Where was I? That’s like asking me what I was doing when Kennedy was assassinated. For the record, I was in my mother‘s womb at the time.

As I write this, I’ve been in the club less than seven years (joined after the 2019 convention). I did not join to make money. I did not join for camaraderie. I did not join to help the organization grow. I did not join to help a building fund. I did not join for any reason other than the fact that I appreciated that there was a resource for me to look up items that I found interesting and to feed my degenerate interest in having one of each in the type set that I settled on collecting. I own an Internet services provider company and know there are costs associated with operating websites. I felt $30 a year was a really good value for what I was getting access to. That was it. The reason I paid my club dues was simply to thank it for the Chip guide. Nothing more. It didn’t hurt that Doug Smith covered five dollars of my first years dues. I’m pretty sure the club has gotten more than five dollars of value back from me, so thank you Doug for your investment.

I had no dreams of being a board member. I wasn’t interested in volunteering to help at the convention. To me, the convention was nothing more than a store for me to shop at once a year and buy items without paying sales tax and shipping, at a location, I enjoyed visiting anyway.

So, where was I? Blissfully ignorant of all the crap going on behind the scenes and battles of ego. Fast forward a couple of years, and I’ve met and enjoyed speaking with several members of the club. I phoned up old timers and had great conversations, not just of collecting, but of their experiences in the gaming industry. I found it, and them, fascinating. What did I know of club operations at that time? Nothing. It was a conduit that I used to fill a desire to know about a time period that I could never visit in person.

At some point, I became vested enough in my friendships, and felt that my tiny tenure in the club gave me a little bit of standing to wear I could reach out to people I thought were behaving inappropriately and asking them to curb their language and vitriol in public forms like this one. Some people I tried to gently chastise publicly. Others received emails from me, trying to bring down the temperature in the room. Some saw the air in their ways. Others doubled down, told me to mind my own business, and told me I’d never understand their anger towards another member.

In my brain, I knew the negativity was just insect noise. Small, annoying, but just loud enough to drive the rest of the club a little crazy. I felt, as many of us do, that I could be a voice of reason and could have a calming effect, if given the opportunity. I have held positions of leadership in the past, rescue a handful of businesses from bankruptcy through acquisition, and have given significant amounts of my time and money freely to help organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters, the United Way, Rotary International, and dozens of other nonprofits in smaller ways.

In every single instance of my work and volunteer life, I’ve been “the fixer”. The guy who sees problems and finds ways to solve them. It hasn’t always been easy, and I’ve had my share of set packs along the way, but I’ve always found ways to get past those problems and help steer the organizations I’m involved with in the right direction to move forward.

I feel that I am accomplishing that with this group right now. We are not facing financial ruin in five years anymore. We are successfully transitioning the club into operating in the modern era of technology. We are becoming more efficient and effective at everything we do. And as I hope to demonstrate during the remainder of my inaugural term of leadership, we are going to move from a position of bleeding to death to stability, and ultimately, growth. Yes, growth. Growth in membership in addition to finances.

The one thing I find most inhibitive to growth and membership is the persistently small but loud insect noise between members holding grudges.

So, the question should not be “where were you?” but rather “where are you now?” and “where are you trying to take us?”. Right now I am trying to encourage everyone to adopt a tone of support for their candidates and leave the negative baggage at the door. Once the election is over, everyone will drop their weapons and go back to their lives anyway, leaving the victors to continue working behind the scenes to better the club. Where am I trying to take us? To a problem free, conflict free Nirvana of happiness and success. Posting messages like this one is a distraction. I spend way too much time trying to wordsmith messages of guidance peppered with humor and smarm. What I should be doing right now is finishing the set up of the clubs first online auction. Finishing up the list of job descriptions. Organizing permissions on our Google workspace account. Helping Charles implement a more efficient authentication protocol. Re-organizing the structure of the club website. Ordering T-shirts for the convention. Setting up an online fulfillment center for ongoing merchandise sales. Those are the things that are necessary for the smooth operation and future growth of this club and tasks that I have taken upon myself to complete.

I’ve said what I needed to say about my expectations of behavior by club members, which is not limited to their participation on a club website, but anywhere in the world, whether their behavior can reflect positively or negatively on the club.

I want to make one final point about censorship. Every social media platform, every business website, and every event you attend has a personal interaction policy of some kind. When you join a Facebook page, you’re usually asked to be civil to everyone else on the page or your face being kicked off. This board (The Chip Board) is one of the only places where ethical behavior is not encouraged, and poor behavior is not penalized. Yes, it is David’s site and he is free to run it as he sees fit. And let’s face it, the more you all bark back-and-forth at each other, the more money he makes through views of the ads running at the top of the page.

So, I will ask again one more time. Please close your history books. Read each candidate’s statement. Reach out to them individually and ask them questions. Cast your votes and understand that no matter who wins, I will still be here doing my level pest to improve the club’s situation and will work with whichever board members you see fit to put in office to work with me. I look forward to seeing you all in June.