National Association of Bulletin Board Systems (NABBS) Draft description of purpose, organization and activities. First public release, February 3, 1993 FOR ALL BBS SYSOPS! PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THIS TO ALL BBS's YOU CALL. Prepared by: William A. (Bill) Bentley Automation Insight PO. Box 111, Mountain Lakes, NJ 07046 Office Voice: (201) 335-3446 BBS: (201) 335-7202 This is a proposal for the formation of the National Association of Bulletin Board Systems (NABBS). This organization would have as it's purpose the promotion, protection, and advancement of the emerging computer bulletin board industry for the overall good of it's members and, we believe, for society as a whole. It would be a non-profit organization. This document has been prepared and distributed for the purpose of soliciting feedback and volunteers for the formation of the proposed NABBS. As there is no way of knowing where this document will end up, BBS's being what they are , please contact the author by telephone if you would like to discuss this, or by letter to the above address. You may also call Automation Insight BBS and leave messages there. I've created a public NABBS conference for this topic on Automation Insight until the group gets established and has a permanent home. Background The bulletin board community is large and rapidly growing. It consists of thousands of BBSs all over the world, with the United States having by far the largest concentration of them. The community is diverse and changing rapidly. It's roots are with volunteers and hobbyists who originally started them as ways to share information and computer files. Today BBSs are found everywhere. There are a growing number of specialty systems, product support systems, corporate systems, and still many volunteer operated ones. As with any rapidly growing group, there are growing pains. The growing pains for the BBS community takes the form of negative publicity, legislative threats, lack of technical standards, general public misunderstanding, and ethical issues. This document is a working proposal for the formation of a trade association to represent this innovative community wherever it needs a voice, and to provide a focus for any issues or activities that might enhance it's future. Bill Bentley, owner of Automation Insight, an industrial automation consulting company, and Fred Clark, President of Clark Development Company, producer of PC Board Bulletin Board software, have volunteered to initiate this grass roots effort. Who knows where it will go, but you can't tell unless someone takes a step. A brief note about the history of similar efforts. I don't pretend to be a BBS historian but am aware that others have considered similar activities in the past. I do not know how well they were organized. I understand that they were all short lived. From the feedback I have, none of those efforts met with any great success. I have no illusions that thousands of BBS sysops will all drop their lives to pick up this banner! However if enough of you express support, we will try to form a group to get started. It is my assumption that there is no serious national effort that deals with this effort right now. Fred did see a recent ad in BBS callers digest for what appeared to be a commercial trade group that called itself the NABS. I tried several times to contact them to get more information but without luck. I mention them specifically because their initials are so similar to the ones we chose to initially call this effort. Please chat this up on the networks, on your bulletin boards, and among your professional associates who are interested in this industry and contact Fred or myself. As the effort will surely need volunteers for various parts of it, if you are inspired enough to want to volunteer this early, call soon! Purpose, Benefits and Activities Benefits Improve the public image and acceptance of BBSs: Public perception is highly shaped by media coverage. The BBS industry is often subjected to hostile or biased coverage when problems occur. Without a voice to defend ourselves and put these problems into proper perspective, or to conduct damage control when this happens, large portions of the public will continue to view us as "kids stealing software and porn". Even more importantly, we need to increase the incidence of positive news stories about our community. Such stories are seldom sought after by the press, who prefers to go for the gore. Public Relations is the positive promotion of a company or industry by groups that have it's self image at heart. Accelerate the development of standards that will continue our growth: High speed modem standards is already revolutionizing this business. The current widely available v.32 modems and even faster ones on the horizon will greatly multiply not only our customer base but the services we can offer. Wide spread standards are necessary for large populations of customers. Standards development so far have been accidental and largely the result of a few creative and hard working individuals. As much as these people have done for us, a concentrated effort to develop standards will encourage vendors to put development time into products that can be widely marketed, thus expanding the pie for all of us. Protect our industry against hostile governmental or other industry actions: Telecommunications is a rapidly changing field. Without a strong BBS community voice, laws will be passed that would make access and use of the thousands of private BBSs around the world uneconomical or impractical. As our industry grows, it will, attract the attention of corporate giants who would just as soon have it all to themselves. We need a voice to protect our interests here or we stand a very great chance of losing them. Activities These are some proposed activities that might make sense for the trade association to do. Help Bond the BBS community: The purpose here is to provide regular communication among all the participants with he belief that this is an important first step to strength. We need to form an identity with each other and as a group. It might include a newsletter or other paper publication and a trade association BBS. Serve as an industry Spokesman when needed by governmental, vendor, or news groups. Even if the government wanted to solicit the views of our community right now, there is nobody to ask that legitimately represents us. Promote the BBS community to the general public by: Regular news releases to the general and trade press to describe significant industry activities and events. Soliciting authors and finding willing publishers for articles about the BBS community. Industry advertising Lobby for the BBS community (users and suppliers) interests in the government. Protect the community's public image by serving as a watchdog to stay abreast of and counter unfair or one sided articles or news stories about our industry. Establish and promote industry standards for: Software Ethical standards for BBS operators Business and legal practices for BBSs Give advice on technical, operational, legal, promotional or other matters to member bulletin board services. In this role, the trade group could help serve as