Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Topics - kjdiehl

Pages: [1]
1
The Hardline / SMA (and AEA) Discussion
« on: Aug 02, 2006, 12:56 am »
For some reason, the archived SMA discussion just came up on my new-post list, but you can't reply directly to it, so I thought I'd start a new thread.

Just one thing that came to mind: What if here on SMN, our profiles, (like underneath our avatars on each of our posts, along with Karma and stuff,) could show if we're members of AEA, SMA, IATSE, Student, etc, and include a "Choose not to respond" option. I'm not interested in classifying and dividing us, so much as providing more information. I think it would be helpful to know if an opinion is coming from an SMA member or not. It could help to provoke more lines of thoughts on discussions and also help interest people in points of view from other organizations. What does anyone think?


On a completely other note: From the archived thread: "and though we may not be in your city, we'll certainly try to help you." Interesting statement. Definitley something both SMA and AEA need to work harder at in my opinion. They're both so New York-centric. I think this forum does such a great job of being universally helpful by being non-exclusionary. We have clear and valued points of view from all over the world and across all levels of experience here. Yet the SMA still says things like: "We've discussed having our own members-only forum similar to this one, but as our organization is more professional based it would have a different feel to it." More professional??? It's this attitude that has rubbed me the wrong way from both SMA and AEA for as long as I can remember. Why do they have to consider themselves the bastion of professionalism? Just because you're not a member, doesn't mean you're not a professional. It's this exclusive-club feel that's always turned me off to both organizations. I joined AEA out of career necessity, not because I liked it. SMA doesn't even have that going for it. So why should I join SMA, if I don't need to and they're just going to look down their nose at me? Heck, I went to an SMA drink night in NYC of all places, and as I was assured it would be, it was a pointless waste of time. A handful of old-school stage mgt friends, shooting the breeze, and zero useful networking going on. Similar to what it sounds like the recent AEA SM networking meeting in NYC turned out to be.

The great thing about this site is that it gives so many people such a great opportunity to bounce ideas off each other. The sucky thing about this site is that all of our discussions do zilch for actually getting something DONE within the industry. Why, oh why, can't AEA start a similar forum?!? Just think of the amount of efficient communicating that could happen! Regions would actually start to get their voices heard. Just think if Equity posted Wiki versions of the Rulebooks that members could edit. We'd finally start to streamline the convoluted, contradictory, and just plain foolish legaleze and be able to create a single, efficient language for the contracts, so that members could actually start to understand the rules properly. It might also be great for SMA to do something similar- it might actually give a decent reason to join- but it's hard to say how useful it'd actually be, since they don't actually have any real weight over our AEA contracts.

Just some thoughts.

Pages: [1]