In 1991, the DCU Credit Union was rocked with a major fraud perpetrated primarily by the DCU president. The fraud was able to occur in part due to poor oversight by the Board of Directors - all of whom were high-level DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) managers.
I was among a group of Digital Employees concerned about the future of our credit union. Previous to the DCU problems, we had not known each other. We became acquainted through the use of the DCU Notes File (an electronic bulletin board) available on the internal company network (before the internet became big). We decided to meet in person and later mounted a campaign to return our Credit Union back to what credit unions are supposed to be.
The campaign became very intense with significant pressure on our DEC jobs to give up our efforts, but we persevered. I was sad and disgusted at how dirty the politics became - all that for a volunteer position (board membership). In spite of valiant efforts on the part of the DEC management, we did recover our credit union and I'm proud to have been a part of that effort. I believe our effort was one of the first cases of the electronic network being used to combat the power of the incumbency and the power of the high-level management of DEC.
This is a talk I wrote about my experience and what I learned about our campaign using the electronic medium to help level the playing field. I presented the talk (at an evening session) at the 1993 World Future Society Conference in Washington, DC, during the summer of 1993.
(Note that the email address in the slides is no longer current.) I can be reached at paul@kinzelman.com
Here are the slide pages in GIF format:
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