In an email that went out this morning to IGDA members, it was announced that I am on a Task Force to determine how to hold special member meetings. While this Task Force was put together in response to the upcoming meeting to vote on the removal of Tim Langdell from the IGDA Board of Directors, I want to clarify that our purpose and goal as a Task Force is to come up with a set of guidelines for running all future special membership meetings, not just this one.

I’m delighted to be working with a great group of people on this. In less than 48 hours we’ve already had substantive and productive discussion on the matter. I think we’re going to move very quickly on coming up with a set of recommendations to the Board.

If you have questions about how things are proceeding, do not hesitate to contact me. Leaving comments on this blog post is probably the best method as I can collect everthing in one place. I will do my best to respond, and I will relay any concerns of members to the Task Force itself. Sadly, I cannot comment on the specifics of our deliberations until we release our report publicly — this confidentiality was not my decision, but I have agreed to it because I feel that it is in the best interest of the IGDA to get this done as quickly and fairly as possible so that we can hold the special meeting itself.

Since the email system still seems broken (I am not receiving any of the emails sent to all IGDA members), I am reproducing this morning’s email below:

Dear IGDA Members,

As many of you are aware, the IGDA website was recently exploited to send emails to members. This use of private data occurred in the context of a group’s efforts to gain signatures for a petition. The day after the exploit we received the petition with signatures. The method used to gain these signatures has complicated an already complex situation. We have heard from those who feel they were justified in taking such measures, those who are concerned their privacy was violated, and many other perspectives, opinions, and concerns.

The debate over the issues at hand has had a negative impact on the association, and our ability to move forward on member programs and initiatives. Rather than continue a public and internal discourse on the circumstances and validity of the petition, Bob Bates and I have decided that the least damaging approach for the organization is to call a special membership meeting, as the co-Chairs may do as per the by-laws.

Since the IGDA does not yet have a policy for how to hold special membership meetings, at our Aug 5th meeting the Board chartered a Task Force comprised of IGDA Board members Tom Buscaglia and Coray Seifert, and at large members Darius Kazemi, Dustin Clingman and Brian Robbins, with the Executive Director acting in an advisory role to the Taskforce. The Taskforce will evaluate and recommend a policy regarding the methodology and procedures for holding special meetings of the membership of the IGDA, that serves the intent of the by-laws.

Once this course of action is established, it will be possible to fix the other details of the meeting, which needs to occur at least 35 days after the date is announced. We all share the goals of a fair and professional process that can let our organization move beyond this controversy, and I appreciate your patience as we work out the details.

Thank you,
Tobi Saulnier
Co-Chair
IGDA

Given recent events in the IGDA, people have been talking about how the election process for the IGDA Board is broken. I agree that it is.

That’s it. It is not a bad skeleton of a process, but there are some problems with it. The brief statement of candidacy is not a lot to go on. In fact I have voted for Board members that I wish I hadn’t, simply because I recognized their names from various IGDA mailing lists as active volunteers, and their short candidacy statement seemed pretty good.

(Just to be clear: I did not have anything to do with the emails from “concerned_members_of_the_IGDA.” It caught me by surprise, and while I think it was a good attempt at grassroots organization, they could have been somewhat clearer that they did not represent the IGDA itself, and they should have signed names to it.)

(UPDATE: Everyone I spoke to prior to writing this who received a message had a public IGDA profile. It’s come to light that some people who definitely have private profiles also received a message from concerned_members. Seems like there might be some PHP hacking involved after all. Consulting some friends in security…)

IGDA members received an anonymous message yesterday urging them to sign the petition to call a member vote on the removal of Tim Langdell from his Board position.

Joshua Caulfield sent out an email to the IGDA membership today saying the following:

Dear Members,

Recently an email went out that appeared to have originated from IGDA. The return address of this email appeared as: “Concerned_Members_of_the_IGDA@IGDA.org.”
That email address was spoofed and the communication was not an official IGDA communication. We are currently reviewing the methods by which it was sent to see if this was sent out by people ignorant of proper use of the IGDA website or if there was malicious actions involved. We are also reviewing the method by which your email addresses were obtained and if that was done ethically or not. It is my hope that this was done by someone simply overzealous about their cause and not for destructive reasons.

Please be aware IGDA was not responsible for this email and does not have anything to do with the content or the links provided. You should read and use such links at your own risk.

We will investigate this issue and provide you with information on our findings as they are confirmed.

Thank you,

Joshua Caulfield
Executive Director
IGDA

It’s very clear from the email I received that it was not “spoofed.” The people who sent the message clearly used the IGDA’s web forms. The header of the email says it was mailed by ynilo.pair.com — well, pair.com happens to be the IGDA’s web host, so if it was sent via the IGDA’s PHP web form it would indeed be mailed by pair.com. Just to test it out, I sent the following message to a friend:

My friend forwarded me the email he received. The header and footer are identical to the email from “concerned_members”:

From: I_am_totally_anonymous <bad_address@example.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 10:41 AM
Subject: Message via IGDA Profile: I_am_totally_anonymous
To: (my friend)

I_am_totally_anonymous sends you the below message via your IGDA Member Profile:

This is my anonymous message to you.

-Nobody

—————————————–

You can reply to I_am_totally_anonymous at bad_address@example.com.

Note: You can change your public profile access, privacy and email settings via your MyProfile page:
http://www.igda.org/membership/myprofile.php

International Game Developers Association

So there you have it. It is clear that this was a group of people who decided to split up the Member Directory listings (which are publicly available to any paying IGDA member) and went down the list and messaged everyone using the form system. Nobody obtained email addresses through dubious means. It’s like sending a message via Facebook messaging, only in the IGDA’s Member Directory there’s no setting to say “only let my friends message me.” You’re either public or hidden, and the default is public.

