Rest in peace CUSFS, long live Jomsborg

[jack]

Edit2: An emergency committee was formed, and five years later CUSFS has an exceptionally active community composed mainly of undergraduates, so I apologise for my pessimism. See a more detailed description in a reply to Jessica below.

Edit: This was based on my impressions from the conversation afterwards, and is inaccurate in a couple of important respects. It may do as jack-chatting-to-friends, but CUSFS will send an email describing the decisions accurately, to which you should turn.

Last night I went to the CU Science Fiction Society AGM. For a while it has been being sustained by an older crowd of Chiarky people and more recently a less old crowd of Simeony people, but has not really been acquiring *new* people.

Some of the events, such as games evenings, and traditional large CUSFS/Jomsborg socials like the wake have been busy. I haven't attended many of the regular Sunday discussions, but AFAIK they have not been very well attended. The desire has been to attract new freshers to join, and then run the society for their benefit, but if this isn't happening, there's no point carrying on with what we've been doing.

They decided to disband at least for the moment.

There is still a committee for this year, and there are many people steeped in experience and the traditions who will be pleased to help anyone who does resurrect it. And Jomsborg (originally the fantasy split group, now the social half of the society) is certainly sustaining, not actually doing anything scifi/fantasy-y, but as an alumni organisation with rich traditions still hosts the traditional social events (afmaelisdagr and veizla) attended by lots of people of many eras, and steadily if slowly sucking in new people from here and there.

If anyone laments the lack of a real science fiction society in Cambridge, feel free to ask to co-opt the large amount of existing infrastructure in CUSFS and organise it as you want.

Comments

[atreic.livejournal.com]

What's happening to the library?

:'(

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It was mentioned, but I don't know for sure. For the moment, it's bound to stay in Clare's spare room, and I certainly can't imagine her disposing of it in any sense, without at least lots of warning.

I hope it will go on being managed in some sense: either Clare continuing to volunteer (though I hope she gets out of it somehow); or through a stripped down cusfs society which continues to manage robo-rally evenings, the library, and maybe a fresher's fair; or at the last being donated to another Cambridge organisation which would support it. I think enough people care to make sure something good happens to it.

[naath.livejournal.com]

:( But I don't really have the energy to run it.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know, me too :( But I think you've done your bit anyway.

And anyway, it wouldn't really help. The AGM made the point that another year of pushing it along wouldn't really help, but would just be for tradition's sake, as if it were going to take off again, it probably would have done by now. What it needs if anything is someone can put it first and do things a bit differently and find what is really exciting to a new crowd of first-years, of whom they're hopefully one...

If you have any protégés, upcoming reincarnations of Naath, you could encourage *them* to do it :) Simeon said he had some friends who might possibly be like to do something, and I can think of some people who might... :)

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Can I just say that it would have been nice to wait for the official missive before writing this, especially as you *weren't there* when the decisions were taken.

I was hoping to be able to get a missive out before I LJ-ed angst about it, but obviously with these things you want to give the committee a change to redraft

Information that's actually *accurate* will be made available in the fullness of time. In the mean time (I'm at work ATM), I could you update your post to say that the rest of the post may not be accurate and full details will be made available shortly.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. I'll do so.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

And for the record - it's not so much the energy that's failed for me, but I've just had enough of worrying, of spending effort for little reward, of propping up a society that's slowly slipping away.

Another thing is that CUSFS, I think, needs a critical mass and some level of turnover to be successful, to generate new ideas, good discussions and so on. In practise, this means undergrads. I would have liked there to still be a CUSFS for me to go to from time to time if there was something to catch my fancy, but as it is, for the past few years we've been keeping it alive for the sake of keeping it alive and that isn't sustainable.

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

Oops. And I've actually written something for TTBA. IMO Sundays aren't a good night.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

Hmm, maybe I should wait for the missive, but the more I think about this the sadder it seems, because it seems to scream "We were doing it for them, and they didn't want it, so now we are no longer doing it". Whereas I thought we were doing it for us. We didn't borrow books, watch sci-fi DVDs, read TTBAs etc in the same way parents take their children to see the tweenies, bravely suffering in the hope that it will give the kids what they need, we did those things because we enjoyed doing those things.

But obviously noone is enjoying those things or we would keep doing them. Or maybe people are doing them without the need to call it CUSFS.

Hmm.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Also see Pete's last comment.

I don't know how it is for other people. For me I did enjoy many of those things, but think that they will happen *anyway*. Whereas I have not for ages attended any of the regular discussion meetings, either because I think I will have heard the discussion before, or because I couldn't go then, or because I didn't know to expect many people and the last couple I did go to didn't feel very alive (and I may have been wrong, I always intended to, but never quite got round to it, so have been to very very few), but if I were right, *didn't* feel there was much point going on with them as is.

David who found Jomsborg

[(Anonymous)]

I came across this thread by accident. What has happened during the past five years (is now 22 October 2012)?

My Danish husband David Gress founded Jomsborg while a Classics undergraduate (Churchill '72) so I have a personal interest. I myself hung out with some of the CUSFS and Jomsborg crowd in the late 70s when I was at Newnham. I was just talking to Nick Lowe (Jesus '77) last May, and had the impression that CUSFS was still going??

Any updates much appreciated.

Longing for Jomsborg from deepest Denmark

Jessica Gress-Wright

Re: David who found Jomsborg

[jack]

Oh, it's great to hear from you! There should be a more active CUSFS-alumni community.

I was too pessimistic in this post. At the time, there was no-one eager to form a committee (the society had become a bit top heavy with people who'd been regular CUSFS-ites for a while, but it made it hard to get a critical mass of new undergraduates).

But shortly afterwards half a dozen recent committee members volunteered to form a temporary committee. A couple of years later, there'd been an almost complete turnover in membership, and the society was very active again, and composed almost entirely of undergraduates.

Last year it was incredibly active, there were often 30 people at meetings. This year it's shrunk somewhat to regulars, but is still more than a dozen.

It continues to be the case that CUSFS organises both sci-fi and fantasy meetings, and Jomsberg organises the annual Veizla, and the two are essentially merged, even though not officially.

There is apparently planned to be some sort of anniversary dinner this year, to which old members are encouraged to come. I don't know if you and Dave would be interested, but there should be an email list for alumni: if you email the committee (email address at the bottom of http://www.srcf.ucam.org/cusfs/committee.html) they should be able to add you.