Monday, August 02, 1999

Letter to reach out to Penn Hill Dolphins with TRA

General Manager

Three Rivers Aquatics


Mark Rauterkus

108 South 12th Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15203


email: Mark@SportSurf.Net

home: 412-481-2540


www.FreeTeam.Org/tra


August, 1999


Head Coach

Board of Directors

Penn Hills Dolphins


Dear Friends of Swimming in Penn Hills!


This letter is a formal request to all the good folks leading the Penn Hills Dolphins, including coach and board-of-directors, to begin a serious dialog concerning our programming efforts.


TRA and PHD shared a practice facility and meet hosting events in 1999. We need to work on plans for 2000 as soon as possible.


Case in point: I'd like to attend your next board meeting, and perhaps a couple of meetings in the fall of 99. At the meetings it is imporant to make a review of past occurance, make an few summary statements, review our shared understandings of inventory and resources, and make some decisions about the future.


As you may or may be be aware, the TRA team is going to make a few significant changes, yet we are going to build upon our past. I'm in a new role as "general manager" and this new responsibility and opportunity means that TRA is NOT going to be a typical AMS team that is lead a "parents board." Just to be clear, Hosea is still going to be the swim coach. We are going to "profesionalize" our management with a new GM, hence we'll be a coach-operated organization with a new 501c3 charter. We are still going to be using the city facilities. Nonetheless, program changes are expected.


By all means, we want to keep working with PHD -- but we need to be more clear on the relationship AND be sure we have higher-levels of coordination with future planning and expected happenings.


Case in point: In July 00, TRA is hopeful to organize a week-long day camp for its members, and others in the AMS. This day-camp will include a training session at Highland Park Pool and afternoons spent in a Zoo Camp. We'd like to present this info in its early planning stages to PHD so as to keep everyone up to date, and perhaps better craft this enrichment experience so as to accommodate more participants from PHD and throughout Penn Hills.


Another example is our hope to offer a two-month training and carnival swimming experience in August and September 2000, both at the Highland Park Pool and other facilities. The main goal of this camp is to get swimmers to stay in shape and enter the fall season with better conditioning -- as is the way with swimmers in other parts of the USA and from around the world. We hope to conclude this training period with an out-of-state swim meet, perhaps to Orlando -- much like an All-Star Team, but without the need to have fast times to qualify, only a willingness to improve.


By the time of your board meeting, other items of interest will be ready to be revealed to you. Some of these elements would be very easy to incorporate into offerings made available to those of the PHD. However, we have to share the ideas and increase the formal communications between our organizations if this is to occur for everyone's benefit.


Good luck to you, the team, its administration and all your competitors!


Sincerely Yours,




(NEW) GENERAL MANAGER

Three Rivers Aquatics

Mark Rauterkus

Dear Citiparks Swimmers and Guardians - Citiparks Swim Meet letter

Mark Rauterkus

New General Manager

Three Rivers Aquatics

108 South 12th Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15203-1226 USA


412-481-2497 = office

Mark@SportSurf.Net

Dear Swimmers and Guardians,


You are strongly encouraged to check-out and consider joining Three Rivers Aquatics (known as TRA). Kids that love the water, and youngsters that feel at home with either fit bodies or mindful activities have got to look into some of our NEW opportunities.


TRA is changing for the better in 1999. We are hoping to grow with a new crew of "rookie' swimmers. Boys and girls ages 5 to 12 are ideal prospects. We're affordable, instructional, recreational! We're competitive and fun.


This September the activities -- family friendly -- are geared to be enrichment experiences first and foremost! Yea, we love to swim! But, we expect to explore, stretch and soar in many ways -- beyond Fly, Back, Breast and Freestyle.


Emeritus coach Hosea leads our practices as usual, but now he'll be backed and supported by a new General Manager. That's me. Our team's infrastructure is getting an overhaul. I'm Mark Rauterkus, 412-481-2497, a South Side resident, stay-at-home dad, retired publisher (www.SportSurf.Net) and swim coach. I've coached teams in PA, MA, Ohio and Illinois -- and swimmers on these teams have set new STATE Records. My background and concerns for sports advocacy can bring another level of excitement to the happening as our South Side practices. Plus, throughout the year, we want to get more swimming going into more of Pittsburgh Public School pools.


Now is a great time to make a new connection with the team. Many short term clinics and mini-camps are being organized as well. Notice the new Swimmers' Zoo Camp!


Please, if you do nothing else, do this:

1. Get your name, address and phone number (email too if you have it) on our TRA mailing list. We'd like to keep you posted about our progress.


2. Talk with our visiting guest from Los Angeles -- Byron Davis. He grew up in Cleveland! Now we need some Pittsburgh kids to grow up swimming and hit Olympic Trials. Come up and meet him as he is talking tonight at the Zone Meet outside of Pitt's Trees Hall to 8:30 pm.


3. Know that you're invited and warmly welcomed to get into the swim with the TRA team in 1999! See more news on the web: http://www.FreeTeam.Org/tra


Thanks for your interest. Hope you have fun at today's meet.


Mark Rauterkus


New General Manager

Three Rivers Aquatics

Sunday, August 01, 1999

To PHD

General Manager

Three Rivers Aquatics


Mark Rauterkus

108 South 12th Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15203


email: Mark@SportSurf.Net



www.FreeTeam.Org/tra


August, 1999


Head Coach

Board of Directors

Penn Hills Dolphins


Dear Friends of Swimming in Penn Hills!


This letter is a formal request to all the good folks leading the Penn Hills Dolphins, including coach and board-of-directors, to begin a serious dialog concerning our programming efforts.


TRA and PHD shared a practice facility and meet hosting events in 1999. We need to work on plans for 2000 as soon as possible.


Case in point: I'd like to attend your next board meeting, and perhaps a couple of meetings in the fall of 99. At the meetings it is imporant to make a review of past occurance, make an few summary statements, review our shared understandings of inventory and resources, and make some decisions about the future.


