Stormy days at AIDA?

[Chrillepille]

Pranoide, according to the statutes of AIDA International only national organizations can be members and thus only the national organizations have votes in these questions. So you as a person have no saying. What you can do is take part in how your AIDA national is going to vote (and I believe you can be a member of any national AIDA you like, or all of them for that matter). However, all the judges and instructors might have been a ggod spot to find people interrested in applying for the Executive Board.

Cheers!

Chrilledill

 

[Billextreme]

Dear pranoide... and others,

The reason to not cross-posting everything all the time on our AIDA mailinglists is because there are very much mails already as it is. Then the tings posted on the assembly mailing list should be sent to all national members anyway by the representative they have. ....at least if everything are working as it should.

I find no harm to post my mail to the assembly from the 12th of October here ....so here it is:

Dear Assembly,

As the President for AIDA I had the best intentions all the way, and never wanted to appear like some sort dictator. But since the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 I started to get more and more frustrated about the sleeping positions inside of the executive board and also in the technical commission. During the autumn 2008 everything backfired and I started to take decision above the heads of people. This was very stupid done and done in a stressful situation where my options appeared to be small and to me very limited. At this time I also started to feel a little alienated to some of the key people, who did NOT sleep. This probably because we worked too much and friction began to arise and I did not take care of the problem when it was small and manageable. Anyhow so was my behaviour far from perfect and when the problem from the technical commission was brought in to the board the problems inside of the board started to accelerate and this was partly because the board had a problem to decide how to solve the problem from the TC. This was some kind of a bad circle and a "Catch-22" situation. To remember is that the AIDA work during the last 3 years have been taken around 2-3 hours every day in average and during some periods a lot more (!). All this when you have a personal company and a work to take care of. Of course there could be a lot of more delegation of work, but with non-active members, some of us took on too much more work than we should, at least I am very sure I did. Maybe it was possible to handle AIDA with only 5 active people 1999 but 10 years later it is impossible, we need a full board that are active and this also in each commission. Now I can see much more activity already on our mailing lists and hopefully also in our forum soon (please!). And I am sure the next executive board will be full of energy to make all the necessary moves to make everything to work, as it should.

When I was re-elected as the President in December 2008 my intention was to stay and work very active until Okinawa WC 2010 and directly after that help to find a new President to take over after me. And then maybe stay one year inside of the board as the TC officer, a post that sometime is closer to my nature than the President is. My goals during this last period as President was to make sure the WC in Okinawa took place and become the best WC ever. Also to create a Medical and Science Commission that would be the world leading in its field with the best possible doctors and researchers. Then help to re-create a very strong TC commission and to have them start with a new safety protocol that will be totally up-dated with the latest when it comes to how safety should be done and how to deal with it. Then of course also have them to up-date the rules as usual, and keep fine-tuning the English etc. A mission for the new TC should be to also come up with a solution for the lanyard problem and maybe have AIDA to start making high quality lanyards and start to sell them for a very good price. This can be done for low money in some parts of the world and should be one of the near future things to do.

Another big thing would be to also start to send money back to the education commission and let them have more options when it comes to the evolution of our education program. After all, the education commission have been the real big money-maker and to channel money back to them would be the most natural thing to do.

When it came to the ranking database and a competition result system we had big plans already, but because of various technical complications and that some of our key persons, for the system we used, have been otherwise engaged, we have a tiring delay for AIDA. This is hopefully on its way to be solved though we got an offer from the Freedive Central people. I have asked them to make a dummy-site so we can check and see if we need to add things or change some setups etc. The final decision about this should be taken by the new board that get selected shortly.

Then I would end to say that I still have the fire and glow to keep these intentions.

Best regards
Bill Strömberg

::::::end::::::

 

[Jorg]

The new AIDA Board candidates are now known. Let the voting begin! Or maybe not? AIDA Executive Board Candidates | Shark Freediving

 

[rxcnc2]

thanks for the update Jorg. I fully agree that it would be good to know the "electoral programs" of these candidates - even if we are not voting directly. And I am a bit amazed at the election process.

by the way, it could be interesting to list in your post, under each category, who are the outgoing persons. I have the impression that there's several of them running again. If those who resigned, those who criticized, and those who were the object of criticism are elected... will they be able to work together?

(I know in my country politicians can do this withouth problems rofl).

 

[CEngelbrecht]

Here we go, then.
This is the time when you look up your national assembly representatives on aida-international.org and exercise what ever influence you wish.

 

[TimoP]

Stormy days at AIDA?

