Well to be perfectly honest, I was quite surprised that Maggie chose to post on our blog. I appreciate that she took the time and effort to let us know that she was going to explain all the details of what has been going on with RUNWAY and her timeline. If you ask me, the most important part of that drawn-out saga of a response (well written as well) is this part: As the magazine will now be closing permanently, the funds secured from the sale of the Bryant Park sim and other personal asset holdings will be used to reimburse advertising clients for prepaid ad sales, prepaid deposits on show services, and to pay the staff for their work on the April issue. My account as Maggie Mahoney will remain open to finalize all of that and then will be closed permanently. I will not be logging into Second Life for any other purpose and will do so only to handle closing business matters. If someone IMs and I do not respond, please do not take it personally. My focus will be to finalize things and then get on with my real life. Ocean closed his account the day we decided to close the magazine; mine simply stayed open to deal with the sim sale and finalization of assets as many were in my name, and for no other reason.
You can see that the groundwork to pass total ownership to the staff was in place or being put into place. Maybe my choice of not calling in the staff to discuss things was a mistake; hindsight is always 20/20. In all honestly, neither of us wanted to sit there and listen to hundreds of questions, say goodbyes, etc.; we had faith in this group of people that we had worked with, some upwards of a year or better, that they would continue on their own independently, not jump ship and side up with BOSL. I was very disappointed personally to learn that they did not have the courage and faith in themselves and each other to do what we felt they would do. If we had known that it would have come to all of this - we would have just closed it, sold the sim and other assets, paid the bills, and left without giving anyone the chance to keep it going. That was our mistake.
Maggie and Ocean's decision to leave SL and RUNWAY was done in haste, very sloppy and as we know, poorly done. It all turned out to be quite a mess because of the way they did things.
Maggie is correct, if she just wanted to shutter the magazine she should have unwound the business properly as she now says she is doing. But what made Maggie think that her staff was prepared take over the magazine to the level she suggested or even wanted to? After all, SHE DID NOT TALK TO ANYONE DIRECTLY! As we all can see from her 'last' posting there is a lot of work when doing a magazine. Not something that someone can be just thrown in to doing. That was clearly demonstrated with all the details Maggie posted if you took the time to read the entire thing.
The complexity of the magazine and the liabilities is something not just anyone would want to take on when they can't even TALK TO YOU!! LOL! How laughable! Maggie clearly admits she did not talk to anyone about it. The log of messages of people frantically trying to sort things out is clearly an indication that the way she did it was wrong.
It could have been simple. Really simple. But no. Maggie and Ocean threw havoc and chaos in the wind as the staff tried to walk through the storm they created. She should have arranged a meeting with the key staff that she wanted to take over the magazine. Or at least the top two, namely, Thalia and EmmZ! If she really wanted the magazine to live on she could have handled this. But, quite honestly, we can see Maggie really did not care at all. She decided to leave in a rush and left everyone attempting to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. When you do not have the ability to communicate and provide transition and an adjustment period for people, it is going to implode as it did.
As for Frolic Mills, it is proven by the atttached messages in Maggies 'last' blog that people did in fact go to Frolic Mills. They later changed their minds when they realized that Frolic Mills intended not to keep RUNWAY in its current form.
I am still convinced that if Maggie had done the proper thing here and communicated with her staff they could have easily transitioned everything over given time and genuine interest. Clearly Thalia and EmmZ did not know how Maggie felt about Frolic Mills or how he would want to change the way RUNWAY Magazine was setup.
Finally, we see that Maggie Mahoney and Ocean Bates did not really care enough to do things the right way. That is to keep the RUNWAY Magazine going. Sadly, they made a laughing stock out of RUNWAY Magazine and themselves. I certainly understand if none of her former staff want anything to do with them. What a damn shame. But the truth is Maggie and Ocean are leaving everyone else behind and they have no plans of coming back.
Maggie Mahoney and Ocean Bates, best of luck to both of you, and may Maggie overcome her breast cancer and have 100% recovery.
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