NorthWest Master and slave

The Formation of Northwest Master/slave Contest

This is usually written as NWM/s and it is a feeder contest for a contest family called the International Master/slave contest (IM/s). The IM/s is held at South Plains Leatherfest in Dallas,Texas each February (you may want to visit www.southplainsleatherfest.com for more information.)

The contest has existed in its present form since 2000 but has a much longer history under a different organizational model. South Plains Leatherfest, for those who have not attended, is very similar to our own FolsomFringe event in many ways. It incorporates a set of classes and seminars not dissimilar from what we see at a FF event, there are usually a couple of play parties and there are various brunches and dinners and featured speakers. The IM/s contest is similar in format to what we saw this year at our own NWM/s contest and is in fact the model that our contest was based on.

Until this year the IM/s contest was supported by four regional feeder contests. They are:

1. Southwest Region – held in conjunction with the Southwest Leather Conference (this region formerly embodied all of Northern California as well.)
2. Southeast Region – held in conjunction with “Together in Leather” in the Carolinas
3. Northeast Region – held in conjunction with the Master/slave Conference held in Washington DC
4. Great Lakes Region – held in conjunction with the Great Lakes Leather Alliance in Indianapolis.

Sometime in 2004 people in the Bay Area made approaches to the IM/s contest owners (Master Jim Glass, slave marsha and Mark Frazier) about creating a fifth region in the Pacific Northwest. I believe that Dmitri E Ville was one of the first persons in the area to express an interest. The ownership of the Southwest regional contest agreed and supported the notion of creating a new region in part made up of geographical territory formerly incorporated in that region. At some point Dmitri came to feel that he needed to drop out of the discussion and approached Alan G. from the smOdyssey Inc. Board of Directors about taking on the project. Separately Master Steve of the Southwest Region, one of the co-owners of the Southwest Master/slave contest approached trudy, also a smOdyssey board member, about the same thing.

During the 2004/2005 board year the directors of smOdyssey Inc. made an application to the owners of IM/s for a Northwest Regional Contest. Serving at the time were Jim H as president, danelle, trudy, Alan, Omega, Margaret, erich, Gordon and Allie/Cece (Allie and CeCe divided a single term.)

The application was returned to smOdyssey just before the beginning of the 2005/2006 board year with a request for clarification of some points. As Communications Coordinator at the time I was asked to make the response and I did so using information provided by continuing board members and a conversation with Dmitri (who had made the original inquiries.) I also consulted with the local bay area chapters of MAsT (Masters and slaves Together) and representatives of other leather community groups. The application with the clarifications was approved by the IM/s and smOdyssey Inc. was awarded the ownership of the contest at South Plains Leatherfest in February of 2006.

One of the things that neither the 2004/2005 nor the 2005/2006 board of directors has really done effectively up to this point is to articulate to the membership what the contest is, and why it is consistent with the Mission and Goals of smOdyssey Inc. At the risk of speaking for members of a board I did not serve on, I am fairly confident in saying that the reason for this lapse on the part of both boards was not due to any intent to hide things from the membership.

It is often difficult to bring nine people together to discuss and arrive at consensus on any given topic and each detail therein. Place that against a background of multiple management style differences and what often suffers is feedback to the membership. That is not an excuse for not having appropriately communication our intention to the membership, simply a reason for it having happened at all.

It therefore does not surprise me that after having now had what was by all measures a very successful first contest, many in the membership of smOdyssey Inc. and many more who are not smOdyssey members but are active in the bay area BDSM community are still not content that they are completely informed on what the contest is and why the board of directors elected to pursue it and as a consequence, are tentative about supporting it.