[ThunderCactus]

I was around since the very beginning, I mean literally I was there when the association fees were paid and I proof read the bylaws myself lol
I always tried to nudge them in the right direction, and make the important point known, with great sorrow my insight was often unheard of overlooked.

It started out well enough, we instilled a democracy based around a set of bylaws (legally written in legal language) that governed the association and how it was to be run, basically touched on code of conduct and due process.
The people who founded the democratic council all left or fell out of airsoft, the new people elected didn't understand how to interpret the bylaws and things were added to the rules and bylaws modified that should never have been modified.
Bylaws were interpreted in a way they were never written.
The general "keystone rule set" made by charlietango was modified for legality (no homemade pyro, at all, ever), and turned into the "MAA rules".

Unfortunately the new electees went about attempting to govern airsoft in Mb as an iron fisted dictator would, and had a "join us, play like us, pay our dues" kind of mentality. There was no room on board for people who wanted to play differently (or with pyro).

You joined the MAA, as an individual or as a group or with a field. You used our rule set, obeyed our bylaws, after a few maa games at your field it would be an MAA field and eligible for funds.

Still it went well for a while, however a number of things led to the eventual collapse of the governing body;
-the wrong people in positions of power
-abuse of power and persons in positions of power ignoring bylaw rules (our pres worked for a sponsor)
-lack of culture, and by that I mean nobody on the council had any ties or acquaintances outside manitoba, and therefore had no insight on how anyone else in Canada has dealt with the problems we were dealing with
-lack of flexibility, the phrase that kept coming back was "why not work with us instead of against us?", but the reality of it was "we're going to argue about this topic until you agree with us"
-lack of a realistic goal or plan. The idea was to unify airsoft in manitoba, the means of which to do so were completely unknown. Nobody on the top level knew why other groups didn't want to join.
-Lack of diplomacy; I actually put forth a position to be an ambassador to outside clubs to find out what others wanted to join, this proposal was more or less scoffed at.
-tight pockets. Despite having money, the association didn't seem to spend it on fields, and once or twice spent a good chunk of cash on things we REALLY didn't need (claymores)
-slow action. Really takes anything for a democracy to get anything accomplished, especially when the higher ups are all volunteers.
-in an attempt to become an official organization, we opted to join the sport Mb association (which really had nothing to do with legitimizing airsoft, it's an association that subsidizes travel costs for vball teams that need to play nationals in Vancouver or some shit), and we made the association "more open". "more open" meaning you no longer had to play airsoft to join....you just needed to be 18+ and have $30 and you could vote on how we played airsoft. And despite being a big hot button topic for 2 years, it turned out that ZERO effort was ever actually put into joining sport Mb....like none...pres gave them a call, they sent some documents, and nothing was ever done beyond that for TWO YEARS.
-Very inwardly focused, ultimately we spent way too much time trying to solve internal problems that were never going to go away and didn't spend enough time helping AIRSOFT as a community.
And then finally it degenerated into people that had no business being in leadership roles making silly rules that did nothing but make airsoft more complicated and added paperwork (safety committee, the chrono registry, forcing chrono before every game, scrim fees collected by the maa instead of the field) and basically just chairsofters dictating rules to the people who actually ran and played at games.

The minority of members who actually played regularly, had fields, and organized games finally demanded change. The majority members that saw us as rabble and usurpers played us down or moderated us. So we left, with the only two regular fields they knew of in Mb (there's on 2 regular at the time but more than 16 playable fields, but I don't think they knew that at the time), all the game organizers, and the regular player base.
Those people who were only on the board to chat in an internet forum seem to have gone away, and those of the majority members that still played ended up having to play 2 hours away in brandon since we were the only people they knew that hosted games locally, and they didn't like us lol
They made promises of changing the boards and re-facing the MAA to something more like ASM (if anyone knows the diff), and finally becoming what the MAA was actually supposed to be. But at that point the name had been soiled far too badly, the people in power could no longer be trusted, and they really had nothing to offer other than a forum and a lot of bad memories. Those of us that had already left knew from past precedence that no changes would ever be implemented....and they still haven't been to date lol
Some other shit happened in between the lines, but it doesn't need to be repeated here. Anyway the bottom line is the democractic council was a horrible failure in just about every way it could have failed.

Since then, airsoft in manitoba has THRIVED under a few dictatorships.
As long as the right person is in charge, progress is made VERY quickly.
Would have taken the MAA at least a decade just to build eddie creek up to what it is, let alone purchasing any land.

In an actual government, you WANT leadership change because it forces a leader to either implement change quickly, or not have time to do anything.
In airsoft, things get done very fast because they're all little things, so constant change of leadership ended up being very very bad.

Basically what we learned is we need to force leadership upon those who are good at it, instead of voted in people who WANT to do it.