Thank You, Torcon

[kevin_standlee]

I have criticized Torcon 3 in the past, so I think it's only fair that I thank them for the check I received today. The convention is spending some of its remaining surplus funds on reimbursing the expenses that members of committee and staff incurred to attend pre-convention planning meetings. I attended one such meeting during the last year of the convention's planning. It was fortuitous timing: I was in the Detroit area working at my company's Auburn Hills MI office, and staying over the weekend during which there was a large committee meeting in Toronto. I took the train from Windsor to Toronto -- that was as much of an attraction as anything else, I must admit -- and shared a hotel room with Linda Ross-Mansfield and John Mansfield.

My incremental expenses -- that is, what it cost me to go from Detroit to Toronto; obviously my employer paid to get me to Detroit -- were reasonably well recorded, although finding receipts for things that old might have been challenging. When asked about my expenses, I itemized what I spent according to my files in Quicken (hooray for good record-keeping!), and T3 elected to reimburse me from those records.

Today I received a US dollar check for $240 in reimbursement of those travel expenses. I appreciate it.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Personally, I think they owe a lot of people for screwing up their Worldcon experience and for bailing them out at-con as much as possible. No offense to you Kevin for the check, but it irks me a bit that I'm sure some people who screwed up massively are getting those checks while folk who worked like crazy at con to patch things up probably aren't.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know who you are because you didn't sign your entry, and you seem to have excluded me from the set of people "who screwed up massively," for which I'm grateful, as I think I did my specific job reasonably well. Anyway, the only way those people who "worked like crazy at con" are likely to get anything is if the convention kept sufficiently good records to that the people who control the corporation today know what those people did. Anonymous hard work isn't likely to be noticed.

I also know, from having chaired a Worldcon, that it's rare to deliberately overlook such contributions. The challenge of keeping track of all of these things, however, should not be underestimated. Under the conditions we operate, I'm less likely to complain about what gets missed than to marvel that we accomplish anything at all.

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

Well, it would have been nice in Publications had used the correct version of the program schedule, and it would have been nice if Facilities had looked at the contract clauses that were put in to allow changes in a time frame that would have been convenient for all concerned, but there's not much we can do about the past except for learn from it.

People are reimbursed for their direct convention-related expenses, not for their time and effort. I don't agree with the travel reimbursement policy. I consider it an ethical violation for people to covertly build travel expenses into their budgets and then claim they have a right to travel expenses if they come in under budget. However, you have certainly not instigated or abused this policy.

A rather deep irony is that Canadians would not normally have a reason to keep personal travel receipts, as there is no tax status similar to 501(c)3 that would allow one to deduct travel expenses. But I suppose I agree with Larry; might as well reimburse people who followed the same practices as those who have already been reimbursed, and even better to make sure it goes to people who will certainly recycle it for the benefit of other fan organizations.