As you may or may be be aware, the TRA team is going to make a few significant changes, yet we are going to build upon our past. I'm in a new role as "general manager" and this new responsibility and opportunity means that TRA is NOT going to be a typical AMS team that is lead a "parents board." Just to be clear, Hosea is still going to be the swim coach. We are going to "profesionalize" our management with a new GM, hence we'll be a coach-operated organization with a new 501c3 charter. We are still going to be using the city facilities. Nonetheless, program changes are expected.


By all means, we want to keep working with PHD -- but we need to be more clear on the relationship AND be sure we have higher-levels of coordination with future planning and expected happenings.


Case in point: In July 00, TRA is hopeful to organize a week-long day camp for its members, and others in the AMS. This day-camp will include a training session at Highland Park Pool and afternoons spent in a Zoo Camp. We'd like to present this info in its early planning stages to PHD so as to keep everyone up to date, and perhaps better craft this enrichment experience so as to accommodate more participants from PHD and throughout Penn Hills.


Another example is our hope to offer a two-month training and carnival swimming experience in August and September 2000, both at the Highland Park Pool and other facilities. The main goal of this camp is to get swimmers to stay in shape and enter the fall season with better conditioning -- as is the way with swimmers in other parts of the USA and from around the world. We hope to conclude this training period with an out-of-state swim meet, perhaps to Orlando -- much like an All-Star Team, but without the need to have fast times to qualify, only a willingness to improve.


By the time of your board meeting, other items of interest will be ready to be revealed to you. Some of these elements would be very easy to incorporate into offerings made available to those of the PHD. However, we have to share the ideas and increase the formal communications between our organizations if this is to occur for everyone's benefit.


Good luck to you, the team, its administration and all your competitors!


Sincerely Yours,




(NEW) GENERAL MANAGER

Three Rivers Aquatics

Mark Rauterkus

Letter for Byron's Visit to Citiparks

Mark Rauterkus

New General Manager

Three Rivers Aquatics

108 South 12th Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15203-1226 USA


SportSurf.Net

Dear Swimmers and Guardians,


You are strongly encouraged to check-out and consider joining Three Rivers Aquatics (known as TRA). Kids that love the water, and youngsters that feel at home with either fit bodies or mindful activities have got to look into some of our NEW opportunities.


TRA is changing for the better in 1999. We are hoping to grow with a new crew of "rookie' swimmers. Boys and girls ages 5 to 12 are ideal prospects. We're affordable, instructional, recreational! We're competitive and fun.


This September the activities -- family friendly -- are geared to be enrichment experiences first and foremost! Yea, we love to swim! But, we expect to explore, stretch and soar in many ways -- beyond Fly, Back, Breast and Freestyle.


Emeritus coach Hosea leads our practices as usual, but now he'll be backed and supported by a new General Manager. That's me. Our team's infrastructure is getting an overhaul. I'm Mark Rauterkus, 412-481-2497, a South Side resident, stay-at-home dad, retired publisher (www.SportSurf.Net) and swim coach. I've coached teams in PA, MA, Ohio and Illinois -- and swimmers on these teams have set new STATE Records. My background and concerns for sports advocacy can bring another level of excitement to the happening as our South Side practices. Plus, throughout the year, we want to get more swimming going into more of Pittsburgh Public School pools.


Now is a great time to make a new connection with the team. Many short term clinics and mini-camps are being organized as well. Notice the new Swimmers' Zoo Camp!


Please, if you do nothing else, do this:

1. Get your name, address and phone number (email too if you have it) on our TRA mailing list. We'd like to keep you posted about our progress.


2. Talk with our visiting guest from Los Angeles -- Byron Davis. He grew up in Cleveland! Now we need some Pittsburgh kids to grow up swimming and hit Olympic Trials. Come up and meet him as he is talking tonight at the Zone Meet outside of Pitt's Trees Hall to 8:30 pm.


3. Know that you're invited and warmly welcomed to get into the swim with the TRA team in 1999! See more news on the web: http://www.FreeTeam.Org/tra


Thanks for your interest. Hope you have fun at today's meet.


Mark Rauterkus


New General Manager

Three Rivers Aquatics

Letter from TRA GM to Market House Athletic Assn

General Manager

Three Rivers Aquatics


Mark Rauterkus

108 South 12th Street

Pittsburgh, PA 15203


email: Mark@SportSurf.Net

home: 412-481-2540


www.FreeTeam.Org/tra


August, 1999


Market House Athletic Assn.

City Parks Recreation Directors



Dear Friends of Sports on the South Side,



This letter is a formal request to all the good folks leading the programs at the South Side Market House, including the directors and booster-board, to begin a serious dialog concerning joint programming efforts.


Case in point: I'd like to attend your next board meeting, and perhaps a couple of meetings in the fall of 99. At the meetings it is imporant to make a review of past occurance, make an few summary statements, review our shared understandings of inventory and resources, and make some decisions about the future.


As you may or may be be aware, the TRA is a swim team, Three Rivers Aquatics that practices in the school months at the Oliver Bath House at 10th Street. The team used to be city-sponsored, then called, DPR (Dept. of Parks and Recreation). For the past number of years the team was organized with a parents board, and that has just recently changed so now the team has a "general manager." With new leaderships, the team is out to make a few significant changes, yet we are going to build upon our past.


We are going to "profesionalize" our management, hence we'll be a coach-operated organization with a new 501c3 charter. We are still going to be using the city facilities. Nonetheless, program changes are expected.


By all means, we want to work with the folks at the Market House to allow for an expansion of programming efforts so we can better serve the needs of the children in Pittsburgh. We want to put forth both the highest quality swim

experience with a competitive team capable of getting our kids onto the Olympic Team -- as well as offering well-rounded introduction to swimming programs that get the kids exercising in a new environment, making new friends, learning about themselves and having fun!







working with PHD -- but we need to be more clear on the relationship AND be sure we have higher-levels of coordination with future planning and expected happenings.


