I'm Still Alive

...and did not make intimate acquaintance with the ground via the 7th floor balcony. I haven't posted sooner because the meeting didn't wrap up until after 7:30 PM, after which we were all hungry and wanted to get some dinner, which we did. When we came back from dinner, we headed to the pool, where we relaxed in the hot tub for a long time -- something none of us had time for when we were actually running a Westercon here in July.

It was a long day, as you can tell by how long the meeting lasted. I'm not going to publish the detailed list of our decisions yet, because I've been asked to wait until we have a formal announcement written, which may take a few days. Note, however, that (a) we ended up having not quite as much surplus to spend as the early estimates showed, and (b) the requests we had would have spent that surplus at least twice over and probably more. Nobody will get a giant windfall, in my opinion. Many groups will get a nice donation that they can do some good things with, but no super-sized donations. I'll talk more about it in a few days once we're ready to make a formal announcement.

I am very tired. This kind of meeting is a lot of work. Running a significant surplus is the second-worst thing that can happen to a convention of this sort. I'm only glad that the very worst thing didn't happen.

Signing Off

Randy McCharles will be here in about 20 minutes to pick me up in the lobby of the Westin, so I'm signing off for this trip. My need for connectivity is not so severe that I'm willing to pay another $10-15 for it at Calgary Airport. My flight to SFO leaves mid-afternoon today.

It has been a reasonably productive trip. There was a fair bit of sighing over alternative paths for Calgary fandom, but as I kept pointing out, this is a volunteer, hobby organization. People should do what they enjoy doing. I guess by that standard, I like attending meetings. Horrible thought, that.

Kevin

Parting Shot

Despite what I wrote a few minutes ago, I'm not gone yet, but I've moved, and am now sitting here in the lobby of the Calgary Westin by their lobby fireplace, and I decided just to check and see if the wireless service happened to be on the same system as the wired service. (At some hotels they come from different vendors.) Turns out that they do -- the login for the one works on the other. Somehow, during Westercon here, I'd gotten the idea that they were separate systems and separate charges. Wish I'd realized they were the same during Westercon; it would have saved me sticking around downstairs working on my e-mail when I could have been more relaxed in my hotel room.

Whoops, here comes Randy. Time for me to leave.