setback or going to ruin anything. I pitched Demo Labs as a way
> to subsidize the travel. It didn't happen.
> 
> That's it. That's the entire DEFCON issue. Early on, I explained that we
> don't pay for things people would go to normally. If you were already going
> to HamCation, it was expected that you would not use up the budget for
> this. We expect good faith here. For non-ham conferences, you need to be
> part of the speaking track or something like Demo Labs.
> 
> I think it's time for M17 to own up to the fact that you really did get
> distracted with a second round of funding from ARDC. You really did start
> in on a proposal. You really did accept the condition of dumping ORI to get
> more money.
> 
> Ed really did get flustered when he realized I might be able to see the
> typepad of the proposal when it was posted in a channel where I could see
> it.
> 
> I got told that M17 was "pretty sure" that ORI would be kept around. Pretty
> sure? Geez, thanks.
> 
> These things actually happened. They are not good things and show a
> remarkably myopic view of M17, where supporters can be discarded when a
> better deal comes along.
> 
> This is not how you win. Come clean and fix this. It's entirely up to M17.
> If we hear nothing otherwise, we'll simply provide banking services from
> here on out, no hard feelings.
> 
> -Michelle Thompson
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jun 18, 2022 at 10:06 AM Stephen Miller <smiller at kc1awv.net> wrote:
> 
> > *I have conflicting stories from Ed and Steve. The ORI board has problems
> > with what these two people did at Hamvention in Ohio in the US.*
> > I never went to Hamvention. Not sure where this came from.
> >
> > *Ed and Steve were asked to apply to Demonstration Labs at DEFCON in order
> > to justify travel expenses. This is a formal part of DEFCON and receives
> > very good media exposure. Even after several reminders, they blew this off.
> > They didn't do it.*
> > Can you provide me with when and where the information for this was given
> > to us?
> >
> > *This was discussed in person at HamCation in Florida, but Ed and Steve
> > didn't really seem very interested.*
> > If my interest seemed lacking, it's because a decision wasn't going to be
> > made while on a trip for M17. I prefer to make decisions when 'in the
> > office', as it were.
> >
> > *This was ended by our CFO not only because of the DEFCON charges, but
> > also because of Ed and Steve's active effort to apply for a second round of
> > project funding from ARDC, on their own, without including anyone from the
> > current fiscal sponsor at all, and then lying about this funding proposal
> > to both me and ORI's chief financial officer.*
> > Neither of us started any application process to receive more funds from
> > ARDC. A simple discussion to ARDC members by Ed while at Hamvention on
> > whether or not additional funding would be possible was had. No formal
> > grant request has even been started, to this day. The reason this
> > conversation happened was due to information that we wanted to corroborate
> > from Michelle, where it was stated by Michelle that ARDC could not accept
> > ORI as a fiscal sponsor. No solid explanation was given to us by either
> > side on that matter, however ARDC did wish to continue funding M17. I never
> > lied to Michelle, or Steve Conklin. I find it extremely insulting that this
> > assumption was made.
> >
> > *It's not a good experience at all for major changes to be started behind
> > our back by your team leaders, and then to have people we are supposed to
> > be working with lie about these activities, and then have to guess and
> > wonder what is going on for weeks afterwards.*
> > No major changes have been made, or even had decisions made upon. There
> > was a discussion about getting funding for a salary for Wojciech, because
> > of his current circumstances, and perhaps a second grant from ARDC, both of
> > which was posted in our boardroom channel on Discord.
> >
> > I would greatly appreciate it if assumptions about lies or truth were
> > discussed with the people in question. I have not received one email, phone
> > call, text message, or letter from ORI about any of these allegations about
> > what I may or may not be lying about. There seems to be many assumptions
> > made about my participation and decision power within the M17 Project,
> > without any sort of communication with ORI regarding it. Personally, I find
> > this type of behavior disgusting. Never have I ever been accused of lying
> > by the CEO of any organization I have worked with, professionally or
> > otherwise. I can't believe that it was here, and in this situation which
> > has clearly been blown significantly out of proportion.
> >
> > --
> > Steve Miller
> > KC1AWV
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