Adventures, conflicts, lessons, reflections & growth; why I joined, and resigned, from a national committee.
Chapter One.
In the beginning, well, kind of….
24 months ago, the Perth design and development community looked very different compared to how it does today.
Let’s take a trip back to around two years ago, when I attended a Port80 meetup for the first time in years. I thought, “Gee, I don’t recognise this meetup at all”. When I first entered the web industry back around 15 years ago, I was lucky to have a friendly web community to embrace me into it.
I remember it fondly; allow me to please paint a picture.
There were about 12 people sitting in the beer garden of a pub, split across two high benches on a Wednesday afternoon in sunny, blue-skied Perth, just simply chatting about web things.
There were no formalities or big expectations, just people who worked in the industry sharing stories and getting to know one another.
Things like the iPhone and social media didn’t exist then either, thus why I don’t have a handy photo I can add to help paint the picture. We simply had to deal with conversations with 100% pure attention. Weren’t they terrible times… (?)
It was a meetup held on the first Wednesday of every month and I couldn’t wait for it to roll round each time. People I met at this meetup waybackwhen are still people I consider good friends, industry peers and some I’ve gone into business partnerships with and even work with today in my 9–5 at Bam Creative.
I was young, starry eyed and super enthusiastic coming into such an exciting industry. This was the perfect meetup for me, and these were my people. Still today, we refer work to each other and happily help one another find employees or jobs as needed. What an amazing meetup it was for such genuine connections to form. All credit goes to my fellow Bammer, business partner friendtor and all round great guy, Miles Burke, who was the organiser of it all in the early days. Legend.
Chapter Two.
When things changed.
Before I commence this part, I want to add a disclaimer that these are the events coming purely from my personal lens. I’ve tried to be as unbiased, non-judgemental and non-offensive as absolutely possible. I am mindful, however, that my account of it is influenced by, but also not limited by, numerous factors that in combination, are unique to my lens;
- A business partner of the founder of the original Port80 and first Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA) chairperson.
- A professional who is good at business thinking, but prefers to not be classified as a suit.
- An individual who has never had any committee experience up to this point.
- An individual who has had 15 years’ experience in the web industry.
- A woman.
As time went by and the industry shifted and changed, the meetup grew and evolved and new organisers took on the baton to keep the tradition going. Locations changed and structure started to get put in place to add learning value with talks. It was different, but still pretty great because there was still plenty of mingling time.
The marketplace became more and more competitive and the change of meetup attendees from a diverse, tees and jeans wearing crowd to a male dominated, suit-wearing, business card holding one would have made for a great time lapse.
There was nothing wrong with the change; it just didn’t really feel like my people anymore, so I made the decision to stop going.
Years passed, life happened and work got busy. Not going to this meetup didn’t affect me too much so I didn’t put too much thought into it. It turns out I wasn’t the only one who made this choice either.
It wasn’t until a couple of years ago, when I started to mentor more junior designers and developers coming into the industry, that I realised that there wasn’t something as welcoming and guiding out there for them from the industry body like what I had. This realisation made me quite sad and my initial instinct was to complain about it, and oh my; did I complain. And so did others.
We whinged. We vented. We declared how crap the meetup had become and how the Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA) had lost relevance and respect. It was out of touch, not good enough and… well, blah blah blah… it doesn’t matter what was said, because words are, frankly, cheap. We, no — I should only speak for myself here — I was being judgemental and who was I, to have this right without having all the information and understanding?
It wasn’t the association that I wanted nor needed, but I had imposed my expectation of what an industry body should be and how it should act and behave, through my inexperienced eyes and uninformed assumptions. It was easy to speak up about it to willing and agreeing ears rather than give my candid feedback to the source who may not have been aware of this perspective of the community sentiment.
I therefore made a decision to try and make a difference.
To reference a fairly popular quote, “be the change you want to see”, it was exactly what I set out to do by getting involved with the Australian web industry. In 2015, I accepted a nomination to be part of the AWIA national committee.
Chapter Three.
Why I resigned from the AWIA committee.
2015 marked the beginning of my two year term on the AWIA committee. I took over the organising of the Port80 Perth monthly meetup, revived it, and was the event host for 7 months until retiring it in 2017 to launch a new initiative.
