David Jay is Speaking at Yale University Thursday, April 21

[tase]

I have no idea where to post this where it can get the most views.

I mentioned this yesterday on the backup board. I was hesitant about going as there is a good chance I will be the oldest person there perhaps by 30 years. There were only 10 spots allotted for non-students. Anyway I gave in and rsvp'd that I was going.

I started this thread to perhaps start a one day group project as to what questions/comments we could come up with and present in the most comprehensive form we can.

I was hoping to have a nice finished product that I could printout and hand to him.

The deadline should be about 2pm EDT.

I just checked the notification webpage and found this under description:

David Jay, founder of AVEN, will lead an hour-long workshop at Yale. If you have questions you'd like to ask him (whether or not you can attend), you're welcome to post them on this page. Harkness Hall is located on College Street between Wall and Elm. This event is FREE and open to the public, but you must RSVP here. This event is not through Yale but through a student-led Aces & Aros group on campus.

Here is the link to the announcement-not sure if we should bombard him with individual concerns though

David Jay Event Announcement

So I don't know if we should come up with something to post on that page as well as something to hand him in person. I think doing both might have better chance of getting our point across that his baby AVEN needs a total overhaul.

I don't know if we can get some technical information or suggestions from Cole?

It is my understanding that members have made attempts to contact him regarding the sad state of our beloved AVEN, with no response. I thought this may be the best chance to give our concerns directly to him.

If those behind the scenes are or have recently been in contact with him, and he is very aware of all our issues, please let me know so we don't duplicate efforts already in the works.

I still think ideas/suggestions/concerns directly from the members may have the best chance of getting heard.

Mods-please feel free to move this to the proper section if there is somewhere better than here.

Thanks everyone

Edit:This was just posted by Cole

Hey everyone,

The recent downtime experienced was triggered by our server provider in attempting to fix our mail server. Unfortunately, the work they anticipated would be a quick fix exposed a number of issues that they have fallen behind on updating: namely, cPanel, Apache, and PHP were all out of date. This is the cause of the prolonged outages over the last week.

After performing a full backup of our server and spending ~12-16 hours working to resolve the issues, we are up to date on latest server software and out mail server has been restored.

With these changes, we will be able to perform some other much needed updates to the server to improve the performance of our site. This weekend (Sunday, April 24), our team will be converting several of our overloaded database tables to a more optimized format. From there, we will be providing the Board with a list of further recommendations.

I appreciate everyone's patience and will provide an update once our first-round improvements have been completed.

Best,

Coleslaw

Should we let David off the hook?

[God of the Forest]

***

[tase]

Hey I contacted admods immediately, so just chill. Make a post in your thread and voila right back on top.

Thanks for your contribution

[God of the Forest]

Hey I contacted admods immediately, so just chill. Make a post in your thread and voila right back on top.

Thanks for your contribution

Sorry I was just being silly...so just chill :P

[divided_sky]

Isn't it about time we had a new public face for our community? I'm honestly bored with him, and his explanations of what asexuality is and is not are irritating. I want someone with some energy and fight in them. Like... a bobcat. A rabid bobcat.

[Perissodactyla]

Isn't it about time we had a new public face for our community? I'm honestly bored with him, and his explanations of what asexuality is and is not are irritating. I want someone with some energy and fight in them. Like... a bobcat. A rabid bobcat.

LOL! Cracked me UP!

:D

[FoxEars]

WHY CAN'T I BE IN YALE

FUCK

^ FoxEars ^

[Skycaptain]

Because you haven't got the key :-P

[Evren]

I would like to know whether or not he would be willing to bring more people on to help with AVENs upkeep. I know there are people on this site who have offered to help. With the repeated shutdowns and multiple errors that come up, I think we need at least 3 people who can fix it when it goes down. It's not only annoying to the community, I also don't think that it's fair on Cole to have to fix it every time it goes down.

[tase]

I added this to OP, but here it is again.

Cole just posted this

Hey everyone,

The recent downtime experienced was triggered by our server provider in attempting to fix our mail server. Unfortunately, the work they anticipated would be a quick fix exposed a number of issues that they have fallen behind on updating: namely, cPanel, Apache, and PHP were all out of date. This is the cause of the prolonged outages over the last week.

