The Jay Miner Society

This article is split into a number of parts and is about the Jay Miner Society.

Date: Mon, 15 Dec 1997 19:52:40 -0500
From: Giorgio Gomelsky 
To: ARISE@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: [ARISE] Call For Nominations

I, Giorgio Gomelsky, am currently the sole Trustee of the Jay Miner Society, and therefore in accordance with the Articles of Association of the Society I will be appointing new Trustees to form a governing Board or Steering Committee for the Society, consisting of seven members. I am now calling for nominations of Trustees from among the membership of the Society. Assuming that there are more nominations than places on the Board, there will be an election among those nominated.

The position of Treasurer is special in that New York state law requires him/her to be a resident of the state of NY and to have physical access to the society's bank for the purposes of making deposits and withdrawals. Assignment of the positions of President and Secretary will be decided by the new Trustees after their appointment.

Candidates must be current members of the Society and must be nominated by another member. No member may nominate more than one candidate, and I will ask all nominees to confirm their nomination. Any member fulfilling the legal criteria for the position of Treasurer may be specifically nominated for this position; this will not preclude his/her being appointed to another position. Nominations must be sent to me by electronic mail or the US postal service by midnight after 21st December 1997.

I reserve the right to reject any nominations which do not meet the above conditions or whose authorship appears to have been forged.

If there are fewer than five nominations, or if there are no nominations for the position of Treasurer, I will re-open nominations for a further period. If there are exactly seven then they will become the new trustees. If there are more than seven nominations, voting will begin at midnight before 22nd December 1997, and before this time and after nominations are complete I will issue a voting form by electronic mail to all members. This form will carry full instructions on how to vote.

The vote-takers will count and compare the valid votes they receive and will send a summary of votes and the results to all members by electronic mail by midnight before 31st December 1997. Any objections to the result must be sent to me by electronic mail by midnight before 3rd January 1998. In the absence of any valid objections, the elected candidates will be appointed Trustees on 3rd January 1998 and if I am not among them I will resign as Trustee at that time.

giorgio gomelsky

The Jay Miner Society is an organisation dedicated to the fostering of the spirit of the the Amiga. Working to the philosophy of Excellence through Simplicity, we are a user orgranisation that has decided to finally take control of its own platform in order to guarantee its future. Our motto: we are the Amiga!

The Amiga has had a strange history. Years ahead of its time in both the hardware and software spheres, it enjoyed a wonderful period during the late 1980s and early 1990's when it was the pre-eminent choice for the discerning computer user. And then disaster, Commodore going under, Escom going under and the Amiga foundering, despite the valiant efforts of the community itself.

There lies our inspiration. Despite no official development, no marketing, the Amiga continued to survive, continued to expand, continued to develop. Over the past twelve months it has become apparent that the Amiga is no longer something to be owned by any one company, it is owned by the users and the developers - we are the Amiga, and whether Amiga is owned by a supportive parent company or not, we intend to push our platform forward.

JMS is a primarily user-driven initiative that has been coalescing for nearly a year. Its birth was an amazing process, probably impossible before the age of the Internet. A broad cross-section of Amigans - some well known, including Carl Sassenrath, Dale Luck, Dave Haynie, R J Mical and other 'Amiga legends' - and others less so - users, writers, developers and dealers in the US, Canada, Europe, Africa and Japan - batted various ideas and aspirations back and forth on a closed mailing list (ARise) for some months.

At the heart of the discussion was the issue of computing in the Amiga spirit. Remember that at that time Gateway wasn't even a gleam in anyone's eye as respects the Amiga's future! Like all Amigans (and not a few users of other platforms too) we had real concerns about the direction personal computing was moving - more complexity, extravagant waste of resources (with consequently less stability and functionality), fewer alternatives, 'dumbed-down' software with little flexibility. This is the exact opposite of the elegant promise of the Amiga envisioned by Jay Miner.

We all understand that the Amiga has been badly neglected and has fallen behind in many ways. Still we would like to see improved support of existing machines and, what is more important, accelerated work toward next generation Amigas (and/or their descendants and siblings) and a common 'Next Generation' OS for them.

Since the long anticipated purchase of the Amiga's assets by Gateway 2000, we have seen a renewed interest by the industry, and along with that we intend to help GW2K to recognise the Amiga and the community for what they are, a unique resource, a unique customer base. We would like them to work with us to move the platform forwards into the new millenium, and they have stated an interest in doing exactly that. All we know is that we are the Amiga and after a few years of having our platform torn apart and left to die, we just aren't going to stand by and watch anymore.

