The Culture: Uncle Kevin Begins Telling His Story

What's the tell that a turnover of leadership is coming? When the current leadership starts doing retrospectives.

Despite my take on Uncle Kevin and the company, don't take this as me criticizing either party for doing this.

What has been a consistent beat on this blog? The need to preserve the history of the hobby and carry it forward. What is this doing? Exactly that.

It is good, therefore, that Kevin is taking the time to tell his story in his words from his perspective. I welcome this series, and I look forward to seeing more of it. You should too, no matter what is said here or in later episodes. Take it from someone that trained in the discipline: this has value no matter the content.

I am certain that past Palladium employees, partners, and contractors have their own tales to tell; some of them have, at various times, been made public. (Alas, finding them as of this moment is difficult due to Wayback Machine being borked by the DDOS attack on the Internet Archive.) In time, I hope, all of them come out and are collected together to piece together the most accurate accounting of what happened. (If you think that's not a thing, consider World War 2 discourse before and after the Soviet Union archives opened to the West in 1990s. Major sea changes happened and are still happening.)

Why do I say that this is a tell that a leadership turnover is coming?

First, the obvious: Uncle Kevin is a Boomer. Boomers are old, well past usual retirement age old, and increasingly taking up spaces in the warehouses for discarded people we call "Assisted Living Centers" these days and "Old People Homes" for when Boomers threw their parents into them. He can't keep it up forever, and he may not want to, but just up and selling out ain't how people like him--who, to his credit, did build up a publishing company in a niche market from nothing and keep in running for generations despite many (self-inflicted) calamities--want to go out. They want to secure their place in their world first, then transition out into retirement.

Second, Kevin wants (and, to be fair, deserves) to be respected for his deeds. That ain't happening if he doesn't talk them up first, letting others repeat them to ever-wider audiences until he reaches a satsifactory level of recognition and reknown. This isn't not something to fault him for; this is typical End Of Career stuff, Lifetime Achievement Award stuff, and in this niche you don't get the Academy to just hand you your moment and an award on prime-time TV. You have to toot your own horn, remind everyone of what you did and how it made Current Year possible, and be shameless about saying "I did that!" Stuntmen, SFX guys, concept artists, novelists, etc.- everyone at that point wants the acclaim for the work they did over their career, which means they're looking to take their leave and this is the Swan Song.

Third, by talking up himself and Palladium now Kevin makes any potential sales offers lean harder in his favor. Yes, including any from those already working for him that offer to buy him out. That's just playing the business game. Can't hate the man for that; it's just smart business, and he's survived enough to learn a thing or two about business by now.

Therefore I'm expecting this to be an implicit announcement of his intention to retire, thus this is part of his farewell tour before he ties up loose ends and hands the business off to someone else (and deposits a fat check to use as his retirement fund). I'm assuming that he doesn't just shut the company down, or retain ownership and just become hands-off on operations, both of which could happen, but most Boomers like him are looking to cash out and that's why I say this is leading up to him selling the company and heading into the sunset.

In any event, this is the beginning of the end. May it be a good one.