I rallied the community to get involved and formed an amazing team who were the amazing crew that made it all possible; David Thomas (developer at Bam Creative), Teegan Lincoln (front end developer at Bam Creative) and Corey Ginnivan (lead designer at Appbot).
This same team proudly created and launched a new initiative called Localhost in January 2017 which ran for another 7 months, after we retired the Port80 meetup. It was a total of 14 months of 100% volunteering time on top of our full time jobs, but we loved (almost) every moment of it.
Where are we today? I recently resigned from the AWIA committee in mid-June, a few days after the Localhost roadshow (The deployment), the supercharged multi-city touring meetup my team and I created, and approximately only two weeks before the end of my two year term on the committee.
A lot of people have been asking me about why I quit and especially why my team and I have stepped away and handed over Localhost to AWIA, especially after the time, energy, heart and soul that we poured into creating this community driven brand from scratch.
It’s a tricky one to explain without proper context and I also needed some time to let the emotions settle. Now I’m a little less “burn everything down” and more “I’ve learned things and grown. What’s next?”, so it’s a more appropriate time to talk about it.
I’ve written and rewritten this post several times, being careful to not start any fires I’d be unable to put out. It’s weighed heavily on me as to whether to publish this reflection post at all. I feel that it’s important that this story is told, even if after several edits it does skim over details in order to keep the peace.
I owe it to my team and to the community that we’ve interacted with and who trusted us, to explain why we made the heartbreaking decision to step away from Localhost, even though we had even bigger plans for it.
Before I continue, I’ll refer back to my disclaimer from chapter two again;
These are the events coming purely from my personal lens. I’ve tried to be as unbiased, non-judgemental and non-offensive as absolutely possible. I am mindful, however, that my account of it is influenced by, but also not limited by, numerous factors that in combination, are unique to my lens;
- A business partner of the founder of the original Port80 and first Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA) chairperson.
- A professional who is good at business thinking, but prefers to not be classified as a suit.
- An individual who has never had any committee experience up to this point.
- An individual who has had 15 years’ experience in the web industry.
- A woman.
So here’s (some of) the story.
At the start, I was honestly in two minds about whether I would proceed with it or not. The brand reputation of AWIA was damaged — whether they were aware of this or not — and I was worried about how this might reflect on both the agency I represent and myself.
The committee election announcement at the AGM was an interesting start to the first five minutes of my term. When all the seats were announced except the last, it was down to two members who came a draw in the nominations. The chairperson at the time decided that the best solution was a coin toss…. and voila, there we have it, the committee was formed! (actually)
This was my first official experience and oh boy, I can still hear the echo of those alarm bells at that moment…
Once I made the choice to go ahead though, I made a promise to myself that I would give it my best shot — it’s just how I roll. My experience in target market analysis, audience engagement, brand development and passion for the community equipped me what what I believe I needed to have a positive impact straight away. I was determined to hit the ground running.
I had a clear vision that the key to saving AWIA was with genuine community connection, relationships and engagement. It was, and still is, my belief that the world of one-way relationships don’t have a place in this industry, but that it should indeed be a relationship that provides value both ways.
I had grandeur plans of re-identifying the organisation’s goals, target audience groups, redeveloping AWIA’s brand positioning, redeveloping the touch points and implementing strategies to engage each group deliberately and authentically.
TLDR; I failed.
In my first month, I completed an audit, compiled feedback, performed a SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, started competitor research, broke down the primary target audience groups and secondary and tertiary segments, defined goals, metrics of success, created wireframes for the website… and so on…
I was armed with a multi stage plan that I believed would help identify and communicate AWIA’s value to the industry again. The branding, the messaging, the website and the web awards were all in my roadmap and I didn’t think it was too ambitious for an experienced team of 11 professionals, after all, we had achieved much more in less time with 7 people with varying years of experience notched up in our belts in our team for Mixin (a completely separate and independent project that I’m very proud to be part of).
This leads me to why I failed in my mission. Let’s talk about rookie mistakes #1, #2, #3 and #4.
