There was a general lynch mob feel to all this until a few Comments showed up this morning along the lines of “hey, hold on a minute…let’s not all rush to being judge/jury/executioner at once…” And, let’s not support those who take that position or promote a public lynching.

LoT can resolve whatever they need to resolve with their former colleague, hopefully, in private. That is not what this Comment Thread is about. It’s about how this was handled, both by LoT, Silicon Florist and others.

Minimally, it was way, way, way too personal. And, before Posting such personal responses, people should be forced to tie their hands behind their backs for 24 hours and think before pressing ENTER.

I believe that Silicon Florist should have done more than sit back and watch the day go by. This Blog site certainly elevated the issue and kicked up a storm. Sure, they’ve gained a lot of traffic, but, not the kind that will help them in the long run. And, LoT should have done a whole lot more to handle this with a dash of humility.

Raven, I am grateful for all Legion of Tech has done for the Portland technology community. Thank you! I am sure this is an difficult situation for you and the other board members. You all have my well wishes and sympathies. BUT…Legion of Tech’s statements and comments seem very odd and singularly concerned with directing any guilt away from the board, not really being open with the community. Legion of Tech’s post nor subsequent comments or tweets offer any apology whatsoever. None. No “We’re sorry”, but merely “Don’t blame us”. You commented here once again not to apologize to the community or sponsors, disclose any new information or step up and take responsibility, but reassert once again, “Don’t blame me!”. That’s the common theme here, and seems your only agenda. It comes off as petty and self serving rather than open and responsible.

Here is what I believe you are hoping isn’t said, and it happens to be the truth so I’m going to say it: It was the board of directors’ responsibility to have implemented proper controls and checks to ensure this didn’t happen in th first place. In this regard the Legion of Tech board was absolutely negligent and at least partially responsible. Some would say equally culpable. I think the Legion of Tech board is going overboard in trying to publicly humiliate this individual over and over in blog comments and tweets(we’re not specifically naming him or her, but we’ll make it easy enough to figure out….wink wink) in hopes to divert any attention and possible accusations of it’s own negligence and irresponsible practices. Enough already…we get it: You desperately don’t want to accept any blame or responsibility for your own negligence in the situaltion.

The responsible and mature thing would have been for Legion of Tech to simply apologize and take responsibility for it’s role in the matter and leave it at that. Repeated updates and comments, not to give new information, but merely to divert any blame from you, comes off as a smokescreen. If your goal is openness and credibility, it doesn’t help your cause. If the party in question truly has admitted guilt, than perhaps you can take a lesson from him or her: When you mess up, have the honesty to admit it and move on. No amount of blaming others, even justly, can take the place of that kind of honesty nor can it excuse your own negligence. And going out of your way to unnecessarily and repeatedly tarnish a former co-worker (and friend, as you tweeted this morning) does not engender a good perception of you or Legion of Tech. It’s not classy or professional. Take the high road instead. Once was enough.

BTW, this isn’t fraud, it’s “alleged fraud”. Ask your lawyer to explain the difference, what consitutes defimation, and the possible legal risks to yourself and Legion of Tech by publicly accusing someone of a crime before it’s actually been determined to be so in the eyes of the court.

I don’t care to engage in childish speculation or gossip and will reserve judgment until I hear the whole story and give this individual every consideration until I do. Right now, it’s all just allegations. I’ve seen enough of these situations to know better than to rush to judgment based on one side’s story- especially when that story is only motivated by self-interest, rather than true openness and disclosure. I hope this is all resolved amicably, but at the end of the day Legion of Tech’s reputation will be hurt not because of what happened – money can be replaced, practices improved, lessons learned- but because of the way they handled it after the fact- failure to take public responsiblilty and repeatedly holding a friend up for ridicule in hope to avoid blame for its own mistakes and failures.

I know it wasn’t me, as I stated in my letter of resignation to the board 3 months ago, between raising a family with my wife Zoe & trying to run a software startup I just didn’t have any spare time to devote to the board. Luckily I was only on the tech committee and had nothing to do with finances (I’m a moron when it comes to math).

All that aside, just like with CubeSpace the LoT needs your help, prayers and glad tidings and not petty backdoor sniping or snark. So does the perpetrator of this action. We don’t know the reasons they may have had for doing this, what we do know is that this person made a choice to try and help out the Portland Tech Community and to build a fellowship with all of us. Regardless of what happened in the end, that’s pretty damn noble and something we should all aspire to do more often.

Perhaps it should have remained private, but it isn’t any longer, so let’s let them resolve it without undue drama.

I am not a techie, but this community is full of some of the best and nicest people I’ve ever known. It still is and I’m thankful that I know so many of you.

This too shall pass.

