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If I may touch on something Steve said about the IPPCA.
I was invited to belong to the club several years ago, and while I was interested in the stated objective, I am also cautious by nature. And while I attended one of the initial “pondlawhatever”, a watch and wait was the best move. And after watching them grow a bit over the last two years, I have made the decision not to belong for one major reason.
My wife puts it best. Qualification without quantification is worthless.
In plain language: When you have a professional organization that rates its members, usually you have a panel of its peers that makes the decisions as to who is rated and how highly. If you dig into the Master Pond builder designation you will find that the two owners of the organization (last I checked) were the only master pond builders at the IPPCA. I called them the owners because they started it, and they will run it as they see fit. They do have a board of directors, but they are really more a formality than a real organizational guidance.
My question is who qualified them as master pond builders? Well shucks, they did. So let me see, I now am asking two guys that declared themselves "master pond builders" to join their club and they and they alone will decide if I am good enough to be in their club? And if they decide that they don’t like my hair cut, who I am married to, who I have legal problems with etc, then that keeps me from being a good pond builder, or a master pond builder like they are? And it allows them to black ball me? After spending too many years working for someone else that dictated my future, not interested in giving someone else that power that is not qualified to have it.
The way it has been set up and run, I don’t see an upside to belonging to the IPPCA, only down sides. I suspect that is also one of the reasons for all the hype, why they are really not growing as quickly as they had planned. Too many politics and not enough professionalism at the top. Then too, they allow people like HAH in as experts in their field?
Change it from a good ole boys club to what it was promised to be, and I would gladly join. But from what I have seen first hand, not interested.
So while on the surface they sound like a great idea, the substance does not meet the promise.
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