Case in point: In July 00, TRA is hopeful to organize a week-long day camp for its members, and others in the AMS. This day-camp will include a training session at Highland Park Pool and afternoons spent in a Zoo Camp. We'd like to present this info in its early planning stages to PHD so as to keep everyone up to date, and perhaps better craft this enrichment experience so as to accommodate more participants from PHD and throughout Penn Hills.


Another example is our hope to offer a two-month training and carnival swimming experience in August and September 2000, both at the Highland Park Pool and other facilities. The main goal of this camp is to get swimmers to stay in shape and enter the fall season with better conditioning -- as is the way with swimmers in other parts of the USA and from around the world. We hope to conclude this training period with an out-of-state swim meet, perhaps to Orlando -- much like an All-Star Team, but without the need to have fast times to qualify, only a willingness to improve.


By the time of your board meeting, other items of interest will be ready to be revealed to you. Some of these elements would be very easy to incorporate into offerings made available to those of the PHD. However, we have to share the ideas and increase the formal communications between our organizations if this is to occur for everyone's benefit.


Good luck to you, the team, its administration and all your competitors!


Sincerely Yours,




(NEW) GENERAL MANAGER

Three Rivers Aquatics

Mark Rauterkus


Tuesday, June 01, 1999

Political Uses of the Internet to Explode in Many Ways

Political Uses of the Internet to Explode in Many Ways

To build a space that can become a spot that helps to create and strengthen releationships needs to include many elements that leverage many political opportunities. The notion of the "electronic town hall" was made popular in past national elections, CNN, Ross Perot, and many other examples. The buzz has started, but the execution is far from reaching a potential.

Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania do have impressive www sites. Much work is being done in this area, but much more is needed.

Steve Forbes uses the net to launch his second White House bid. He says it's time to jump into the information age, come March 1999.


The Tribune-Review reports, "This rather novel approach to announcing one's presidential condidacy won its share of attention...."

"I'm going to run the first full-scale presidential campaign in American history on the Internet, because I want you to be involved every step of the way," Forbes posted.

  • http://www.Forbes2000.com
  • Washington Politicians Are Stuck In The Stone Age

    Pittsburgh area people and politians are going on-line and are moving in the right directions. But, to make on-line communications effective, the first hurdles involve the old "Chicken and Egg" debate -- as to what needs to happen first?

    If the people are not pushed and pulled to the internet, then the politicians are not going to be pushed and pulled to use the internet. We all have to tug at technologies to make a critical mass to allow better economy of scale.

    The On-Line Mission Is A Valuable Corner Stone Here

    The visions put forward in this position paper call for the creation of a high-tech incubator for community building activities. Passion Park can host many sessions, both on-line and in-person, to help citizens, politicians, team captains, coaches, athletes and health-care folks mingle and be better informed.

    Not only do league officials and coaches have a place to put their game schedules and line-up, but politicians need to put in their schedules, hold debates, use teleconference appearances to go to Harrisburg, Washington, and the local meeting at the Block Watch.

    Saturday, May 01, 1999

    Given a City Council Defeat, Then What?

    Given a City Council Defeat, Then What?

    Should City Council vote to NOT sell the land from the URA to UPMC for the football compound, what might happen next?

    Back to the Drawing Boards

    1. UPMC, Oxford Developers the Steelers, and the URA would do well to go back to the drawing boards and re-tool a facility plan that fits and is fair.

    2. Or, UPMC might opt to turn up the political heat, with or without the Mayor's office help. Then the site plan can be better crafted in its presentation, and re-submitted.

    3. Or, UPMC might try to tip the scale in its favor with a better suite of buy-outs to the community groups. A $30K offer went to $75K, and the amount might need to go much higher. Everything has a price.

    4. Or, UPMC might opt to move to a suburban site. Fine. UPMC can't take the land with them. UPMC is not going to move to Florida, to North Carolina, to Columbus, Ohio. And, Pitt athletes are not going to go far from Oakland.

    Watch for Pitt's Rounds of Settlement Overtures

    Pitt should settle this mess. The problem comes as to who is going step up and attempt to broker the deal to settle.

    Pitt could have tried to settled various concerns months ago. But Pitt was too arrogant to admit any wrongdoing or pig-headed thinking and planning. Pitt is too deep into its 'we are innovators, top job-providers, know-what's-best' posturing to backtrack.

    As much as the citizens of the South Side and the region want to get this over and move beyond Plan B, we can't. We won't be able to avoid another long string of embarrassing rounds of blunders. Developments in the past months don't offer much hope.

    Settlement from Pitt are described as "minimalist" and "nowhere near" acceptable. Those scraps don't sound like the makings of a settlement to us.

    Best Interests Should Not Be Egos

    Fighting against SUN Corporation and a coke oven is one type of foe. The corporations have the foregone conclusions that actions are geared to the shareholders best interests.

    Pitt has no shareholders. UPMC is not a corporation that trades stock on the big boards. Pitt's top shareholders are students, faculty and the academic ethics of knowledge discovery and sharing.

    Pitt has its pride on the line. UPMC is not driven by the share-holders interest, rather by the interest of its management.

    Will UPMC and the Pitt AD come up with settlement terms that are acceptable to all? Or, has the Pitt PR ploy worked?

    Pitt's Athletic Department, its students and our communities will fare better when Pitt's leadership gets in sync with the community, its roots and its vision of what sports are.

    Pitt's arrogance is taking a back seat to that of UPMC's.

    Saturday, April 10, 1999

    Burt Out

    Burnt Out

    I want the stadium to stay more than anything, but ....

    The administrators at Pitt won the battle and the war, as expected. They won due to attrition.

    "I want the stadium to stay more than anything, but this has ruined other Student Government Body (SGB) projects, relationships with administrators, and almost friendships for me.

    One student sighed for relief and wrote of life beyond SGB, "... with two other jobs where I put in about 6 hours a week at one and 12 at the other.

    The students have classes, projects, and a double majors. One wrote, "I just can't do it anymore. Sorry."