Rookie mistake #1: Assuming that everyone was there for the same reasons
It was way too ambitious. The contribution that the committee members each agreed to was only two hours per week, along with a conference call once per month. By the time we finished talking about things, we ran out of time to actually do them.
Even though I wanted to hit the ground running, asking about current systems and processes, methods of communication and projects on the go, I soon realised that it was too soon to be in action mode. We were still in the team forming stage and needed a better understanding and aligning of everyone’s visions and the dynamics that existed within the team.
Rookie mistake #2: Change became a personal attack
Turns out that I was trying to save something that didn’t realise that it needed, nor wanted, saving. AWIA wasn’t ready for mass change because it didn’t know or wasn’t ready to acknowledge that there was anything broken. I’ve learned with hindsight that suggesting change in a straight and honest way can be threatening and bruising egos is a quick way to lose friends.
No one wants to hear that they’re irrelevant or could be doing things differently, even if it is with positive intentions for the better.
My honesty was perhaps too brutal and it didn’t do me any favours, naturally. I never thought I’d say this as something to reflect on, but perhaps more nurturing and gentle womanly tones from me might have gotten me further, instead of my non-pandering attitude, which was, “harden up, come down from your thrones and let’s get on with it”. I don’t think I actually said that aloud, but…
Wait.
Sometimes, honesty isn’t the best policy.
Being more patient and empathetic towards how suggestion of change would be a difficult pill to accept and swallow, may have served me better, and this is a learning that I will take into future boardroom settings.
Rookie mistake #3: Prescribing the medicine too soon
I was coming to the committee with solutions, before even beginning to understand the current dynamics, politics and pain points, which all shed light on why things were the way they were.
Even in design projects, I wouldn’t assume an answer before properly understanding the problem, so I should have applied my design experience in this scenario by doing more research first and listening more before proposing solutions.
I’m much more mindful of slowing down now, in lieu of this mistake, because there’s always more than meets the eye.
Rookie mistake #4: Not picking the right battles
Battles. I probably wore permanent war paint on my face and in hindsight should have put down the armour every now and then and just enjoyed a diplomatic cuppa more often.
It’s just that so much was broken, and still is, and I didn’t quite know where to start. I’m just not the type of person that would want to sidestep around problems and keenly wanted to resolve them.
So.
- I battled with the previous chair;
- I battled with the current chair;
- I battled with the vice chair;
- I battled for the use of word chairperson, or chair, rather than chairman;
- I battled for an improved community meetup;
- I battled for a bugfree website that was a representation of a national body;
- I battled for the definition of “bug fixes” versus “feature requests” on the website;
- I battled for a pause, review and overhaul of the Australian Web Awards website, event and process based off community feedback;
- I battled for centralised tools for project management, team communication and internal process management, rather than emails to coordinate everything…;
- I battled to protect my time when more was being demanded of me;
- I battled with feeling like the only one hustling to get things done beyond talk and meetings;
- I battled internally on whether or not to do Localhost as part of AWIA or separately — this was a huge one;
- I battled for Localhost to be a sincere project to give back to, unite, and have genuine conversations with the community, not become a sales driven membership drive;
- I battled with managing egos and individuals wanting recognition;
- I battled with refusing to be “managed”;
- I battled with being the only woman left on the committee the past year;
- I battled with, but also became very aware of the world of politics, alliances and manipulation. Admittedly, I’m very green in this area.
There were probably more, but of those, I only won three.
“If you want something done, you gotta do it yourself”
Sebastian, The Little Mermaid.
Introducing Localhost to AWIA
During a committee meeting late last year (2016), many discussions were had, including the importance of adding a conference in the near future roadmap. My reply to this was “great, but who’s going to organise it?”. Of course, crickets. No one had time, nor experience in event management, and I certainly wasn’t going to put my hand up for that on top of the other projects that I was looking after.
I did bring an alternative to the table which I had been working on separately; this was the Localhost initiative and the concept of multi-city roadshows (initially planned for only 3 cities).
The concept was ambitious, but achievable, and the objectives I outlined were clear. It was to be a project that would be aimed at raising the profile of the Australian industry, and the people in it, as a whole by creating a platform for opportunities helping communities to come together to grow and collaborate.