After performing a full backup of our server and spending ~12-16 hours working to resolve the issues, we are up to date on latest server software and out mail server has been restored.

With these changes, we will be able to perform some other much needed updates to the server to improve the performance of our site. This weekend (Sunday, April 24), our team will be converting several of our overloaded database tables to a more optimized format. From there, we will be providing the Board with a list of further recommendations.

I appreciate everyone's patience and will provide an update once our first-round improvements have been completed.

Best,

Coleslaw

Do you think we still need to question David about this?

[Guest 80814]

Yeah. There's one person running the main resource for an entire sexuality and they don't get a penny, and seem to be given equipment/servers powered solely by hamster wheels to do the job with. Meanwhile the admins seem to have little-to-no contact with any webmasters to solve minor issues (ie. the 'Learn More' button directing to a non-existent page, a thing that could be fixed literally within 10 seconds if anyone could actually access what they need).

If the bloke has no interest in being here or running it, why does he still hold any position of power. Not that you or anyone could exactly say that to him that but it's frustrating.

I'll go calm down now with tea and biscuits.

[Guest]

Do you think we still need to question David about this?

They seem to have a handle on it.

[tase]

That is my hope, but James has a point as well.

[Kelly]

I wish that I could attend. I would not be able to get there on time unless I played hooky from work.

His talks tend to be quite interesting.

[tase]

Oh come on. I'll treat you to the restaurant of your choice.

[Skycaptain]

Sadly I can't make it, the FAA say no Skyship flying in USA airspace

[Perissodactyla]

Will someone film the event?

[Evren]

Sadly I can't make it, the FAA say no Skyship flying in USA airspace

Ahhhh :(, skyship is a great name for a plane though.

[divided_sky]

I appreciate all that he has done to raise awareness of asexuality and forming this community, but man, he is not a great spokeperson. He can be all over the map trying to explain what asexuality is, which is to say that it isn't really anything concrete, sine we all mostly have our own definitions for what it means to us. Watching his tree of relationships in that Asexual documentary was absurd. Seems like a super chill dude and probably very easy to get along with, but I don't consider him representative of asexuality as it applies to me. And, he's been doing it forever. Someone else step up. It starts to feel like he is the only one, since he is the one doing all the major interviews and talks and such (for the most part). Let's get some new faces in there, new ideas, new opinions, new discussions. What else can he say at this point that he hasn't already said 100 times?

[divided_sky]

Am I alone on this? I don't think it's a good thing for one person to be the face of an entire group to such a degree. Unless there are others out there that I just never hear about. There should be more of us talking, being interviewed, telling our ace stories. One person cannot possibly be representative of such a diverse group of people.

[tase]

Volunteers divided

[divided_sky]

I'm all for it, but the masses will revolt in short time. I'll be deposed and exiled to Siberia. Or worse yet, Indiana. I mean, if I were "the asexual guy", I'd be asking other people from here to speak about their experiences and not have my own opinions be the center of discussions. My opinions aren't in line with most of the ace community on a lot of topics. So, I'm a poor representative. And regardless, I want to hear from others and have discussions and really show the variety in this community.

[WünderBâhr]

There are conferences where other representatives do talk. People can organize their own local meetups and "workshops", if they want to contact the Project Team to get resource info and so on. While David Jay is a spotlight figure for Asexuality visbility, he is not the only one. And AVEN is not the only asexuality community. But he networks, advocates and runs in those relevant circles, where talking about it can be his thing.

Granted, it would be useful to have a more consistent and active community panel of reps, and maybe that's something to look into. DJ has been and will always be a leader in vised for asexuality. He may not poke his head around AVEN often, but he will always have his place here as a founder.

That's my two cents about that, anyway.

The Yale workshop sounds cool, but alas, I would not be able to attend.

[tase]

It's time to start getting ready for meeting David.

I'm not sure if I was understanding the message, but there is a possibility of only 15 people total attending.

So I might get ample opportunity to talk to him about different things. I was planning on hanging in the back row, but there may be no place to hide.

