Maybe this has something to do with new people at the helm. Maarit Lamminen was selected as the chair (although she's handled the task since last Spring, after Shimo Suntila, chairman and editor for many years, resigned his post). A good choice, since I think Maarit has already stepped up and proved herself up to the task. Also the society's fanzine Spin will get a new editor next year. Johanna Ahonen was today officially announced as the new editor. Will look forward to the new Spin on things also.
Once again, not many people showed up for the meeting. Often, I've wondered if it is at all possible to get members of our different societies to be more active and take part in things, or at least to show up and speak their mind about who should run the society and how it should be run. Or if we should even try, for that matter. Maybe we should just be content that we can do what we like, without other people butting in with their opinions. But I'm afraid that will eventually lead to the societies withering and dying for lack of new blood. Even though some new people were chosen for the board last year and again this year, they had all either been on the board previously, or were already active in some other local society. So no really new faces, I'm afraid. But maybe the new leadership will succeed in promoting the sf activities and perhaps inspiring new people to come abroad. And so, here's the brave new TSFS inner circle:
From the left: Janna Jokela, Maarit Lamminen, Kirsi Saaros, Leila Paananen, Katja Rosvall, Johanna Ahonen and Tomi Junnila. Missing from the picture are Tytti Korhonen and Elina Keskitalo.
2 comments:
Regarding activity levels: This is one of the reasons Upsala fandom has always elected to remain a network, an informal circle of fans, instead of forming a society. No bureaucracy, no leaders, anyone can come up with anything they like to in the group's name without having to vote about things etc. And when activity ebbs, no fear that the society will die. If someone wants to speed things up, they just call a meeting or invite people to an event. Fast and no overhead.
I think things are moving a bit on that direction here as well. There has of course always been informal activity too, but for example the Turku fan meetings that started again this Fall are now unaffiliated with any association. They are "organized" by fen who want to go to a bar to meet other fen, and so no-one is obliged to be there or arrange programming, if they don't feel like it.
Finns seem to be suckers for organizational punishment, though. Whenever somebody thinks up a new thing that might be fun, pretty soon there will be a registered society with regular official fanzine and somesuch. Which more often than not tends to kill the activity in a few years, but by then it is of course time to start up another society...
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