[thechat] evolt historical/organizational questions

[Luther, Ron]

Erika asketh many questions:

>>list of names of the original breakoff crowd from monkeyjunkies?
Sorry.  That was before my time.  (No real help there. I just wanted to say that.)  I think maybe Ron White and Scott Dexter could have been there at that time as well?  Dean?  Neuro?

>>leader-ly role??
My impression was that in the big inning ... Dan owned the ball.  I believe Evolt was sitting on 'his' box at 'his' company up in cheeseheadland and that he was personally footing the bill for bandwidth.  For a very long time.  I suspect he was also heavily involved in the initial coding and mailman setup.  For better and/or for worse that gave him a bigger stake and a bigger vote than most on strategic directionality issues.  After something vaguely resembling a rugby scrum, (I *would* say think 'geeks in a blender' - but that might have been a scosh more fun), .jeff ended up with the ball and Evolt was sitting on 'his' box at 'his' company and he was personally footing the, not insignificant IIRC the numbers being bandied about at that time, bill for bandwidth and (methinks) building the Oracle backend version of evolt.  Eventually we arrived at rugby scrum #2 and now seem to be sitting on 'our' box and paying our own bandwidth bills.  (Personally I suspect that some generous yet unspoken UK benefactor(s) are quietly at work behind the scenes helping with the costs but I have not gotten a whiff of any upcoming scrum #3 so I choose not to think to hard about that.)

>>is the group structure currently fairly anarchist, and is that working for us?
Channeling the spirit of Nancy Reagan ... I would just say yes to anarchy.  ;-)   As to the second part, I personally think we've lost a bit of steam over the past few years.  I don't see as much of the cowboy frontier 'hey, check out this cool stuff' vibe anymore.  But that may just be me.  Or maybe it just reflects an (egad) maturing of the web itself.

>>how many international Evolticons have their been?  regional?
I recall seeing photos from several that were held overseas.  At least one on which involving technical talks compleat with slide presentations and possibly even an evolter wearing a tie?  Aardie accosting Dave Winer at one of our wingdings?  Or one of Dave's?  Possibly two Evolticons in the UK and one on the continent?  (Of course, Mike King and _that_ crowd mostly had a standing weekly curry and pint bender ... if I remember correctly.  So they may feel a higher count could be justified.)  I think Tara and Rudy may have also hosted one (or more) in Toronto?  I seem to remember pix of Rudy and Aardie playing disc golf up there.  And weren't there also one or two at SXSW in Austin a couple years in a row that some bozo from Texas always made excuses not to attend?  Uh, yeah.



Badly mis-remembered rumours provided by ... RonL. (and the exuberant number "e")