HPCC club and Valentin Albillo Message #1 Posted by Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz on 24 July 2007, 12:29 a.m.
This posting is about Valentin Albillo’s membership agreement with the HPCC HP calculator club, and criticisms of it. Some people have said this is a subject for the HPCC club only, not for discussion on the MoHPC Forum. Others have suggested they will leave the club because the club has made no official posting here. As so much has been written on this Forum, and because Valentin asked for it, here is a statement on behalf of the club. If you are not interested in goings-on at HP calculator clubs, feel free to skip the rest :-)
* Valentin Albillo does NOT have a free membership of the club. That is Valentin's understanding of the arrangement, and that of most of the club Committee. After paying for membership in the usual way for 4 years, he offered to make payment instead by writing a guaranteed and regular set of articles for our journal, Datafile. The Editor liked the idea, the club Committee accepted it, the Annual General Meeting in 2005 approved the agreement, the AGM in 2006 confirmed it, and it’s been running satisfactorily for two years and is now well into its third. Not everyone agreed, but this was an officially made agreement that Valentin paid by providing articles regularly, not a free membership.
* An arrangement like this, where a regular supply of quality articles is guaranteed, is very valuable to an editor. It is like the difference between a journalist with a contract to provide a weekly newspaper column and bloggers who post when and what they like. The blogs might or might not be more interesting than the column, but they do not provide the guarantee an editor needs that pages will be filled in every issue. The HPCC Editor offered to make similar agreements with other members who could satisfy the Editor and the Committee that they would provide a regular supply of substantial articles of interest to HPCC members.
* Two members of HPCC opposed this agreement, and voted against it at the AGMs, because the club works on the basis that all members pay money for their membership. As in most clubs, it would be considered wrong for the Treasurer or the Editor, for example, to get their membership in exchange for the work they do. The Committee recognized this concern, but considered Valentin’s offer to be for the good of the club and voted to accept it.
* Two other members have expressed some opposition, and one of them has recently suggested that the agreement is contrary to the club constitution. This objection has been made only after the agreement had been working successfully for more than two years. The Committee believes that the constitution allows it to make such special arrangements for the good of the club, but the question will be discussed at the next AGM, and appropriate changes will be made to the constitution if the AGM so decides.
* The members who are opposed to the agreement have every right to continue in their personal opposition to it, but I ask them not to publicly misrepresent the position, and not to be rude to Valentin on this Forum, nor anywhere else for that matter.
* Until the situation is discussed at the AGM, the Editor has withdrawn the offer of similar agreements. Further, to avoid any more arguments, Valentin has now paid with money for his membership for the rest of the current year. Despite this, he will hold to his agreement with the club and will continue to write for Datafile – he has already offered a set of articles about the new HP35s.
Apologies for the length of the above, but I hope it clarifies matters.
Wlodek Mier-Jedrzejowicz
on behalf of the HPCC club Committee
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