    Thursday, April 08, 1999

    Pitt News, front page headline with photo (of me) Pitt fan poised to stop stadium demolition and UPMC facility

    My photo ran on the front page of the Pitt News, Thursday, April 8, 1999. Here is the story, retyped.
    Hal Turner, Editor in Chief

    If a South Side Pitt fan gets his way, about $100 million worth of Pittsburgh sports developments will be postponed or canceled.

    Mark Rauterkus handed City Council members three ring binders filled with the lyrics to Pitt's alma mater, the Pitt victory song and "Hail to Pitt" - and about 90 reasons not to cary out the athletics department's plans.

    The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is planning a $30 million Pitt/Steelers practice and rehabilitation facility on a former steel mill site, the LTV site, in Rauterkus' neighborhood. If the facility is not built, it could put the brakes on Pitt's proposed stadium demolition.

    But Rauterkus is vehemently opposing the entire plan, saying the time constraints are limiting the number of avenues Pitt, UPMC and the city Urban Redevelopment Agency are willing ton consider. Rauterkus collected the signature necessary to ask City Council for the special public hearing, the begged the council to not permit the practice facility's construction.

    "We need a swift, stern message from City Council to go out to Pitt, UPMC, and the URA and the other power that be," Rauterkus said. "Their plans possess fatal flaws. The outcomes come up short. The citizens demand more."

    No Pitt or UPMC representative was at the hearing. City Council President Bob O'Connor assured Rauterkus that all groups involved could make their case to the council later and debate before the nine members vote on the side of th LTV land to UPMC."

    Rauterkus contends the facility would slam the whole region with problems, not just the South Side.

    First, he said, the site is too small. Eighty-yard indoor fields will be built, similar to the field at Pitt's Cost Center, when two years ago a Pitt football player broke his neck running into a wall.

    Second, the timing is bad considering the delays Pittsburgh is about to endure during extensive road consturction around Downtown. Pittsburgh will be gridlock, Rauterkus said, and this construction can only add to the problems.

    The project upsets South Side residents worried about taxes, noise, bright lights, crowds and traffic; it worries Pitt students who want to see Pitt sports headquartered on campus; and it conflicts with several NCAA rules about college and professional teams sharing space, he said.

    Rauterkus and NCAA officials have hinted that violations can be avoided, but Rauterkus believes it can only come at a great price involving too many scheduling sacrifices on the student-athletes' part.

    Jerry Dettory, a represntative of the URA, said the neighborhood residents will no longer need to worry that the nonprofit, tax-exempt UPMC won't have to pay taxes. The company has agreede to make payments as though it weren't tax-exempt.

    Also, UPMC will offer $75,000 to the South Side Planning Forum to distribute as it sees fit among neighobhood projects.

    The indoor facilities will be available to public groups, such as football camps and YMCA special events, and Pitt, UPMC and the Steelers often will be involved, Dettory said.

    He added that while the plans may seem inadequate to some now, no definite blueprints have been drawn up.

    "There is no final plan," he said. "It


    The article ends in mid-statement. Not typo on the blog. The article will be put into its rightful date in a few days.

    The 'blast from the past' re-looks at an issue that got my blood to a boil about politics. This was my first big brush with Bob O'Connor and those on city council. At the time, Michael Diven was on council too. Diven was a football player as well.

    At the time, in the hearing, much was said beyond the snip of news coverage. I didn't stress problems with traffic and downtown being torn apart (Ft. Pitt Bridge, North Side Stadiums, Convention Center construction, no Hot Metal Bridge yet (nor pedestrian passings on the Hot Metal Bridge (still not completed).

    The one suggestion as an alternative was to put a temporary practice facility on the site and then move the Steelers to a long-term home, along with Dr. Fu and UPMC in the top floors of parking garages on the North Side. Then the Steelers would have been able to stay, long term, at or near the North Side's stadium. Plus, the parking garages would have been put on a fast track.

    Georgetown's football team in DC practices on a football field built on the roof of a parking garage.

    Today, if the Steelers and UPMC Sports Medicine were on the North Side, the areas around the stadium would have already been developed. The Steelers and Pirates are WAY, WAY, WAY benind of thier promises to develop the land around the stadiums.

    Today, we face the possibility of a casino going onto the North Side -- to the displeasure of the Rooneys and others. They should have taken a bigger footprint, be it vertical, in the area around the stadium for their prime uses -- football.

    One of the other suggestions I put forth at that time called for a development effort of Hazelwood by the University of Pittsburgh. The new Peterson Event Center should have been built on Pitt's side of the river, around graduate student housing, along the river, behind Pitt's main campus. We'd be able to have a "River Campus" with a new basketball facility joined, perhaps, with a new hockey facility for the Penguins.

    Bob O'Connor's eyes opened wide as we talked about these suggestions. He loved the idea. He said, "To bad these ideas didn't come up a few months earlier." His objection was the timing.

    My reply was that Pitt Stadium has survived for 75 years. It could still make it another year. Pitt was okay with its practice facility needs. The Steelers needed a field. But, the Steelers already had Duquesne University and that bubble too.

    The objections didn't wash.

    Now as we still look at Hazelwood -- we see a squandered opportunity.

    Now, as we still moan about equal opportunities for females -- we still have Pitt with a guys only state-of-the-art (but still not regulation sized) facility!

    The trend..... they thought small. I wanted them to do better. What they put on the table wasn't good enough.

    I went to the first football practice at the new facility. The coaches had put orange cones on the 10-yard line (outdoor) and ran around shouting -- "Ten 's the goal!" They played with the goal at the 10-yard line so as to make for more of a buffer past the endline.

    Red Zone Hypnotics has been used to various stages of success with teams since then.

    Wednesday, April 07, 1999

    Public Hearing, called by Mark Rauterkus, City Council Chambers

    The public hearing was held on April 7, 1999, in city council chambers. This was the first public hearing I called. I presented council members with a 'position paper' and had it in a 3-ring binder. It was more than 60 pages.

    Friday, April 02, 1999

    Calling Citizens - Public Hearing - Come to City Council Chambers on Wed. April 7, 2 pm

    The Citizens fo Pittsburgh have put forth a petition to City Council for a public hearing concerning the sale of land by the URA to UPMC for a football compound at the LTV site. Your input, ideas and appearance in City Council chambers are welcomed. Council members do understand these happenings, yet nudging is needed. 

