Open and clear lines of communication are important in every endeavor of human society. Misunderstandings and wars have been waged over slights that were not intended nor even existed when spoken yet through tangled communication channels degenerated into what they were never meant to be. We have gone through one of these periods in Omaha fandom and I want to commend John Jaeckel for beginning the process to end that cycle.
I went to Capes Lounge, the newest comic book store in Omaha, yesterday to meet the owner and thank him for some recent things he had done to help OSFest this year. John happened to be there and overhead some of our conversation. I am glad that he decided to approach me outside.
After finding a place where we could hear each other over the traffic, we had a very good and productive discussion. We cleared up a lot of the miscommunication and misconceptions about what was being said because we could respond to each other in clear and correctable dialogue. A problem is that Omaha gets to be a closed community and generate closed internal communities very quickly. To avoid this, we hope to use the Anime NebrasKon BBQs as a venue to keep the dialogue going within fandom in Omaha.
Some lessons we took away from our conversation is that: what is written on the internet stays on the internet FOREVER; what you think is a closed venue probably isn’t, other people will find your words; tone of voice while writing may hide good intentions; and without give and take dialogue people will take away the worst possible meaning to your words.
Personally I think this is a great start. It will open up avenues that can only help all of fandom in the Omaha area. Working together Omaha fandom can bring both a general convention and several focused genre conventions, which working separately we might not be able to pull off. So I thank you John Jaeckel for getting this conversation started.
Anime NebrasKon: when are you having that next BBQ?
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