I don't blame SRL for anything that happened... I *never have... and I was too tired from running the event that evening to knock some sense into SOMARTS head that the rocket wasn't that big of a deal. eddie, scott and I met with SOMARts last week and we all consider the case final.

thank you karen and mr. bad for getting the vibe out there about how you guys feel. I want to say from scott, eddie, and myself that we firmly stand by our decision to invite Mark Pauline and SRL to the event. We discussed for weeks whether or not a machine would be present. We also knew (2 days before the event) that SOMARTS had a REALLY weak stomach for the event and WEBZINE99 was too far along to change our lineup. Let's learn to looooove one another!

To questions as to why SRL was involved at all, I'll say that I intentionally invited speakers and people from a diverse range of creative independent projects to inspire and challenge (what mark pauline announced so well) "boring webpages" which sounds insulting at first, but then to me is saying... make your work go "boom!" A perfect message, in my mind. When was the last time a controversial webpage shutdown a party? (please respond to this!)

I also want to reiterate that we had *terrific help from many of the individuals of the SOMARTS staff who bent over backwards to help us set up the evening before and the day of. We could not have pulled it off the way we did without them.

my conclusion is that it will be a long long long time before I support SOMARTS for *ANY event. It is my complete opinion that the upper infrastructure is unstable. They scarcely support their own staff, let alone an event that they host. I wish that they could feel the responsibility to the community that a city-sponsored venue should... by supporting and presenting events that are valuable... even if certain things don't seem that valuable at the time. I mean... the mayor was there... were they really that afraid of the police?

all in all, webzine99 *was a complete success and I open our structure to *ANYone who feels they can make it better next year (or earlier!) this list is awesome. I love the debate and I love the energy. I would ask that we try to contextualize our postings by putting a spin on a comment that can open the dialog to the group. karen and mr bad and terbo and everyone... keep posting... make it make sense.

lovely,
ryan j.