Hey SOCIS!

I'm sure the more active members may have heard that myself and Chad has resigned from our respective executive positions. We gave a short explanation at the time, but I felt that it was inadequate to truly give you insight to why I "dropped SOCIS" as I have heard from some people.

Lets begin by saying how much I like you guys. I found SOCIS early Winter 09 when I was in Coop* 1100 with Wyatt and Martin. I remember Wyatt being surprised to learn that the Asian kid sitting in front of him was not only in Computer Science, but also never taken 2500. Then he mentioned Linux and I immediately got interested; that's where my first contact of SOCIS began. The Linux installfest that SOCIS held was an immense success as I remembered. There were lines of people outside the room waiting to have their laptops glorified by the magic of dual booting and I was amongst them. I still remember my first reaction upon entering the room, the first thought running though my head was "Stereotypical Computer nerds in a basement" but then I was warmly greeted and that thought quickly changed to "Stereotypical Computer nerds in a basement with potential social tendencies". I remember being stuck in that room frustrated with not being able to install damn Linux on my netbook and managed to overwrite my windows boot sector as well. Matt Englert was kind enough to sit through it with my to recover my windows boot capability and I was well on my way to liking SOCIS. From then on I frequented the lounge and met many of you fine people sitting in front of your glowing screens right now! And the rest they say, is history.

Fast forward to the end of last year during the AGM. Elections were coming up and most people saw me as a potential candidate for SOCIS. I was both excited and terrified by the idea due to the fact that I never really saw myself as a leader of any kind, let alone an organization that has treated me so kindly. I remember almost bailing out to submit my candidacy but due to Wyatt's very persuasive reasoning, I decided on the day of that I will run for the position. Another surprise came when Chad, a member of no more than 2 or 3 months back then, also ran for vice president. Votes were cast and titles were given and the newly elected executives were excited to think of new ways to change the club that has been home to us. That thought as I would find out later, would lead me to writing this letter to all of you now.

The problem was never so much of us never being able to think of creative and new ways to make the club more accessible and more entertaining. We were just never great at implementing our ideas and getting the ball rolling. I remember over the Summer this year that I was excited to be able to stay in Guelph as well as being able to be close enough to the University so if there are anything that needed to be done in preparation for o-week, I would just be a jog around the corner. I never received anything more than an email during the Summer. In fact, I was getting so concerned that I have received no form of communication whatsoever that maybe I have just been forgotten. Either ways, September eventually rolled around and we all came back to school in high spirit and high hopes for the future of SOCIS. At first I was a little concerned about the events being mislabeled in the o-week guide, but thanks to Chad's charisma and initiative, we've had a massive turnout (that we didn't know was stolen) of students to most of our events. It seems like we are being effective after all! Perhaps we were too successful too early, but having that many people show up gave made me even more ambitious to try and grow the club to its full potential. It's my responsibility to reciprocate the warmth and kindness I have received from the past year and I had the potential to do such a thing with so many members being aware of us. My first thought was to tackle the tight space we had in the lounge. We only ever used half of the lounge effectively for having a space for people to sit in, the other half being used as some sort of box and junk warehouse with a fridge hidden in the back somewhere. I don't believe its an unreasonable request to asks for space to move the crates out of the room so we can have more of an open space. I distinctly being told that it will be two weeks before the crates are moved out into the storage room next to us. That two weeks would turn out to be closer than two months. That would be the first disappointment I have in the executive council but certainly not the last.

As the Community Liaison, I believe that I was a marketer for the club and the events we hold. However, I was a responsible (but ultimately ineffective) marketer that had a moral compass. Even though most people would not think it, I was very ambitions about getting people into the club. I confess that this may seem overzealous borderline stalker-ish, but I actually went onto the START online website to lurk and see if there are any computer science students around. I even had some help to be able to advertise us to the general public! As the school year started though, I knew that to make the club bigger, we would need to change the lounge. Put yourself in my position. If you know full well that there could be things that would make SOCIS a better environment for new incomers, wouldn't you want to wait and show them the best possible facet of SOCIS? I mean even if I were to convince first year students to give us a chance and show them what a great time they could have here, they wouldn't be able to stay since there's no room in the lounge. My pleas were ultimately ignored until Chad, Mike, Laura and I just overhauled the lounge in the matter of one night of hard work. What it took four people to do in one night would've taken months of "planning" for the club to do. Granted many people don't like the new layout but give the resources and space we had (i.e. None) to work with, we shifted things around so that the fridge was more accessible and no one has to stumble to the back of the room to grab a pop. By then, it was late October.

If you still don't see my reasoning, here's my nail in the coffin. I stand by what I said earlier about having ambition but no motivation. We had grand schemes for fun events but these events always seem to be delayed or ill-prepared. I did what I could to advertise these events in my newsletter but just like past community liaisons, I had problems attain blurbs to fill in the blank space under the header. The September issue of the newsletter went relatively smoothly as the events were discussed and planned ahead of time. The October edition was more difficult but I still managed to squeeze it out as close to the start of the month as I could. The November edition as you may have noticed, was stillborn. I would like to make excuses and blame other people for this, but I won't; its my fault. I didn't pressured other people enough to give me a short 3 sentence blurb about the events they are in charged of. I didn't know enough about the events that my fellow executives are running since my communication was poor at best. Worst of all, what I have wrote was so inadequate that when I submit it to review by the president and asked that he fill in the blank spaces of two events, I was never given a response. At the end of the day, maybe I just wasn't SOCIS exec material after all.

The tension ran extremely high during executive meetings to the point where I wasn't only upset, but angry about the issues. Basic issues such as events and even forum moderation led to heated debates that gave no closure. It was so frustrating that I came close to quitting during an exec meeting and leaving it at that. At the end of the day, my decision is finalized and I can finally focus my times on developing myself and spending time on modern warfare 2 as oppose to sitting in on meetings that gets nothing done.

I would just like to take this time to thank the execs this year that made a difference and more importantly to the members who were simply there to enjoy what little fruit we had produced this year. I will probably still be around to say hi once in a while but I feel that SOCIS has changed from what it was last year into something else that I don't seem to enjoy. I wish the current executive council and the newly to-be-elected executives the best of luck in the remainder of the academic year.

For now I think, I'm going to clock another 4 hours into my xbox; Its more fun than arguing anyways.

Thanks for reading!

Kelvin Lau
2nd Year BAH/CIS
SOCIS member

tl;dr I quit because I suck :P