     Fatal flaws loom large within this planned development. 

     1. These 'state-of-the-art" fields -- to be locked, fenced, lighted, and closed for all times to community use -- are in the flood plain and are only 80-yards in length. 

     2. The NCAA won't allow college athletes to share the same facilities at the same time with professionals. Both the Steelers and the Panthers (football) won't be able to move into this facility. 

     3. Prior planning efforts called for "flex-office space" and a "diversity of jobs" -- not secluded football fields and not high-grade medical offices. 

    4. The corporate welfare in the shadows of Plan B needs to end here and now. UPMC's plans don't fit and are not fair. 


    We can do better with this space, and we demand it. City Council can move to curb Pitt's disregard for balance in our communities. City Council can put the URA on notice that the needs of citizens outshine corporate greed. Please fight against the pervasive "done-deal mentality" and help with calls, buzz and political presence. See a position paper: http://www.SportSurf.Net/backyard Send email to backyard@sportsurf.net Voice # 412- Okay to copy to others.
    This was the contents of a half-page handbill organized, published and delivered about by Mark Rauterkus.

    Wednesday, March 31, 1999

    A rant for all times, Browser Wars, Netscape, Microsoft

    From March 31, 1999

    Jamie posted:


    resignation and postmortem.
    © 1999 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>


    April 1st, 1999 will be my last day as an employee of the Netscape Communications division of America Online, and my last day working for mozilla.org.

    Netscape has been a great disappointment to me for quite some time. When we started this company, we were out to change the world. And we did that. Without us, the change probably would have happened anyway, maybe six months or a year later, and who-knows-what would have played out differently. But we were the ones who actually did it. When you see URLs on grocery bags, on billboards, on the sides of trucks, at the end of movie credits just after the studio logos -- that was us, we did that. We put the Internet in the hands of normal people. We kick-started a new communications medium. We changed the world.

    But we did that in 1994 and 1995. What we did from 1996 through 1999 was coast along, riding the wave caused by what we did before.

    Why? Because the company stopped innovating. The company got big, and big companies just aren't creative. There exist counterexamples to this, but in general, great things are accomplished by small groups of people who are driven, who have unity of purpose. The more people involved, the slower and stupider their union is.

    And there's another factor involved, which is that you can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company. Netscape's early success and rapid growth caused us to stop getting the former and start getting the latter.

    In January 1998, Netscape hit one of of its blackest periods -- the first round of layoffs. It was quite a wake-up call. Netscape, darling of the computer industry, the fastest-growing company in the world, was not invincible.

    More concretely, this was when we realized that we had finally lost the so called ``browser war.'' Microsoft had succeeded in destroying that market. It was no longer possible for anyone to sell web browsers for money. Our first product, our flagship product, was heading quickly toward irrelevance.

    And then the unexpected happened: the executive staff decided to release the source code. I won't re-hash the history of the creation of the mozilla.org project, but suffice it to say that, coming as it did only two weeks after the layoffs, it was a beacon of hope to me. Here was Netscape doing something daring again: here was the company making the kind of change in strategy that I never thought they'd be able to make again. An act of desperation? Perhaps, but still a very interesting and unexpected one. It was so crazy, it just might work. I took my cue and ran with it, registering the domain that night, designing the structure of the organization, writing the first version of the web site, and, along with my co-conspirators, explaining to room after room of Netscape employees and managers how free software worked, and what we had to do to make it work.

    At this point, I strongly believed that Netscape was no longer capable of shipping products. Netscape's engineering department had lost the single-minded focus we once had, on shipping something useful and doing it fast. That was no longer happening. Netscape was shipping garbage, and shipping it late.

    And daring move or no, this was not going to change: Netscape no longer had the talent, either in engineering or management, to ship quality products. The magic was gone, as the magicians had either moved on to more compelling companies, or were having their voices lost in the din of the crowd, swamped by the mediocrity around them.

    The Netscape I cared about was dead.

    But I saw mozilla.org as a chance to jettison an escape pod -- to give the code we had all worked so hard on a chance to live on beyond the death of Netscape, and chance to continue to have some relevance to the world.

    Beyond that, I saw it as a chance for the code to actually prosper. By making it not be a Netscape project, but rather, be a public project to which Netscape was merely a contributor, the fact that Netscape was no longer capable of building products wouldn't matter: the outsiders would show Netscape how it's done. By putting control of the web browser into the hands of anyone who cared to step up to the task, we would ensure that those people would keep it going, out of their own self-interest.

    But that didn't happen. For whatever reason, the project was not adopted by the outside. It remained a Netscape project. Now, this was still a positive change -- it meant that Netscape was developing this project out in the open, in full view of the world, and the world was giving important and effective feedback. Netscape made better decisions as a result.

    But it wasn't enough.

    The truth is that, by virtue of the fact that the contributors to the Mozilla project included about a hundred full-time Netscape developers, and about thirty part-time outsiders, the project still belonged wholly to Netscape -- because only those who write the code truly control the project.

    And here we are, a year later. And we haven't even shipped a beta yet.

    In my humble but correct opinion, we should have shipped Netscape Navigator 5.0 no later than six months after the source code was released. But we (the mozilla.org group) couldn't figure out a way to make that happen. I accept my share of responsibility for this, and consider this a personal failure. However, I don't know what I could have done differently.

    I can come up with a litany of excuses and explanations for why we are so late (heaven knows I've been making these excuses to the media for half the lifetime of the project.) Some of them are:

    Excuse #1:
    It's a really large project, and it takes a long time for a new developer to dive in and start contributing.

    Excuse #1a:
    Because of this, what happens is, someone will try to make a small change, find that it's taking them longer than a few hours, and will give up and do something else instead.

