There was some discussion on twitter yesterday regarding Summer in the City. I missed the fireworks, but I thought I'd add a word or two in a place not confined by a 140 character limit and at a time slightly out of the heat of the argument, which I hope will allow for a more level headed approach.
The background to the story is this. Davey (aka daveyboyz) entered an online video competition a few weeks back. The prize was £100,000 (I believe only £20,000 was cash, the rest in 'sponsorship'). Davey announced that if he won he would give £2,000 to help cover the cost of the gathering already being organised by myself and a few others. Whether this move was intended for the good of the community and the gathering, or as a way of gathering support for the video, I'll leave for you to decide. What I will say is that he didn't make any contact with any of the organisers before he did this.
I remember seeing a lot of my friends helping out on twitter, asking people to vote for the video for the good of the gathering, but in the end it wasn't enough, Davey didn't win that prize.
However, and I don't know exactly how it works - I think there are competitions every month and Davey's video was re-entered into the next competition, and it won. The prize is significantly smaller, I believe £5,000.
Now here comes the argument (isn't it always right after the money comes in?!) Tom, who's helping to organise, assumed this meant Davey would be sticking by his promise of a £2,000 donation. Davey said it was a different competition with a smaller prize so he would be keeping all of the money himself.
The point of this blog is still to come, and it's not to voice my opinion on what would have been the right thing to do, but I'll let you know that now just for the record.
I don't think it would be fair to ask for 2 out of 5 grand, when it was originally supposed to be 2 from 20 (plus all the sponsorship).
I also don't think it's fair to give nothing when a lot of people were voting for the video under the assumption that a percentage of the winnings would be going to the gathering.
What I would have done is given the same percentage - it was £2,000 out of £20,000, so I would have offered £500 out of the £5,000 winnings - 10%.
If I were in Davey's place, that's what I'd have done. But let me be clear, I'm not asking for £500, or any money. First of all I don't think even I could persuade Tom to accept it now, secondly Davey posted the following tweet earlier:
"if I do give anything to the gathering, I will decide people i give it to - its not going anywhere near you guys, sorry"
So I don't imagine asking for any amount would be fruitful.
But most importantly, and here we've finally got to the point... We don't need it. (Sorry you had to read all of that to get to a four word point. Still it could have been worse, I think Tom's was four letters.)
We've planned this gathering well, spent a lot of time considering options, searching for places and thinking about ways to finance it. Though there's still work to be done, we're in a good place.
I wrote this post last night, and at this point I took a break and watched X-Men 2! When I came back there was another tweet from Davey that read,
"Ok well i dont mind giving some, but i wont be giving directly to you organisers."
I think I've said all I need to as an organiser of the event, namely that planning is going really well and we are happy to continue without any 'help'. So I'll leave this last paragraph for my personal thoughts - this is my blog after all.
I was quite insulted (though not surprised) that Davey made the announcement without consulting any of us. Those last two tweets have magnified that considerably. I don't know where he would plan to send money if not to the organisers, but I feel as though he's undermining the huge number of hours we've spent discussing, researching and planning this gathering. On the plus side, nothing has changed! I'm still really looking forward to August, in a couple off weeks I'll be in London and I'll be looking at the probable venue for the Saturday night. There's also a sample t-shirt on it's way to me, we'll be selling them to help with the funding.
On another note, did you hear... The UK is forecast a long, hot summer. I'm very ready for that!
xxx
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16 comments:
The point is that very often people don't realize that money just isn't the end of all things. You put a lot of hard work into this gathering and are not getting paid. It's about dedication to something, because you believe it to be a worthy cause.
People don't understand that giving time is worth not only money, but even more.
The internet can be a fickle place when actual money is involved... I still commend you for putting thought and time into the gathering.
Ah wow, love it how over the top everything gets. I didnt promise anything the second time, as I received little help the first time. The votes I got the second time were through my hard work in my own campaign videos - so please don't presume I won because 'Summer in the City' fans..? did it for me. Cheers for making this into a huge fiasco again.. Just to remind you again - you did nothing towards me winning, and I didn't promise anything the second time. Have a great day
You guys stole the warmth ):
We have your cold winter here at the moment and it REALLY sucks ):
Goodluck with the event mate (:
I didn't say it's the reason you won, I said I know some people voted under the assumption that the money wasn't just going to you.
Have you noticed these 'huge fiascos' always seem to involve you?
Well then people shouldnt assume if I dont promise.. how is that my fault? I certainly don't feel bad as these few people didn't result in my winning. Let me re-enstate to anyone reading: I did not promise to give to the gathering in the second competition as the money was always planned to go on a professional camera!