I'll try to post from inside the workshop.

Maybe even a picture or two.

[tase]

Here he is

[Guest]

Here he is

That picture is cracking me up.. he looks exactly like a cowboy from an old western in the way he is walking (I'm picturing that in slow-motion) and his facial expression is saying ...''howdy''. He just needs some guns on his hips and he could be some gunslinger going into a tavern and buy himself a whiskey and the company of a corseted lady :P

[Perissodactyla]

LOLOMG! I'm just So tempted to realize your visual suggestions in Photoshop, Pan!

However, your description is so vivid, that everyone who reads your words can immediately visualize your picture. :)

And just to be very clear... seeing David Jay in the film documentary,

(A)sexual (2011)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4rdRQtsiTQ

caused me to become aware of AVEN immediately and become a member one year ago.

I was completely stunned by David Jay in that film plus many other of the charming people telling their stories.

I highly recommend it, if you haven't already viewed it. :)

Then, perhaps the first charismatic person I met in AVEN was... PanFicto. :)

So that's why this picture and Pan's post really amuse me a lot plus give me a little deja vu. :)

[tase]

That is hysterical Pan. You are definitely right on.

I have another pic of he and I together. I am debating about posting it or not.

Pan-I don't know if you saw my post in random or not.

I cornered and questioned him on the definition issue.

I laid down the "partnered sex" def for him-his eyes lit up.

He said he was happy with the fuzziness of the sexual attraction def. I told him it causes much debate, some not so friendly.

Later he said that he will definitely bring up the subject of adding the 2nd def at their next conference call.

He's not involved in day to day stuff or content, but he is still involved in any major decisions.

Also there is talk of upgrading to a cloud based server?

It costs 3x as much and may open up a section to accept member donations.

But he did say if that happens we could be down for a while during transition.

He spends his non speaking time in DC working on lobbying.

He was very proud that he and his posse convinced the mayor and board of Ed in NYC that it is now mandatory to include asexuality as part of their sex ed curriculum in all NYC schools.

[Guest]

LOLOMG! I'm just So tempted to realize your visual suggestions in Photoshop, Pan!

However, your description is so vivid, that everyone who reads your words can immediately visualize your picture. :)

And just to be very clear... seeing David Jay in the film documentary,

(A)sexual (2011)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4rdRQtsiTQ

caused me to become aware of AVEN immediately and become a member one year ago.

I was completely stunned by David Jay in that film plus many other of the charming people telling their stories.

I highly recommend it, if you haven't already viewed it. :)

Then, perhaps the first charismatic person I met in AVEN was... PanFicto. :)

So that's why this picture and Pan's post really amuse me a lot plus give me a little deja vu. :)

I did like that Jay said often in the documentary ''I just don't want to have sex'' and at one point he even said (unless I dreamed this) ''I feel attraction, I just don't want sex'' (which sums asexuality up really well) BUT, I wasa little upset that he described asexuals as innately polyamorous and said that without sex, monogamy doesn't exist. I hope he has learned more since that documentary was made, and is now aware that asexuals are not all innately poly and some do legitimately desire sexless monogamy ^_^ (even for sexuals, monogamy isn't just about sex!)

I really liked the documentary other than those couple of things. I have also seen Jay quoted as saying ''An asexual is anyone who wants to be asexual'' ..and hopefully he has changed his opinion about that too now.

Okay I just saw your post as I was writing that Tase. What it would require is a thread where people who are very clued up on definitions and studies etc (not to blow my own horn, but myself, and Mysticus, Skulls, and anyone else who feels fully informed about *sexuality* and the reasons the current definition is inadequate) to actively engage in conversation with Jay to explain what the issues actually are. I have been told many times I need to message him to discuss the issues, but after seeing him quoted as saying ''an asexual is anyone who wants to be asexual'' I kind of lost all faith in his message? Maybe he was misquoted though, or has now changed his mind and would like to take steps towards clarifying what asexuality really is, in the main definition here on this site.

[tase]

I wish one of you were there tonight.

I did ok.

He was very approachable today and any of you would have had ample time to make your cases.