Hi Everyone,
This is my personal opinion on the renaming of DPITB to The Tom Oliver Congress.
Personally I hate putting an individual on a pedestal unless everyone, photographers and Twitchers together, know who the individual is. If the 'naming rights' were for our group only, then I could understand the promoting of an individual's name to the position of naming rights, but as Graham said, when the results of the BL survey came in very few members had any knowledge of what DPITB stood for. Well my question is how in hell is this going to change by changing its name to Tom Oliver etc.?
When you think of well known legacies, you think of bronze statuettes of Rod Laver, Glenn McGrath, John Newcombe, all these legacies are well known within and without the cicle of participation for which they hold notoriety. If we want to talk about legacies, I think that it would be more prudent to pay homage to our earlier 'Forefathers' from PhotoBOCA, these are the blokes who worked tirelessly out of their own pockets to set up a fantastic group that was eventually able to be carried forward into BLA and I certainly won't go into politics here as to the result of the merging of the two groups.
Therefore, I believe that there are more gentleman with the entitlement to be given 'naming rights' to this new "Congress" name than just Tom Oliver. . .
I also believe that including an individuals name into the title of 'Our' new congress belittles the work carried out by other founding individuals and this, an individuals name, also introduces more confusion as to what this new Congress is about seeing as there was apparent confusion into the acronym DPITB.
Therefore, in my humble opinion, a more suitable name would be simple and to the point, along the lines of National Bird Photography Conference or similar?
Richard Smart's idea of a vote at DPITB this year as already been 'vetoed' but I can state here and now, if there was a vote as to the naming of our Congress/Conference, I would strongly vote against it and I suggest that other members get off their bums and take this opportunity to let The Committee know what your feelings are on this matter and I also suggest that when it comes to 'Important' decision making that The Committee consults with its membership rather than making decisions which, I feel, should be presented to the membership for consultation before voting on. . .
Without prejudice,
Bruce Terrill