These messages were not sent in an unethical or illegal way. If anything, the messages are a consequence of the rather poor state of the current IGDA website (having seen the new site, these issues will not come into play, it will be a lot more Facebook-like in terms of privacy).

I also want to say that I think it was a bad move for the “Concerned Members” to remain completely anonymous, but that’s neither here nor there. It wasn’t a hack, plain and simple.

I had originally written a long post about this, but I believe I will simply say the following:

For those members who have asked me to say something on the EDGE Games issue, I do think that I have made my position clear by supporting the petition to call a member vote on the removal of Tim Langdell from the IGDA Board of Directors. I believe that the actions of EDGE Games are not consistent with the IGDA’s mission, and I believe that Tim Langdell’s association with EDGE causes damage to the IGDA as an organization, if only because of the member dissatisfaction that it has provoked. I support the right of members to vote on this issue, and again I encourage you to consider signing the petition.

This whole issue has caused me to think more deeply about important related IGDA issues which I’ll be addressing in forthcoming posts.

I wasn’t aware until today that the IGDA sent out a Member Satisfaction Survey to members via email. If you’re a paying IGDA member, you should have gotten it on July 21st or some time around then. Definitely go back and check your email for the survey link. (I’d link it directly here, but I think it’s a unique URL per member and I don’t want to mess up their tracking.)

It’s vital that the IGDA hear member feedback wherever possible, and for that to happen, you as a member have to provide said feedback.

I noticed this morning that the Silicon Valley IGDA Chapter has worked out a sponsorship deal with a law firm which is providing four 30-minute pro bono consultation slots per month to members of the SV IGDA chapter. That’s a fantastic idea, and frankly one that I wish I’d thought of!

So kudos to Ann Burkett for securing a fantastic benefit for her local IGDA members, and for raising the bar for us all.

Active IGDA volunteer Corvus Elrod is spearheading an effort to get 10% of the IGDA voting membership (about 1400 people) to call a special meeting of the membership to vote on whether to remove Tim Langdell from the IGDA Board of Directors. Per the IGDA Bylaws, 10% of the membership can call a vote on, well, basically anything, including the removal of a Board member. Regardless of how you feel about the Tim Langdell issue, please remember that signing the petition means that you support the membership voting on the issue — you are not saying anything about the issue itself.

Corvus has a nice writeup of his motivation for calling the vote at his blog. The form to enter your signature is available here, and you’ll need your IGDA member number which you can get by logging in here.

I encourage you to sign, provided that you’re an IGDA member with voting rights (not a free forum member, and not a discounted student member).

The IGDA has just announced its new Executive Director: Joshua Caulfield. He’s held the position for a few weeks prior to this announcement, and I’ve had the pleasure of talking with him about the state of the IGDA, the organization’s direction, and other topics. I’ve got to say I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen so far. In particular, I now realize that bringing on someone with professional association management experience may in fact be just what the IGDA needs.

You can go see his introductory blog post at the new IGDA Staff Blog.

I’ve written before about lack of transparency from the IGDA Board, but a culture of secrecy exists throughout the IGDA. A lot of the IGDA’s active volunteers in the SIGs and Chapters carry out their business over private mailing lists.  Paul Sinnett (a London chapter coordinator) made a pretty compelling point about the issue on a private developers’ forum that I’m a member of. He gave me permission to repost it here.

Yeah I think [secrecy is] more than half the problem with the IGDA as it stands. Over the last few months the quality of life team has been busy putting together a studio survey. Not that anyone would know. All the activity has taken place in private.

There is nothing in any of those messages that could not have been publicly posted on the forums. And yet I’m told that would be impossible. The lack of transparency is exactly why things like Mike Capps’ behind the scenes machinations can go on for years without notice.

[...]

The mailing list disease is spread throughout the organisation. Forcing all the SIGs and chapters to use public forums is the best single thing they could do to improve the association at this point.

Those who say they can’t work without private list groups I would ask to stand down.

As a chapter coordinator and a SIG volunteer, I generally agree with what Paul is saying. So much of what goes on on the mailing lists can happen in public and would add a lot of visibility to the good work being done by volunteers.

There are some issues that I think will need to stay private. When we’re discussing sponsorship fees for meetings of the Boston chapter, I would prefer that those kinds of communications stay in private emails between the chapter coordinators and the sponsors.

I think that fourm-style transparency makes a lot more sense for a SIG than for a Chapter. Chapters are inherently local things. Sometimes the Boston coordinators just meet for dinner to conduct business. Chapters are also generally run by no more than handful of people (our chapter has five coordinators). I think that if you have a small group of people putting together local events, that coordination doesn’t have to take place over a public forum. On the other hand, we often have people approach us and ask if there’s any way they can help with the chapter, and we really don’t have any work for them. But if we handled our business on a forum, I suppose we could say, “Join the forum.” Then they could chime in an offer to help when they see opportunities arise.

SIGs, on the other hand, can involve dozens of active volunteers distributed geographically all over the world. They’re working on things that affect people industry-wide, like white papers and the Global Game Jam. I think that in these cases, more transparency is called for.

What I would like to see is for mailing lists and forums to be merged into one entity, like in a Google Group: you can choose to interact with it as a mailing list or as a forum, but in the end it’s all on the public record. I’d like to see all chapter and SIG *member* activities be on this public forum, along with private lists just for the coordinators of the chapters and SIGs.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while — I’ll be back very shortly with some comments on the Tim Langdell EDGE thing. (I just moved apartments and I don’t have internet at home right now, hopefully I can compose a post tonight.)