Installfest thoughts

[Christopher Browne]

On 8/28/05, Colin McGregor <colinmc151-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Something to be discussed, I passed out some 300
> flyers promoting this event, nobody showed, what went
> wrong?
> 
> - Was the flyer wrong look/layout?
> - Did I not promote the event in the right places?

I saw a flyer at the College St "Canada Computers," which impressed me
at least a little bit.

> - Was the date wrong (i.e.: end of summer)?

I'll bet it wasn't nearly ideal.

> - Was the place wrong (too far from subway)?
> - Something else?

It is equally possible that the place could have been "too close to subway."  

The one thing that struck me on the notice was the whole "oh, you'll
be responsible for paying for parking" thing.  The closer you get to
the subway, the more likely the need for parking to be somewhat
costly.

It's also entirely likely that this sort of thing starts small and
grows.  When I was part of NTLUG (<http://ntlug.org/>), they started
their "Linux Installation Project" as something that started a couple
hours before each meeting.  It grew into being fairly active; it
didn't suddenly burst into something giant.  Summer time was generally
not terribly busy.

> Other concerns, who speaks for GTALUG? I arranged for
> a release form (not needed this time out) to be
> checked and vetted by a local lawyer. Part way through
> the event I found those forms had been hidden under a
> pile of release forms that as far as I could tell had
> NOT been checked by an Ontario lawyer (never mind by
> one that I trust). Now, again the comes questions
> comes up, who speaks for GTALUG, at least for this
> this event I thought I was... Further could these
> other release forms expose myself and/or GTALUG to
> legal liability?

My reaction to this is "Isn't there a risk of legal paralysis in this
paranoia???"

Putting myself in the shoes of an outsider for a moment, if I saw a
"slickly-lawyerly-worded form," I would wonder why a bunch of
"computer hackers" felt the activity to be SO risky that they consider
it vital to so conspicuously and *precisely legally* disclaim
responsibility.

It would definitely leave me suspicious, and more than a little
disinclined to sign off.

Taking off those shoes again, I certainly don't object to the notion
of having a lawyer look at release forms, but if it NEEDS to lead to a
whole diarrhea of legal verbiage, I start to wonder if this doesn't
mean that running an InstallFest is a "supremely legally risky"
endeavour that perhaps we need to steer clear of.

That is, if avoiding legal entanglements in some given activity makes
it mandatory to have a frightening, unreadable set of technical legal
disclaimers, perhaps the activity has become one which Legal Dangers
has essentially rendered into a state where we can't do it.

Shall I reword that a third time?  If putting on an InstallFest is
*so* unsafe, legally speaking, that we need for participants to sign
off on fairly intense legal contracts, doesn't that suggest that an
InstallFest is too risky (from a legal perspective) for a volunteer
organization to run?
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