I didn't know it's that STORMY:
http://www.weather.com/multimedia/v...pid=823425597&bclid=877032950&bctid=959746457
http://www.weather.com/multimedia/v...id=823425597&bclid=77032950&bctid=49386302001
Just listen, the hurricane/tropican storm AIDA (IDA) is on Caribbean area just now!
But not so near the Bahamas and Dean's Blue Hole.

 

[Jorg]

Latest news: Bill Stromberg Re-Elected As AIDA President! | Shark Freediving

Wow! Didn't expect that!

 

[trux]

Interesting! So the Assembly first dissolves the Board just to install it back in place a few months later? Can someone explain what the theatre was about? However, I cannot tell I am surprised. It became clear the Assembly was in fact not inclined to any change, in the moment they rejected the idea of the interim Board.

Well, congrats to the winners. Let's hope for the work to be started soon. I am afraid there are loads of it waiting.

 

[francisco]

What a wonderfull surprise ! Mmmmh !


rofl

 

[Walrus]

The voting system is very flawed to say the least. I know that at least one of the vote counts is different to how some AIDA nationals actually voted with this latest Assembly vote.

Suggestions were made to the Assembly on how it could be improved to remove any doubt from the voting process. Something really should have been done to improve the process before this last vote ever took place.

Cheers,
Wal

 

[trux]

Wal, if one vote is different that it should be, does not it make the elections automatically invalid? I would expect it in a democratic system like AIDA is supposed to be. Can you prove it? Was the voting public or anonymous? Who was counting the votes? Were some of voted candidates involved in the votes counting? If so, is it really permissible? Doesn't it look more like elections in Northern Korea?

 

[TimoP]

Doesn't it look more like elections in Northern Korea?

Maybe not exactly, because AIDA votings are done by emails to @aida-international.org, not like this:
A guide to voting in North Korea | Japan Probe

 

[trux]

Well, having lived under a communistic regime for almost 30 years, I can tell you that I have first hand experience with elections in a totalitarian regime. And I can tell you it is no fun. Unfortunately I do not really like what I am hearing about the elections. I hope we get explanations, and the election report pretty quick.

 

[pehtran]

Regardles of the outcome... one thing can be expected: there were tensions between the key people of AIDA and so far nothing has been done to release this tensions.... If the president of organisation can not resolve this tension and if most people here are surprised by the outcome to say the least then organisation can not function the way it should. That is my opinion. Miha

 

[Walrus]

With the AIDA Assembly voting system all votes have to go to votations@aida-international.org which is a physical email account that obviously exists on :- http://aida-international.org
The Assembly is told that the purpose of this account is to forward to a yahoo mail account, which then forwards to the 2 vote counters. The Assembly is told that one of the vote counters also has the only password to the votations@aida-international.org

Anyone that's ever owned a website will know the neat little control panel that creates, deletes, updates a new email account. On my own website I could use this panel to create an account called vote_me@my_website, then delete this account and create a totally new account called vote_me@my_website. I could even give it back the same password. Call me silly but sometimes I get bored and need to amuse myself

I work in IT and in my opinion the current system is seriously lacking in security, accountability or transparency. With the help of 3 different AIDA's I suggested changes to be made to the voting system to the Assembly but we were largely ignored.

After the recent Assembly vote there are a lot of AIDA National's that are surprised by the voting results. There are rumours floating around now that after some discussion with the vote counters there are AIDA's that have had their emails go missing ("delivery failure") and others that have had delays that seemed to have caused them to vote outside the required time thus making them invalid.

These are rumours and I don't have any facts on this. I'm not saying for one moment anyone has done anything wrong, what I am saying is the current voting system is a complete joke.

Cheers,
Walter Steyn
AIDA International Judge
AIDA Australia Website officer (2 days remaining)
AIDA Athlete...... when I get the chance

 

[trux]

Anyone that's ever owned a website will know the neat little control panel that creates, deletes, updates a new email account. On my own website I could use this panel to create an account called vote_me@my_website, then delete this account and create a totally new account called vote_me@my_website. I could even give it back the same password. ..

Indeed, and you do not even need to do it so complicated. As long as you have the root / administrative access to the server, you can simply read, delete, reject, reroute, or modify email of any user without knowing his password. It is very trivial, and you do not need any hacking skills for it. Such voting system is completely unacceptable, unreliable, and uncontrollable.

What about doing an exit poll? Asking all national branches if they voted, and how they voted. Of course, only if they agree revealing it, but I really see no reason why someone would refuse telling how he voted. In first place, the easiest way to control the legitimity of the poll would be doing it publicly - mistakes or manipulations would be excluded.

 

[TimoP]

I agree with Wal and trux: AIDA voting system is very strange mixed version of secret voting with no security. Too easy, that too many things can go wrong by accident or by purpose.