What we are is an attempt to bring the Amiga community together, to provide some focus, and a possible path into the future. We want to expand the platform, move it towards an open platform concept in both the hardware and the software arena, to see it push hard into those areas which are crying out for a simple, powerful, elegant solution. That is our agenda and we hope that the community will rally round and join us. We are no longer just consumers, we are adventurers and we want to ensure that the adventure continues.

To summarise, our goals have been:

1. To form a non-profit association of Amigans, organized to protect and advance the Amiga and its software, open to representation/contacts with the other major user/interest groups. This would be a place to organize the voices of like-minded Amigans and to get them heard. R J Mical, Dale Luck and Carl Sassenrath visited Mrs Carol Miner on 1 May 1997, and obtained her permission and blessing to use the name "Jay Miner Society for the Advancement of Personal Computing". The Society was legally incoporated on 14 August.
2. To launch and support an Industrial Council of engineers and developers to discuss and possibly organise appropriate development projects. The IC was officially launched as the 'Industry Council for the Open Amiga' at the 1997 World of Amiga, in London, UK. Gateway 2000 directly contacted us, and has twice expressed interest publicly our ICOA initiative. Recently, ICOA and JMS representatives were invited, along with several other representatives of the Amiga community, to an initial meeting at their South Dakota, USA Head Office.
3. To bring together a 'council of elders' consisting of some of the high profile 'creators' of the Amiga who've been involved in discussion on the ARise list. We hope that they will be able to provide some authority as people who 'have a clue', as opposed to bankers, lawyers, corporate bean-counters etc. We would hope they would help be a unifying force in the fragmented community.

Current discussions involve the enhancement of this website, formation of a joint user/owner PR scheme, establishment of JMS by-laws, an official newsletter, user group outreach and membership drive, and setting of guidelines for working groups (teams attacking special projects).

If you've found this website, it seems likely you may have already heard something about the Jay Miner Society. The JMS has been discussed on the Internet, at Amiga exhibitions, and elsewhere. It is still 'early days' for JMS, and many new initiatives are shaping up! We think you'll want to find out a bit about it so you can decide whether it's of interest to you. This web site will show you something of what the Society is doing. But to get a more dynamic and interactive taste, you can subscribe to the Second Wind Mailing List.

If you find that you support our goals, you are currently invited to contribute $50 US for a Founding Membership, which involves annual voting rights and other membership privileges. Yes, this is a lot - most of us viewed our contributions as a 'donation to a worthy cause', an investment in the future, rather than a 'purchase of services'. Other types of (more affordable) membership may become available later. Special options for User Group affiliation options are likely to be arranged too.

This might be a good point to mention that we do not intend JMS to usurp in any way the role of the local user groups - not that it could. We believe that the user groups around the world are one of the greatest assets the Amiga has - without them, it would almost certainly be defunct! We want to tailor JMS to supply connectivity and functionality to worldwide User Groups, and to let them have a joint voice with which to address the Amiga's new owners. To date, the idea of an independent Industrial Council that would include user representation in the person of a JMS representative has been well received by Gateway/AI. We feel certain the international Amiga user community will benefit if we can solidify this high level of respect for their input by the new owners. This would certainly be an improvement over previous regimes!

The JMS web pages - specifically, the Hall of Gold - will show you exactly how any money is spent as a matter of policy. In any case the JMS is registered as a not-for-profit society, so its financial dealings are open to public scrutiny.

The actual mechanisms of sending money to the JMS are not quite as straightforward as we would like at the moment. If you live in the US you can send a check or cash to Giorgio Gomelsky, who will pay it directly into the JMS central bank account:

If you live outside the US, you can send a cheque for $50 or CDN$70 to Andrew Bienhaus. He has set up an account with a Canadian bank that does not charge for handling foreign cheques. There are no charges for transferring funds on from that account into the central account in New York. The details are:

You can also wire money directly into the account:

Bank name:	Toronto Dominion Bank
Bank:	004
Transit:	26562
Designator:	0351
Account name:	Jay Miner Society
Account:	0000364

But before you send anything, please check the current details with whoever you are going to send the money to! Bank charges can wipe out a large part of your contribution if it is in the wrong form. Once your contribution has been received, you should receive notification by email and your name should be added to the list of members here.