Lev Lafayette's journal

The Earthworker Cooperative, a community-led cooperative, has a debenture system being offered to members - it retains its democratic system of ownership and management, but also allows for members to effectively invest with returns. I've decided to put a few thousand dollars of my savings into this loan scheme and am very interested in exploring the possibility for other cooperative ventures. There is, of course, a good variety of non-capitalist organisational models which are often overlooked from the standard for-profit company; incorporated associations, co-operatives, research agencies, statutory authorities, etc - and as this example shows, they have a variety of ways of raising necessary funds to further their aims.

Speaking of non-profit research agencies, spent a good portion of the last week preparing training material for multiple courses that I'll be running for the University of Sydney later in the near future. Three course books, about 15,000 words a piece, with a fair bit of material derived from previous courses but tailored for the specific software that will be utilised. From what I understand I'll be taking two trips (end of January and March), and somewhere in between that a three-day session at La Trobe University in early February and a three-day session at the University of Western Australia. In less exciting news, we're in the final stage of the review of project management procedures and tools which, in a delicious act of recursion, was a project which I managed in its own right. The procedures a lot more watertight than what we've had previously, mainly following the PRINCE2 framework for governance. The tools section has been left somewhat more varied, which I'm less happy with.

Thursday night was what will probably be the second last session of The Great Pendragon Campaign which dealt primarily with the increasingly strained relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere. Current plans for the next game will be The Laundry Files, which will be a very different style and subject matter. Probably worth mentioning that, following three years or so of recreating this story, on February 1st I'll be giving an address on the subject at the Melbourne Unitarian Church, entitled: The Once And Future King : Mythology and Motivation from the Arthurian Legends.

Had a non-cheesequest event today with ser_pounce and hathhalla, so named as ser_pounce, our maître de fromage, is possibly allergic to lactose! I did however make a safe goat's cheesecake with a berry coulis. We played Hoax, another superb game from that old company, Eon Products, and then Six Billion, whom I once organised a demonstration session with the designer - an excellent if a little complex. We watched the second season of Morel Orel and in the evening caseopaya and I watched Uli Lommel's version of The Raven, a comically bad horror film (but which a reviewer generated a brilliantly appropriate poem)