a clearinghouse to disseminate good ideas throughout the community. Prohibited activities: As important as knowing what the group will do, is some understanding of areas that it should NOT become involved in. This is harder to do but here are some ideas to start with: No development of software or hardware (This should be left to the vendor community.) Will not provide legal representation to members for specific problems. Although it might offer advice on where to get competent legal counsel, for instance. Will not to define individual BBS operating rules or procedures. Other suggestions? Organization Such an activity, although non profit, must be led by a paid staff in order to be effective. I believe that it would be quite feasible to begin with perhaps a single full or part time person, who would establish a network of competent resources to be called on as needed on a contract basis. My own preference is that a single full time person is the minimum that should be considered. I doubt that this effort can be organized and led only by volunteers. The NABBS should be a corporation in order to protect its officers and members. The activities it would engage in as described in this document would likely pit the group as an adversary against other organizations and liability protection is essential to attract competent officers. In order to maximize the effectiveness of the group and minimize the operating cost, the trade association should organize in such a way as to solicit and encourage member BBS owners and vendors to provide as much volunteer assistance as possible. The core staff's job should be one of organization, communication, and leadership and should draw as much as possible on the talents of it's members for much of it's work. Some care must be taken with this approach to be sure that quality and timeliness are not sacrificed. Certain things lend themselves to volunteerism and others don't. Resources that need to be available to the trade association, either as full time staff, as part time help, or as volunteers include: Industry experts in BBS software and operation Lobbyists Writers & publication specialists Public relations specialists Legal Suggested Organization President, head honcho, or whatever you want to call it. Maybe the only full time staff position at first. Responsible for the organization of the trade association. Should be capable of doing many of the tasks personally at first. Legal May only need contract help here for a long time. Governmental Affairs Can start as part time. That may be all we need. I see this as an activity that does not need to start immediately as well. Can be funded as funds permit. Public Relations To write or edit or solicit articles. To get us press coverage. To develop and place industry advertisements. To deal with the media. Standards This is primarily an organizational task to create a structure and motivating force. The content should be supplied by industry volunteers. Administrative Probably the second most important initial need! Arguably the first! Letters need to be written, mailing lists need to be developed and maintained, telephones need to be serviced. Funds need to be managed and reported. BBS Operations Someone to operate the trade association BBS, if established. This could be combined with one of the other tasks, or could be handled by a volunteer. I think it is important however that the system be owned by the trade association and that the sysop be a contractor to it, to guarantee consistency and long life. Finances It is impractical to attempt to project any possible budget without knowing sysop community reaction and support. I've done a quick one with a bunch of assumptions but decided it would be unfair to publicize it with absolutely nothing to go on. What we should pay the most attention to now are key assumptions of: --> Number of paying members that we can attract. --> Annual Dues for each one that we can reasonably get. Summary Thank you for your interest and attention to have read this far. Please let us know your thoughts on this. We welcome all suggestions. Also please note that at this point there is no organization, no commitment, and no specific plans or timetable to start. These will develop and be communicated in future letters after the response to this is evaluated. I plan two months for distribution and feedback before any further response is made so look for it around the end of April 1993. As of this writing, we also do not have a specific plan for distributing this document other than to make it available for downloading on as many key BBSs as we can. I'll try to stay organized and at least keep track of where I send it. After that, it's up to you folks! If there are future distributions, we'll establish a distribution plan and make that a part of the letters so you'll know where to look. I can't let this end without one anecdote. Some of you will be aware of the formation of a software industry task force to help stop software piracy, and the recent seizure of a BBS in Baltimore. As a result of these actions, the Nintendo company obtained a mailing list of BBS sysops and mailed a news release to all of them notifying them of the seizure of the allegedly illegal BBS. That news release was widely viewed by the BBS community as strongly implying that they were all illegal misfits and that this was a warning to them. Great consternation ensued and plenty of angry sysops and BBS community vendors called the law firm who issued the press release. In addition, hundreds of messages were exchanged on several BBS networks. The result of all this activity was a follow-up mailing of an explanatory letter to the same mailing list a few weeks later. The network messages began to die down and many sysops seemed to feel as though justice had been done, although there are still some lingering hard feelings. But was justice, or even a little tiny bit of justice done? Lets review the numbers here. Nintendo spent perhaps $5,000 on their first mailing to the sysops. They decided to spend an equal amount on the 'apology' because of the calls. Approximately 5,000 sysops were directly affected by this mailing and perhaps another 5,000 heard of it via network discussions. We felt more or less vindicated. But this news release, was released to several hundred newspapers the following week. The media being what it is, is wrote a few dozen follow-up articles on this topic. the media, also being what it is, primarily uses source material for it's articles that is easy to get, namely Nintendo's own releases and subsequent statements. So although this issue was debated perhaps evenhandedly, in front of a few hundred sysops, and a few thousand more current BBS users, TENS OF MILLIONS of the general public will hear only the crackdown side of the story in their local newspaper. Those tens of millions of people have to decide how to spend their time and money. Will they buy that modem? Will they subscribe to that BBS? Will they even investigate it? So I ask you, how did we do, folks? Please take a few minutes to let us know your thoughts on this subject. May 1993 bring you happiness, new customers, and even higher speed modems! Bill Bentley Automation Insight