    Excuse #2:
    People only really contribute when they get something out of it. When someone is first beginning to contribute, they especially need to see some kind of payback, some kind of positive reinforcement, right away. For example, if someone were running a web browser, then stopped, added a simple new command to the source, recompiled, and had that same web browser plus their addition, they would be motivated to do this again, and possibly to tackle even larger projects.

    We never got there. We never distributed the source code to a working web browser, more importantly, to the web browser that people were actually using. We didn't release the source code to the most-previous-release of Netscape Navigator: instead, we released what we had at the time, which had a number of incomplete features, and lots and lots of bugs. And of course we weren't able to release any Java or crypto code at all.

    What we released was a large pile of interesting code, but it didn't much resemble something you could actually use.

    Excuse #3:
    The code was just too complicated and crufty and hard to modify, which is why people didn't contribute. This was a believable excuse for a while, which is why, six months ago, we switched from the old layout engine to the new layout engine (Gecko/Raptor). By being a cleaner, newly-designed code base, so the theory went, it was going to be easier for people to understand and contribute. And this did get us more contributors. But it also constituted an almost-total rewrite of the browser, throwing us back six to ten months. Now we had to rewrite the entire user interface from scratch before anyone could even browse the web, or add a bookmark.

    Excuse #4:
    It didn't contain a mail reader. There is surely a large class of users who would be interested in working on Communicator that are less interested in Navigator, but we never really found that out, since we never shipped the source code to communicator (for a number of reasons, none very good, some downright pathetic.) Now, as a result of the Gecko/Raptor rewrite, the mail/news reader is being rewritten as well. Maybe it will even ship someday.

    Excuse #5:
    Netscape failed to follow through on their own plans. During 1998, Netscape sunk a huge amount of engineering effort into doing the 4.5 release: working on a dead-end proprietary code base, the source of which would never be released to the world, and would never benefit from open source development. This was a huge blow to the Mozilla project, since for the first half of the year, we weren't even getting full-time participation from Netscape.

    This isn't even so much an excuse as a stupid, terrible mistake, considering we should have learned our lessons about doing parallel development like this in the past, with the abortive ``Javagator'' project.

    The worst part about all this is, for the last year, I've spent much of my time striving to convince people that mozilla.org is not netscape.com. I've told people again and again that the mozilla.org organization does not serve only the desires of the Netscape client engineering group, but rather, serves the desires of all contributors to the Mozilla project, no matter who they are. And that's certainly true. But the fact is, there has been very little contribution from people who don't work for Netscape, making the distinction somewhat academic.

    Now, to be fair, in this first year, we did do some very good things:

    • We showed the world how to operate a large software project out in the open. Whatever else happened, we did maintain a high level of communication between geographically and organizationally separate contributors and other interested parties. We transitioned from a secretive and proprietary development model to a very public one. We showed that it can be done.

    • Though we didn't get a whole lot of participation in the form of source code, we did get a lot of feedback about the directions the software was going. And the right feedback at the right time can easily be far more valuable than source code. By doing development out in the open, and ``living in a fishbowl,'' I believe that Netscape made better decisions about the directions of development than would have been made otherwise.

    • We released the source code to a number of ancillary tools, such as our bug systemsource-control interface, and build tools. These are very good (and complete!) tools in their own right. Though they were critical to us in the development of Mozilla, and we created them in support of Mozilla, they are not tied to Mozilla, and others are finding them useful with their own non-Mozilla-related projects. These tools, and the development model they represent, are a valuable contribution in their own right.

    • And merely by being who we are and doing what we did, we played a big part in bringing the whole open source development model to the attention of the world at large. We didn't start the mainstream media interest in open source (Linux did that, mostly), but I think we did legitimize it in the eyes of a lot of people, and we did tell the story very well. Lending the Netscape name to this software development strategy brought it to the attention of people who might otherwise have dismissed it.

    But despite all this, in the last year, we did not accomplish the goals that I wanted to accomplish. We did not take the Mozilla project and turn it into a network-collaborative project in which Netscape was but one of many contributors; and we did not ship end-user software. For me, shipping is the thing.

    Perhaps my goals were unreasonable; perhaps it should have been obvious to me when we set out on this project that it would take much longer than a year to reach these goals, if we ever did. But, it wasn't obvious to me then, or now. These are the goals I was aiming for, and they have not yet been met.

    And so I'm giving up.

    The Mozilla project has become too depressing, and too painful, for me to continue working on. I wanted Mozilla to become something that it has not, and I am tired of fighting and waiting to make it so. I have felt very ineffectual, and that's just not a good feeling.

    For those of you who choose to continue, I wish you all the best of luck.

    I must say, though, that it feels good to be resigning from AOL instead of resigning from Netscape. It doesn't really feel like quitting at all. I was the 20th person hired at Mosaic Communications Corporation (All Praise the Company), and of those twenty, only five remain. The company I helped build has been gone for quite some time. We, Netscape, did some extraordinary things. But we could have done so much more. I feel like we had a shot at greatness, and missed.

    My biggest fear, and part of the reason I stuck it out as long as I have, is that people will look at the failures of mozilla.org as emblematic of open source in general. Let me assure you that whatever problems the Mozilla project is having are not because open source doesn't work. Open source does work, but it is most definitely not a panacea. If there's a cautionary tale here, it is that you can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of ``open source,'' and have everything magically work out. Software is hard. The issues aren't that simple.

    Jamie Zawinski, 31-Mar-1999








    Monday, March 22, 1999

    Hold the phone: P-G Headline was Panthers see move as positive. But I didn't.

    PG, March 22, 1999

    Headline: Panthers see move as positive

    by Shelly Anderson, Sports Writer
    A piece of lined notebook paper was taped to Pitt Stadium door leading to the athletics department yesterday in large letters was a note to the athletic director.

    "Hey Steve Pederson, Thanks for destroying our tradition and our football program, SOS."

    The three letters at the end stand for Save Our Stadium, a movement among student groups who unsuccessfully lobbied against the Univ. of Pittsburgh's plan to raze the 74-year-old stadium and move home games to the North Side.