The crossroads on whether to work with AWIA on this project or not, was a huge one. It was a chance to give back to the community, finally giving AWIA the chance to provide value back to the members and connect with the rest of the communities and individuals in the Australian industry. A huge opportunity for them and a timely springboard for us, the Localhost team, to bring our vision to improve the Australian industry, come to fruition much sooner with AWIA’s support.
I made it clear, or so I had thought, that this initiative was to be purely a project to help and connect with the community, amplifying the opportunities for Australian designers and developers, and was never intended to be a membership drive nor a revenue raising one for AWIA.
It was my first official in-person meeting with more than one of the members at a time (as oppose to conference calls), which likely contributed to the success of the motion passing for action. I had been given full autonomy of my project, with financial support by the committee, and so I hit the ground running.
There was some feedback from a couple of the committee members regarding my official proposal which outlined the goals, objectives and budget, but nothing that was deemed a show-stopper, so I received the stamp of approval, and proceeded with the plan — to run an independent community driven initiative, with support by AWIA.
When something is too good to be true, it probably is, right?
Chapter Four.
Onto making things happen.
Everything was in motion and things moved very quickly. I gave periodic updates as things went on and kept a keen eye on the budget to make sure we were going to be on track to deliver what we set out to achieve within that.
It was a busy 6 months for David, Teegan, Corey and I, but I’m so proud of what we were able to create and build in such a short amount of time;
- Naming, logo design, full branding process, sub-brand design, collateral design and strategy development
- Website design, development and launch
- Content creation and developing a code of conduct for events
- Launch of a community calendar with collaborators across the country
- Launch of a community blog
- Creating a meetup starter kit, launching a new branch in Brisbane and adding BNE to the roadshow plans
- Call for speakers, speaker selections, info packs and liaison
- Launching ticket sales and roadshow info page on website
- Social media strategy, design and management
- Securing sponsors
- Organising venues and partnerships across multiple cities
- Organising volunteers for events in multiple cities
- Organising catering for events in multiple cities
- Organising photography and videography
- Post event editing and production
- All in the meanwhile running our monthly meetup event in Perth, on top of side community projects such as web and wellness events and discussion dinners
- And then of course, hosting a 4 day, 4 city roadshow tour…
Oh, and I should mention we did all this out of hours because we also all had full time jobs? Phew!
Once things were in motion for the Deployment, we hardly had a moment to surface for air. There were thousands of collective hours invested into ensuring that it was a success and was true to our vision, right down to as many of the details that we had control over within the time that we had available to us.
We worked nights, weekends and all nighters. Whatever was needed to ensure that it was a success.
I’m still incredibly proud of what we managed to achieve in such a short amount of time and the positive feedback has been overwhelming. We’re so grateful for the support and appreciative of all of the kind words of encouragement sent our way.
When I look back on everything that we achieved, it makes it an even harder choice to walk away from it.
Sadly, it needed to be done.
The battle that broke the panda’s back…
(that classic saying…)
Around a month in the lead up to the event, I started receiving direction from the committee on how things should run and suggestions on things that needed to be changed. I was asked to involve particular committee members in on the project more, especially because I was coming to their hometowns. With roles already assigned, volunteers confirmed and everything in motion, it was just simply too late in the piece for me to change anything.
My concern rose during this time because the nature of the requests made me question whether I had managed expectations and communicated the goals for community engagement, and not membership drive, as clearly as I had hoped.
I then thought to myself, no, Patima, you had been given full autonomy of the project and it’s yours to manage. It seemed like that now there was something to manage, and it looks like it was this initiative and me.
I decided that I would stand by the initiative and the decisions that I made.
At the second leg of the event in Melbourne, however, we were forced to go off script, even though it had been discussed prior to the event and I had advised against it then as well. I thought I had made that intention clear, but it unfortunately wasn’t enough.
I was approached by the AWIA Chair on the night to invite the Vice Chair up to address the audience. I advised against this, not only because we were running very tightly on a schedule for the event, but also knowing that it was going to be a sales pitch for membership which was never the intention of the event. I explained that there would be a future platform for this, and that this event was something that could open up a dialogue and connection that didn’t exist previously. I reiterated that the long term benefits would be positive for membership numbers. My plea was unfortunately ignored.
