[MR] Crown Dseign Competition Eligibility

[egeorges]

Kenny,

I understand your point.  The SCA is a pretty tight-knit community, and
usually in our day to day life in the SCA we have no need to worry about
property rights, legal issues, etc. It's one of the better aspects of SCA
life.  But if the Committee had simply privately selected some SCA artisan
and had them do a design that we came up with on our own, the complaint
would be that some "secret cabal" had gone and made a major and expensive
decision for the Kingdom without consulting anyone or involving the greater
populace at large.  I don't think that would have been the right approach
either.  

There's a balance to be struck here, and the Committee has worked hard to
strike that balance.  So we're involving people by having a design
competition, and to get the most possible entries, we've tried to make the
competition available to a wider variety of entrants so we can have the best
design possible.  That requires a little more specificity on our part to
make sure that the competition is fair, open and honest.  So yeah, the
notice for the competition isn't going to read like a standard A&S
competition notice in the Acorn.  It's going to be more specific, it's going
to have a few more rules.  There will be more mundane considerations
intruding.  But I think if you look at what we're really asking people for,
it's something that should be familiar to most Scadians who have ever
entered an A&S competition:  We want a drawing and some documentation.

We've dwelled on the minutiae a lot in this venue because people have had
questions, because this isn't a typical A&S contest, and it's not an
ordinary event.   I personally believe that people have a right to have
legitimate questions answered in a serious way.  People have asked for
detailed legal explanations of why we're doing this or that, and we should
honor that inquiry with a thoughtful reply.  But don't think that just
because that's where the discussion here has taken us, that that's all the
Committee is concerned about.  

This is no ordinary regalia item we're talking about here -- it's not a
banner or a cloak or something that is relatively inexpensive and fairly
easy to replace.  A crown is the single most identifiable and important
piece of regalia we as a Kingdom can have.  The cost can run into the
hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, and so it behooves us to be
extremely careful in how we handle it.   Because of the importance and
expense involved in this project, we have to be a little more cognizant of
the risks that the mundane world will foist upon us.  So yeah, that means
worrying about who owns what, and how to protect ourselves legally.  It's
disappointing, surely, that it has come to this.  It's happening in a number
of aspects of the game -- the increased need for waivers, the requirements
for new and more specific financial policies at the local level.  But the
SCA is not a party in someone's backyard anymore.  We are an international
corporation with thousands of paying members.  It would be irresponsible for
us to proceed without doing what's necessary to protect ourselves.  Is that
a little sad and disappointing?  Yes.  But it would be foolish to have the
competition without those protections.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is this: don't let all the unfamiliar
elements of the contest specifications distract you from what the
competition really, on a practical level, entails.  That would be like
letting the waivers you sign as a member or an authorized fighter get in the
way of what really happens at an event or on the tourney field.   The
legalese and the precautions are an unfortunate necessity, and to let that
ruin your game for you would be silly.  We're looking for drawings and
documentation and the winning design will be used to create new crowns for
Their Majesties Atlantia.  In the end, it's really that simple.


In Service,
Luce Antony Venus
New Regalia Committee