As far as I know, these votings are the most important way to Assembly do use their power in AIDA. If this doesn't work reliably, where is the power in practise? I think many of us have some idea about that. There are all too many doubts, those must be checked officially or else AIDA is in a VERY big trouble, where is no way out.

The first step the democracy is to have a fair and reliable voting system.
In AIDA we could do it easily, we have several IT-experts, and in fact, it's not so difficult.
Why not to take the first step to democracy?
I mean if the Assembly has the power. But if it hasn't it, or it cannot use it for technical reasons, so let's do just as before and see how AIDA will start to lose it's authority as a international freediving organization. I think (and many others too) that the active (AIDA) nationals can do resonable systems for freediving if AIDA international can't work for it.
Cause we have already the AIDA International for freefivers, why don't we make it so good as possible? Why to ruin it, and start everything again? I can't understand who's interest is to ruin the AIDA, but we are now going in that way.
--------------------------
Famous sayings of Lord Acton:
“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

And a newer view by Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D. :
"Power has advantages and disadvantages for leaders.
On the positive side, power makes leaders more assertive and confident and certain of their decisions. This enables them to move forward on chosen courses of action. Leaders must use power to "get the job done."
On the negative side, the more people possess power, the more they focus on their own egocentric desires and the less able they are to see others' perspectives. And then there are individual differences."

.

 

[Jorg]

Bill Stromberg just resigned from AIDA Bill Stromberg Resigns From AIDA! | Shark Freediving

 

[Walrus]

Hi All,
like any company or organisation AIDA international has real world Asset's. Because a board does not exist it changes nothing as to who owns and controls these real world assets. When there is no AIDA board, who owns AIDA International ?

It's a real shame that the Interim board was never established, they only lost by a single vote so had large support from the Assembly. The main push for the Interim board was to establish integrity, transparency and credibility back into AIDA. In my opinion it was a complete mistake to try to vote a new board in when there could be lack of trust and credibility in the voting system itself.

Regards,
Walter Steyn

 

[BennyB]

Unfortunately I only have a few minutes free to comment, very busy at work and flying out for the weekend soon.

This is a short summary of some of what has happened so far:

A couple of weeks ago (before the Board vote) the Australian Freediving Association sent the Assembly a letter on behalf of the AFA, British Freediving Association and AIDA New Zealand stating that we believed that the current voting process was inadequate - it could be easily tampered with and there was no feedback process for AIDA Nationals to learn if their vote was received and if so, if it was a valid vote or disqualified. We provided a recommended approach to provide more transparency around the voting process which we wanted to have in place before the Board vote started. A number of AIDA Nationals did not want any changes put in place, I believe there were concerns about changing the process so close to the vote.

Two or three days ago the results of the vote were released to the Assembly. In one of the votes a particular candidate received only one vote in total. Currently I sit on two AIDA National Committees - Australia (as President) and the UK (as Treasurer). I knew for a fact that both of these AIDA Nationals had voted for the candidate that received only one vote. So therefore I knew that something was inherently wrong with the voting process.

Looking at the results, we knew that 26 out of 34 or 35 AIDA Nationals had voted. We did not know if either the BFA or AFA vote had been lost, not counted or changed somehow. We get no feedback whether your vote was actually successfully recorded, so if you make a mistake in your vote (eg. cc'ing anyone is not allowed) then you will never learn from the mistake and may continue to do it unaware that your vote is being disqualified each time.

I addressed the Assembly with this information and asked for further transparency of the vote, which has been supported by many AIDA Nationals. We contacted the Scrutineers of the vote and requested further information directly from them. From this, we learnt that one AIDA National vote was not included because it was sent past the time limit. We also learnt that another email had bounced and was not recorded. The scrutineer recommended that a revote be taken as the position of Vice President could have been determined on this vote alone. Through the Scrutineer's information we could not determine whether the AFA or BFA vote was invalid.

Later, the BFA wrote to the Scrutineer to check if their vote was counted, to which the Scrutineer replied that the BFA vote was never received, despite sending it well within the time limit and to the correct email address.

Since then the discussions within the Assembly have been thick and fast and many people want a revote, although disappointingly some still think that the current system is ok, despite the fact that it has been proven beyond reasonable doubt that it does not work.

In the last 24 hour the dialogue in the Assembly has been very productive and we are getting some good ideas on how to change the voting process to make it much more transparent and take the ownership completely away from those involved in the candidature.

Unfortunately in this period some arsehole has been sending Bill Stromberg threatening emails including death threats, which is completely disgusting, only a bottom feeding scumbag coward would lower themselves to this level. This has been the straw that has broken the camel's back and Bill has resigned.

It's been a hectic couple of days...


Cheers,
Ben