Looking Ahead to Westercon
Jun. 24th, 2007 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeI attended the final pre-con staff meeting for Gnomeward Bound today. It was a very long meeting, and I didn't last through it all, because eventually I had to go have food -- I could feel my blood sugar dropping into the basement despite having brought snacks with me. (Having to follow a relatively regular eating schedule can be a real pain sometimes.)
Now, I've been critical of conventions in the past, and Westercon this year has earned more than its share of criticism. However, based on the turnout and results of today's meeting, I have a much better feeling about Gnomeward Bound than I did some weeks ago. Yeah, maybe it's an "All Right on the Night" sort of event, but it does seem to me that the convention is going to happen, and is going to pull itself together at the last minute. Now all we need is for a reasonable number of people to turn up on the door -- the way they do for BayCon and other local SF cons -- and the last hole will be filled.
Before the meeting,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
johnnyeponymous and I met to go over the presentation we're doing as part of the Meet the Guests Reception. This is the Sekrit Projekt to which I alluded a few weeks back. If you can be there on Saturday evening, do make a point of attending. (I hope to get Lisa to record it as well; if that works out, Google Video will be enriched by our words of wisdom.)
After getting a very delayed lunch, I set to work on a number of things that I needed to get done by tomorrow or before Westercon:
1. Prepare SFSFC Board Meeting Notices. (These must go in the mail by the 25th day of the month before the meeting, per the SFSFC Bylaws.) The next meeting will be July 22nd in San Jose.
2. Print fliers for Montréal in 2009.
3. Design and party flyer for Montréal in 2009 party. We've been pre-blocked into room 3007 (one of the "loft suites" that those of you who attended BayCon may remember). The Montréal party will be Sunday night (Canada Day, July 1).
4. Because it's a little uneconomical to hold just one party -- especially when the hotel imposes a $50 per room (not per night) mandatory, non-refundable "cleaning deposit" -- Lisa wants to hold a Going-to-Japan themed party on Monday night. I found a picture of a train platform sign for Yokohama, and used it to design a party flyer for "Next Stop...Yokohama!" Note that this isn't an official Nippon 2007 party. It's Lisa hosting a party where she plans to get a bunch of Japanese soft drinks and snacks and serve them out to people (admittedly, along with whatever may be left over from the Montréal party from the night before) and talk about going to Japan with anyone who is interested.
Now I need to get the flatbed scanner here in the office working again -- it's been disconnected for a while because nobody is using it and they've rearranged cubicles, so it got moved to an unused one -- because Lisa wants to use it for a project of hers when she's down here next week.
Update, 23:30: Darn it! That scanner is a SCSI device, and the only computer we had with a SCSI card in it is gone! I've left a message with the appropriate people asking what happened to that computer, or, if they retired the computer, did they salvage the SCSI card from it so we can install it somewhere else (not likely).
Now, I've been critical of conventions in the past, and Westercon this year has earned more than its share of criticism. However, based on the turnout and results of today's meeting, I have a much better feeling about Gnomeward Bound than I did some weeks ago. Yeah, maybe it's an "All Right on the Night" sort of event, but it does seem to me that the convention is going to happen, and is going to pull itself together at the last minute. Now all we need is for a reasonable number of people to turn up on the door -- the way they do for BayCon and other local SF cons -- and the last hole will be filled.
Before the meeting,
johnnyeponymous and I met to go over the presentation we're doing as part of the Meet the Guests Reception. This is the Sekrit Projekt to which I alluded a few weeks back. If you can be there on Saturday evening, do make a point of attending. (I hope to get Lisa to record it as well; if that works out, Google Video will be enriched by our words of wisdom.)After getting a very delayed lunch, I set to work on a number of things that I needed to get done by tomorrow or before Westercon:
1. Prepare SFSFC Board Meeting Notices. (These must go in the mail by the 25th day of the month before the meeting, per the SFSFC Bylaws.) The next meeting will be July 22nd in San Jose.
2. Print fliers for Montréal in 2009.
3. Design and party flyer for Montréal in 2009 party. We've been pre-blocked into room 3007 (one of the "loft suites" that those of you who attended BayCon may remember). The Montréal party will be Sunday night (Canada Day, July 1).
4. Because it's a little uneconomical to hold just one party -- especially when the hotel imposes a $50 per room (not per night) mandatory, non-refundable "cleaning deposit" -- Lisa wants to hold a Going-to-Japan themed party on Monday night. I found a picture of a train platform sign for Yokohama, and used it to design a party flyer for "Next Stop...Yokohama!" Note that this isn't an official Nippon 2007 party. It's Lisa hosting a party where she plans to get a bunch of Japanese soft drinks and snacks and serve them out to people (admittedly, along with whatever may be left over from the Montréal party from the night before) and talk about going to Japan with anyone who is interested.
Now I need to get the flatbed scanner here in the office working again -- it's been disconnected for a while because nobody is using it and they've rearranged cubicles, so it got moved to an unused one -- because Lisa wants to use it for a project of hers when she's down here next week.
Update, 23:30: Darn it! That scanner is a SCSI device, and the only computer we had with a SCSI card in it is gone! I've left a message with the appropriate people asking what happened to that computer, or, if they retired the computer, did they salvage the SCSI card from it so we can install it somewhere else (not likely).