    Note: The PG reporter made it seem as if Pitt Stadium was razed. Pitt Stadium still stands. The students were not unsuccessful in the lobby campaign just yet. And, the first three paragraphs have noting to do with any "POSITIVE" mention in the headline. The note might have been put onto the door by a football player. The headline should have been: Unknown football player thanks AD for destroying tradition and football at Pitt!

    Inside the stadium, the Panthers were holding a makeup practice for one that got snowed out a couple weeks ago. The fact that this will be their final spring in Pitt Stadium apparently does not weigh on their minds.

    Note: This is proof positive that the Pitt football team will NOT step foot inside of Pitt's indoor football practice facility, the Cost Center, to play football. To cancel a spring practice because of snow when an indoor facility is available is a strange occurrence.

    Interesting, the writer must have ESP to know that the issue does not weigh on the minds of the entire football team. How subjective.

    Snow comes to the South Side too. A late winter storm on the grass fields that are planned for the river-front property being raised out of the flood plain can not be pushed aside with snow removal equipment. The Pitt Stadium artificial truf was plowed, and the field was able to be used the following day. Practices would have needed to have been canceled for more than one week if the team was at the planned facility, because of the snow, wet ground and mud.

    The river bank lands that are going to host that fields might have terrible drainage. The team should not expect to use the fields in the South Side for spring football until finals week. Pitt's academic schedule has graduation in early May. Finals and preparation for finals are in full swing in April. Spring football so late in the semester is another hardship on the student athletes.

    Penn State has spring football starting as Pitts is ending.

    "I think it is a positive move for the program," said sophomore linebacker Amir Purifoy. "Everyone can benefit from it -- everyone at the university.

    "No one on the team has a big problem with it and, hopefully, recruits can be excited about the situation."

    Note: It = silence. Everyone can benefit from silence. Everyone at the university (has been told to keep quiet. No one who wants to keep his scholarship on this team is going to have a big problem with keeping silent. Hopefully the recruits can be excited about the situation (as the players who are here now are not excited in the slightest.)

    The players had a few days to digest the news. The Pitt board of trustees voted unanimously Thursday in favor of the plan, and university officials then outlined their intentions. A basketball arena, student housing and green space will replace the stadium.

    Note: The players had a few days to digest the news, more if they read the student newspapers. The Pitt News scooped the PG at every turn.

    Pederson and Coach Walt Harris later discussed the plan with the football team.

    Note: Who, what, when, where, how, why, wow?

    "They just said not to get wrapped up in the student fanfare -- that this is what's best for the program," receiver/punter Jay Junko said.

    Note: The head coach and Athletic director said no to fanfare. Fans must not be important to Pitt football under these leaders. The AD and head coach told the athletes that your fellow students are not worthy of attention. They said don't build relationships with classmates. They said you are here to play football. They said keep quite. They said, we'll do all the thinking for you.

    Althouogh the idea of the move has been controversial for several months, the players might be among the most understanding -- and trusting.

    Note: Several months is wrong. In November the Athletic Director published other accounts that went counter to recent directions.

    The idea of razing Pitt Stadium had been mentioned for a few weeks. No controversial element was allowed to surface within the ranks of the Athletic Department.

    The players are understanding of who pays for their athletic scholarships. The football team, by NCAA regulations, is filled with 85 players who get full scholarships (room, tuition, board). Each scholarship is renewed on a year-to-year basis with each player. So, an athlete who speaks out of turn, misses the mark set by the coaches can not only get benched, but can lose his athletic scholarship.

    The frail position each athlete finds himself in as part of a NCAA football program make for slave labor situations with certain understandings understood --- hardly most understanding -- and trusting as described.

    "I think the people in charge know what they're doing," said senior strong safety Seth Hornack, who thinks the resistance factor will die down."

    Note: The Pitt Administrators ran a wear-them-down campaign and counted on the students to lose energy. They knew how to run a PR campaign.

    "We've heard about this for a long time, and occasionally you'll see people wearing the T-shirts with 'SOS.' It would be nice to have the stadium stay on campus. It's sad to see it go. But once they see the new facility, they'll see what a nice thing it is for us."

    Note: It would have been nice to have the stadium stay on campus. It is sad to see it go.

    Nobody has seen the new facility. The plans for the new facility are not done. It is foolish to go after two in the bush when one is in the hand. The decision to go to the new stadium should be made after the new facility is seen and known to work.

    The new stadium is a pipedream "nice." The existing stadium is a known "nice." The net gain is nothing.

    Hornack won't get the chance to play in the new stadium. Many of his teammates will, and they're looking forward to it.

    Note: What young person does not look forward to events in the future? Everyone on the team is looking forward to graduation day too. Of course people look forward, that is what people do.

    "As far as the new stadium, for everyone who has a chance to play in it, it's exciting," said quarterback David Priestley, a transfer from Ohio State who is competing for the starting job.

    Note: Duhh to Shelly, the writer. David, we'll be cheering for you.

    "As far as tradition, I've been taught about that at Ohio State and I'm just learning about it here. But it's great that you can rebuild and play in a stadium like that."

    Note: It is great that you can ... play in a stadium like Pitt Stadium. True? If you've been taught something about the college traditions at Ohio State, can you please share those with the Pitt leadership? It would be great if one can rebuild a tradition, but you can't.

    Priestley has three years' eligibility at Pitt. He and other young players will compete in three home stadiums over the next three seasons --- Pitt Stadium this fall, Three Rivers in 2000 and a $233 million stadium to be built for the Steelers in 2001.

    Note: Given the transfer from OSU, that counts as four stadiums for this athlete.

      Given the way the stadiums are being portrayed in the media, how about the:
    • $16 Billion Pitt Stadium
    • $700 Million Three Rivers Stadium, and the
    • $233 million STEELERS stadium.
    Let's use inflation adjusted dollar values to 1999 settings and some cost benefit factors to account for the traditions, history, emotions and innate functionality. Once Pitt Stadium is close, razed (if ever) and needed again in a few years, how much is it going to cost Pitt to rebuild a Pitt Stadium on campus? Hospitals will have to be torn down, infrastructure will have to be rebuilt, new code changes are going to be in place. Other NCAA Division I programs made the same decisions, SMU and Univ. of Minnesota, to move off campus and play football games in pro sites, only to need to rebuild stadiums on campus years later.