LoT has put on some great events in the year or so i’ve been hanging out with this community (introduced to them all by the ubiquitous & talented mr. @donpdonp, my former roomie & tenant & a great pal). i’m very happy they exist, bar camp exists in portland, ignite exists, etc. i would not enjoy or know half the things i needed to help bring up my sagging skill set in web & coding back up to par, after a five year hiatus, if it weren’t for their existence and these events. and i am very grateful for this. and i say this as a person who got his ignite presentation given the beeg ol’ thumbs down. oh well, i can always submit another next time. ;o)

and yes, we all need to work together, not overly criticize what’s done is done, to make sure there is still are many, many more next times, that there is still a legion of tech or whatever form it takes, and that this and other burgeoning tech community creative, informative & fun events (hello? steven walling championing a TED PDX?) continue and gain momentum, despite set backs like this. or, as raven & adam have indicated, that they are learned from and actually make the board and wider community stronger for it.

to raven, adam, chris, etc., i agree & stand with you on this.

i personally appreciate this “spirit of openness” they are attempting here. we can all “monday morning quarterback” until we’re bloody blue in the face about when it should have been done, how it should have been done, how much more privacy should have been employed, etc. personally, i’m trusting they followed the advice of their legal counsel, and didn’t say a word until it was ok to do so. personally, this is what i want to see. trust me, i’ve been there (more on that in a bit). i’ve been a big, hyooooge corporations and start-ups where just the sort of private, behind-closed-doors skullduggery and “keeping it private for legal” or “keeping it private to save a person’s feelings/reputation” is given as an excuse to a bunch of people who are directly effected by the outcome any way. you may wish we don’t live in the social media facebook/twitterverse, amongst the twitteratti, as i call them, any more. guess what? that genie don’t fit so easily back in the bottle (neither does barbara eden, but no matter). even before social media, twitter, blogs, etc., word got out. and then, at these companies, i got to hear it through gossip — which always makes you look over your shoulder and question if you’ve really gotten the whole true story. LoT is not a big corporation. i have no idea if they ever filed for 501c(3), or the like. but they are a group of dedicated volunteers who love tech & this community & want to see it grow. until the case of this one person making this breach of trust, who has been removed and is being dealt with by their legal counsel, i have never had any reason to doubt their motivations or what they do for this community. in fact, this spirit of openness, now that the situation is dealt with, makes me trust them all the more. they are not, in any way, beholden to any of these very corporatesque standards people seem to want to hold them too about what should be private when. this is the new way of doing things — the new openness. i like this better. the openness. yeah, i like it a lot.

as the saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

as for rick & silicon florist — he’s doing his job. he reports on portland/nw tech scene and has an angle of encouraging it to flourish. jokingly, i call rick my “newman” or “arch-nemesis” just to have a laugh with him at gatherings & such about how much we can over-market & hype anything, especially in tech. but i know his aim here is true. it was a story that was out there on a blog, about something that effects the tech scene here in a big way. he reported on it and gave us his view. that’s just doing his job, not creating “hoo-hah” (wotevah dat is).

now, on a more personal note — i have a very personal sort of feeling & somewhat of a connection to this situation, because i have been in the position, in the past, of the person who took the money & hid what they were doing. yes, that’s right, i’m coming clean about this. in the 90s, i worked for a very big software company, kind of well-known. while working in one department dealing with corporate clients, i was given a card to make long-distance calls to call back important clients on evenings & weekends. when i moved to another department, i just very purposefully neglected to mention i still had the card. i ran up about $2300 in long-distance charges on that card over the next 2 years. when it was found out by a manager, i got fired, had to re-pay back the money charged on the phone card, and lost a career i had built up over 6 years. i was lucky — they could have also called the cops. and i paid a price in reputation, especially as a fledgling zen buddhist at the time.

so i’m not excusing what this person has done in any way — anymore than i’m excusing what i did way back in the day (a decade ago, now). both were a breach of trust, wrong and just very dumb ass. but i’m saying i understand, maybe better than a lot of people, how he or she feels right now. our tendency, as we try to come off as all so hip, superior, witty & snarky in the blogosphere/twitterverse, would be to vilify and ‘erect gallows.’ i’m hoping, as someone who has been through this, maybe not. yes, this person will need to bear the brunt of people’s hurt feelings & abused trust for a while. maybe a long while. the best thing they can do is to hear people’s hurt & anger, and say, “you’re right, i did that, and it was horribly wrong and i will never do that again” (and of course, back that up with action). and previous status & responsibilities entrusted with this person are not going to happen now. but i’m hoping restitution and real amends (which is different from “i’m sorry,” amends is actual changed behavior), over time, they can begin to re-integrated in the community.

that’s what i hope, at least. as someone who has been there.

and i don’t think LoT has anything to apologize for here. that is way too much ‘blame the victim’ for me. they have my support, in this trying time. as they should from anyone who has benefitted from what they’ve done here in portland tech.

if anything, we should re-double efforts to help get them sponsors for events like ignite, now that their dealing with a very obvious short-fall.

my $0.02, plain.

As for all of those who are busy critiquing the Legion of Tech board for how they are handling this situation: cut them a break. If you think this sucks for you and the portland tech community, allow me to assure you it sucks for them so much more deeply you need a pressure suit to get there. They have been betrayed, personally and professionally, and are no doubt feeling very hurt. Are there things which might have been done avoid this? Probably. However, that’s easy to see in retrospect.

I’d like to ask everyone, for the good of the portland tech community, to let this issue go a little quiet. The Legion of Tech will tell us more as they can. In the meantime, we can direct our efforts to doing things that built community rather than tear it down.