In this one action that I feel I was cornered into doing, I regretted it immediately.
While the attendees may not have felt negatively towards it, my team and I were mortified as we listened on. We felt like we had betrayed the trust of the people in the room and that our integrity was tarnished as a result. The spiel itself, for those who were there and can recall it, was cringeworthy and showed a lack of understanding of the community that was being addressed and what they really needed from their industry body. I was incredibly embarrassed and disappointed by what happened. They left soon after, I took a deep breath and continued on with hosting the night.
What followed after this was an email received on the following morning with near to impossible requests of my team (who were all, including myself, volunteering our time and had taken leave from work to see out the success of the roadshow). It was enough to take the wind out of any sail.
I was encouraged to give the Chair the floor again at the Brisbane leg, which I did, but it was at this point where my team and I knew that the motives of the “support” for this initiative were no longer the pure intentions that we had set out for it to have.
With all this said, I do understand that AWIA invested financially into the project and their metric for return on investment was measured by logo placement, brand prominence and memberships. These were, however, never the goals of Localhost.
Localhost was meant to be the chance for a new and meaningful way to engage with and have a dialogue with the community that AWIA had lost touch with, not a vehicle for people to get their wallets out.
Up to these events happening, I had genuinely believed that AWIA could be the right platform to help elevate the industry — a national body that would support our industry and be the voice of our communities and the individuals in it. That’s the type of organisation that I can stand with.
I am, sadly, willing to admit that I failed to be clearer about the goals of the initiative and better, clearer and more frequent communication may have avoided this whole drama. Unfortunately, my trust of the association was broken at this point and it was going to take a lot to repair that again.
I consoled myself with knowing that I only had a couple more weeks to go on my term and then I could part ways soon, acknowledging and growing from both the good and the bad experiences.
Unfortunately, the story took a further turn. A week after the event, I was putting together an email to send out to the attendees to introduce them to AWIA and let them know about the membership discount offer that the Chair had offered at the Brisbane leg of the event. I was planning on happily doing this because it was giving the subscribers a choice to do so, and to opt in if they were interested.
What happened next though, completely floored me. The Localhost attendee list was used without consultation, and someone at AWIA sent an email out to the attendees. I was disappointed at this decision.
It was really the final straw. I handed in my resignation, an hour later.
Some further reflections on being on the committee…
It wasn’t all bad and terrible; there were of course some great people who I had the pleasure of meeting while being on the committee. I believe that one of the key contributors to why things needed to be such a battle all the time was a lack of united vision and common values to help guide and steer the decisions and conversations. Or perhaps there was a vision, just not many soldiers to act and make things happen. Perhaps my role was simply to be a pawn piece in the game.
Things seemed to be broken and unrepairable and for a while there, I completely lost interest and motivation because it was getting tiresome to talk about the same things, over and over, and see half-baked action — or no action at all — come out of it.
While this was all going on, I’ll admit that AWIA did enable me, through financial support and complete autonomy at times, to do plenty of great things. For this, I am humbly grateful for the opportunity that I was presented with and hopefully made the most out of.
Making the decision to look after Port80 and launching Localhost in January 2017 with my team; David Thomas, Corey Ginnivan and Teegan Lincoln, was an incredibly rewarding experience and enjoyable times for all involved. We also had an amazing group of volunteers, speakers and collaborators in Perth, but also great support in each of the cities as well.
It was hard work but well worth it.
Sadly, after these series of events I’ve come to the realisation that my vision and values simply don’t align with that of AWIA’s, and that’s perfectly okay. We can simply part ways and it means I can commit my time and energy towards new things that match up better.
It’s heartbreaking to hand over all the months of time, heart and energy that we poured in, but this was the deal that I made when I accepted their financial support, and the soul that I gave away was Localhost.
I can only hope that the community will help shape it to be the meetup that they want and need it to be, going forward, and that AWIA will indeed support and encourage growth and collaboration for a better industry for us in the future.
Thanks for reading.