    The above numbers are fictional, but an accounting of the cost of the associated stadiums would be welcomed by anyone interested in doing this analysis. For example, the RAD board has been putting $10M per year into Three Rivers Stadium for the past few years.

    Pitt Stadium got a $5.8 Million upgrade to the football training facilities in the past couple of years.

    That doesn't seem to bother them.

    Note: Editorial, not news.

    "I think we're all pretty positive about it," said Junko, who redshirted last fall and has four more years to play.

    "There's understandably a lot of nostalgia here, but football is football."

    Note: A redshirt freshman is "pretty positive." Not so convincing. These players do want to keep their scholarships remember.

    The football is football statement is insightful. Football is a game of space, time and relationship. Pitt football played off campus in the Steelers stadium is going to hurt many relationships. Pitt football practiced off-campus is going to hurt many relationships student-athletes, and cause many troubles with their management of space and time.

    Football is football, and in no time frame should a team give away 4-miles of yardage. Home games at the Steelers stadium are going to be road games for Pitt players, Pitt students and everyone else except club-box owners.

    Football is football, and practices on the South Side for Pitt players are going to be another major waste of time for travel, and a poor utilization of space, given the 80-yard fields. The time, space and relationship factors for the UPMC football compound don't make sense for the student-athletes.

    The UPMC facility make sense for a few doctors who desire to hang out in secluded, river-view offices when they are not in surgery at a hospital elsewhere.


    PG Editors Shame

    Shelly, the hope for you is that I'm going to assume that the above story assignment was a trap that the editors of the PG baited for you. That is my guess.

    I'm sure that the PG sports and news editors do not have the guts to cover this story as it should be investigated and reported.

    John Craig, we saw you on the Sunday Morning TV Interview show on KDKA with Pitt's Chancellor. All hopes were dashed after seeing your interview skills and follow-up questions that grey winter morning.

    Thursday, March 18, 1999

    Pitt

    Pitt's Athletic Slogan: Commitment, Teamwork, Pride

    Commitment is needed to the spaces of Oakland. Commitment to listening is necessary. The athletic director needs a commitment to his role as a keeper of Pitt's sacred releationships.

    Teamwork is needed between Pitt and our Pittsburgh citizens. Pitt has a poor record in teamwork.

    Pitt is one of Pittsburgh's biggest players. If we were to make an illustration with a deck of cards and the card-game of bridge, Pitt and UPMC would be much like the Ace and King of Spades when it comes to our assets these days. There is no doubt that Pitt's star is burning brightly in these times, now overshaddowing the rest. In the game of baseball, the power-hitter of the line-up bats fourth and is affectionatly called the "clean-up hitter."

    Without naming names, Pitt is pulling a Barry Bonds. Pitt is being a spoiled player who chokes in the big-games and cranks in the glory and successes when the game is already in the bag. Pitt's TEAMWORK, to use its own slogan against itself, sucks when it comes to the larger picture items in our community.

    In the case of the LTV site and the building of the football practice compound, Pitt isn't needed. The developments at the LTV site is, as a basketball player might put it, a "slam dunk." The LTV site is going to be developed in seven years, says the URA Executive Director at a City Council meeting. Pitt can ride the bench at this game and Pittsburgh can still pull out a mighty victory. The LTV site can be a lock.

    An official from UPMC, T.D., said at a South Side Steering Committee Meeting in January 1999 that other developers for the site are not going to be found. That miss-information can not be allowed.

    What other players did not get to develop at the LTV site because of UPMC's and Oxford's arrival? The URA isn't going to case back-up plans and court developers for places already being developed. The URA puts all its eggs into one basket and gives the cold shoulder to others who might be interested in the site.

    If asked, the URA won't have a clue as to who else might be possible developers and tenants for the LTV site, as in their mind the first best bet already got axed too, and that was River Boat Gambling. Well, if River Boat Gambling went sour, UPMC became part of the next best option. The trend is from sour to bland -- and we must go back to the drawing board and get what works and what was ordered.

    At the initial news event, UPMC was to take nearly 30-acres of land at the LTV site. Now UPMC is going to get nearly 20 acres. The early projection can be called a speculative land-grab.

    UPMC downsided the space plans by casting off the chaft. UPMC only needs to buy the most valuable spaces. The skinny, odd-shaped parcels of land that no developer would acquire are now worthless. No developer would want a tiny, odd-shaped spec of land that sits right next to UPMC as UPMC would be an overbearing neighbor.

    At a public meeting, the developer of another portion of the LTV site, said something very interesting. His off-hand comments that came in the question/answer period of his presentation was at odds to what UPMC and the URA seem to say. The residental builder said that it would have rather have had a larger portion of the site to develop. He hinted at the fact that if more of the site was made available to his company, then they would certainly want to develop those sections as well.

    An obvious alternative to the sale of land to UPMC for a football practice compound is a second sale of space to Contential. Perhaps more apartments can be built on the site, or perhaps a condo development can be built by the same company, and rather than all rental units, these units can be made available on a for-sale basis.

    Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs hit the ball and played a great teamwork game. is an ace in our is he greater good of Pittsburgh by tacking the bigger problems in our society. Teamwork isn't selfishness, and moving a football practice site to that prime river location is total selfishness displayed at its best. Pitt should not cash into a prime spot (such as is the case with the LTV site). Pitt wants to run the final yard and score the touchdown. Pitt can score big-time with a new complex on the river's edge of the Mon at the LTV site.

    Pride is won and earned from respect, not acquired by bullies.

    The past victories that served to buid Pitt Pride are feelings. Feelings can't be easily bulldozed into a new facility, such as the Steeler's New Three Rivers Stadium. As Pitt Stadium closes, so too goes the intangibles of Pitt Pride.


    Tweaking a development to placate special monied interests is the pathway to ruin.