I do however apologise for the lack of communication in making all of this clearer - and I do regret ever pledging money to you guys as it was clearly a mistake which I won't make in the future.
If you think I wanted to use the gathering as a sob story to get more votes, then you are very much mistaken. I could have used a lot more impressive material to get people stirred up sir. Not that I would see anything unfair about asking for votes in return for winning money that some is pledged to a gathering... Look what you did on upstaged alongside us dave.. exactly the same.
Yeah, and we did it.
Once again, I was talking about the 100 grand competition, not the recent one.
Let's not keep arguing please - I wanted to come and enjoy SITC!
Joy of joys, I can't wait.
I don't even know why I bother trying to be nice to the likes of your attitude, let alone offering to donate money to your gathering. But I'm glad you reinforce the reasons why I refuse to give money directly to the people organising it.
It's funny that you are totally not this type of person in real life however.
Davey I tried so very hard with you. I just couldn't handle it. I actually gave up. I don't think I've done that with anyone else my whole life.
So I tried to stay out of your way, but with this latest episode you put me in a position where even that's not possible.
I think our track records speak for themselves, I'm not the sort of person who's difficult to get on with.
Nor am I in real life, as you should know. There were just stupid things that happened online in the past (mainly due to alcohol) which do not happen anymore I can assure you.
It actually depresses me to hear you say you've given up on me, and I wish that everything would just be fine again. I don't want to be on bad terms with any of you, but I just don't see anyway of changing it. I don't care about my credibility in this - im admitting my weaknesses to you now.
This is why I wanted to come to SITC and even donate to it, especially as I would have got so much money orginally. But now it's so little that I can barely afford the camera I want. It's just another one of those unfortunate situations/misunderstandings.. But now I feel we are back to square one again!
Look don't worry about the money, we never took it into consideration. In fact if I was given 2 grand right now to spend on the gathering I wouldn't know wtf to spend it on cos everything is sorted!
The reason people are annoyed is that you do these things without thinking further than yourself. All it would have taken was an email before you announced the possible donation... We were hardly gonna turn you down! And the tweets about donating to the gathering but not to the organisers... It's the same deal - a lack of respect.
I don't wanna sound like a broken record, you just said you wanted to change it and that's the most important thing if you ask me... Seeing things from other people's perspective.
And I overstated in that last comment because I was angry and didn't think I was getting through, so I'm sorry for that. Maybe we weren't meant to be bessy mates but that doesn't mean we can't get on.
Yeah, agree with you man. And we did get on well before if I remember rightly!
I have made stupid mistakes, and my main problem is I do things without thinking. It's taken losing so many people to wake me up to it - I hope you can understand this. You've known that I'm an alright guy so think back to the glory days please!
Anyway - hope to see you at the sitc gathering.
I did not witness this at all and this is the first thing I have read about it. I know my opinion is not thought of as high or even to take notice of but this is a comments box, no?
Any way, It did not even come to me that Davey would give any money, totally different competition etc like you said Dave.
The point I want to make and sorry its long winded to get here but, do you remember the best gatherings you have been too? Right, I reckon it was either Nerifest or The late 2007 gathering, neither had funding both looked like they were fun.
YouStage was another thing, there was arguments about money then and ticket prices, I would have gone but I was told tickets were £90 afterwards I found out they were a lot cheaper, I feel it was done to keep the non in crowd out.
That last paragraph may seem bitter but it was how I felt. I hope that the Summer in the City gathering will be warm and welcoming even to black sheep boy me!
Never assume anything, you make an ASS of U and ME!
Does the gathering need funding if its a true gathering then its ABOUT MEETING OTHER YOUTUBERS not seeing who would die first falling off the top of their wallet.
Only one gathering in the UK has had funding to my knowledge and that was youstage. It was BY FAR the best gathering I've been to.
You shouldn't have assumed it would have cost much money, I said throughout it was unlikely to cost anything and if it did it would be maybe a tenner tops, because we would split the cost between everyone IF we went over. In the end it cost nothing and we had spare free tickets. If you'd listened to me, the guy who was actually taking names and doing the fucking maths, and not the people throwing wild conjecture around you'd have gone and you'd have loved it. So will you trust me this time?
Probably not.
Oh and I just noticed your last paragraph implies there will be a cost to Summer in the City as well... Which you have just made up.
It will be free, it was always going to be free, can you show me anything that says or even suggests we would be charging for it? This is how the rumours started before youstage.
And of course the point is to meet other Youtubers, but why does that have to mean sitting in cold tube stations and getting kicked out of everywhere we can think of?!
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