The Open Forum for Candidates
Nov 13, 2006, 2:09 pm
#16
Original Member, Ambassador: External Miles and Points Resources
Join Date: May 1998
Location: Digital Nomad Wandering the Earth - Currently in LIMA, PERU
Posts: 58,611
OUM: My Confession
Ok so I have been unresponsive to the many PM inquiries about my signature line as well as my platform motto, OUM: Power to the Posters, particularly the OUM part.
So here is the story for all it is worth and what it has got to do with anything. Judge for yourself:
Back around the time of the last US presidential campaign Randy (and the TB?) took the decision to close down OMNI.
Many of us were devastated. Without OMNI our reason for coming to FT every day was gone. Trust me when I tell you that wails were wailed and teeth were gnashed.
But the community rallied. Some folks realized that if you entered the actual URL for OMNI it was still there, just hidden from view through the normal approach vectors. So for about 2 or 3 weeks a vibrant and active community was established in the ruins of the former OMNI garden and playground. As far as I knew everyone there had stumbled upon the back door themselves. It was a beautiful thing for these eyes to behold: we all came together and bonded, rallied and had fun in a spontaneous and organic community.
It proved to me that whatever the forum, what counted penultimately, NEARLY as much as points and miles, was the community that would develop around these forums and the fun to be had.
I came to call the experience the OMNI Underground Movement for all the obvious reasons: OMNI is in the basement of FT to start with and we created a community 'on the sly' after OMNI was buried for dead.
Well, like all good things, it came to an end when the HOM was informed about the OUM, and it was shut down. Randy in an unprecedented gesture of magnanimosity pardoned the active members of the OUM for our circumvention of the intent of the closing of OMNI.
But in the end, that experience truly did shift my paradigm about this place: the points and miles that matter, but its really about the posters.
And so there you have it: OUM Power to the Posters.
Clearly, if you are all about law and order I have just hopelessly alienated you (if I havent already). But it's been a while since I alienated a goodly sized group of voters, so...
So here is the story for all it is worth and what it has got to do with anything. Judge for yourself:
Back around the time of the last US presidential campaign Randy (and the TB?) took the decision to close down OMNI.
Many of us were devastated. Without OMNI our reason for coming to FT every day was gone. Trust me when I tell you that wails were wailed and teeth were gnashed.
But the community rallied. Some folks realized that if you entered the actual URL for OMNI it was still there, just hidden from view through the normal approach vectors. So for about 2 or 3 weeks a vibrant and active community was established in the ruins of the former OMNI garden and playground. As far as I knew everyone there had stumbled upon the back door themselves. It was a beautiful thing for these eyes to behold: we all came together and bonded, rallied and had fun in a spontaneous and organic community.
It proved to me that whatever the forum, what counted penultimately, NEARLY as much as points and miles, was the community that would develop around these forums and the fun to be had.
I came to call the experience the OMNI Underground Movement for all the obvious reasons: OMNI is in the basement of FT to start with and we created a community 'on the sly' after OMNI was buried for dead.
Well, like all good things, it came to an end when the HOM was informed about the OUM, and it was shut down. Randy in an unprecedented gesture of magnanimosity pardoned the active members of the OUM for our circumvention of the intent of the closing of OMNI.
But in the end, that experience truly did shift my paradigm about this place: the points and miles that matter, but its really about the posters.
And so there you have it: OUM Power to the Posters.
Clearly, if you are all about law and order I have just hopelessly alienated you (if I havent already). But it's been a while since I alienated a goodly sized group of voters, so...
Nov 13, 2006, 2:38 pm
#17
FlyerTalk Evangelist, Ambassador: World of Hyatt
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: NJ
Programs: Hyatt Globalist, Fairmont Lifetime Plat, UA Silver, dirt elsewhere
Posts: 46,919
Finding OUM was like finding and old friend... we were seriously Omni deprived at that time 
