Andrew T Trembley

Yeah, but in this way (http://www.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1390/Mptv/1390/8864_0027.jpg.html?path=gallery&path_key=0087182).

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yourbob.livejournal.com

Ah! More Fabulous!

I didn't QUITE fall off the chair when I clicked.

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yourbob.livejournal.com

Of course that gives me an Artistic Idea. It's not something I could wear, but if I found a model, I'd consider costuming....

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auroraceleste.livejournal.com

I could point you to three or four past posts on my LJ of the wierdness of KC con planning. I just don't get it, fandom here seems clueless. The costuming convention (MasqueCon or some such) that's in KC the weekend after Costume Con in St. Louis is the most immediate example: no research into other cons of the like (they seemed truly surprised that someone else had come up with the idea), no clue that there were any other cons that might conflict, had never heard of the ICG, had no contact other than LARP groups and a ping to the 12-person KC Costume Yahoo group. Very disappointing, the cons here seem to be run on alcohol and faith. I dunno if it comes from the past bad con experience (something with lawsuits and people in prison) or what, but things here are very weird.

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The Midamericon (KC in 2009) folks are actually pretty well connected in midwest fandom and in conrunning circles. I've know a lot of them for years through the Iowa and Illinois conventions, and back from the big Minicons (I stopped going about 8 years ago when I moved to CA). I still see them nearly every year at Worldcon and (when they're bidding) Westercon. I'm kind of surprised that they blew Smofcon so badly.

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jbriggs.livejournal.com

I don't think its as bad as all that, but SMOFcon did convince me that I actually do have to pre-support Montreal. Its no longer a KC cakewalk to Big Mac II, thats for sure.

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johnnyeponymous.livejournal.com

It's interesting to watch the fortunes of Montreal's bid.

When I first heard about it, I asked around and everyone said they had no chance. About a year later, most had up-graded Montreal to 'a maybe' and then after SMoFCon, I was hearing 'Montreal's gonna win'.

If there's anything that the last site selection should teach us, it's that we have no idea who's gonna win until the final count. I was considered nuts for thinking that Denver was gonna take it from the beginning, but it happened.

The thing I love about the Montreal bid (other than Montreal itself and Spruce Beer) is that they're planning a bilingual con. To me, that's a great thing.
Chris

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When they started, they were a hoax bid, and were just looking to pay for their party. 60 presups later, and they were serious.

They're one of the reasons that people are so scared of our hoaxes.

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kevin-standlee.livejournal.com

I'm skeptical about that origin story, really. Some "hoaxes made real" are actually trial balloons for real bids, unlike your finely crafted "Not possible even if we really wanted to do so" bids.

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Realistically, I thought it was pretty much a wash between the two.

What The big factors I saw:

KC had a chance at the sympathy vote. They pulled out of one past bid when their hotels didn't materialize. They lost to LA in their most recent bid.

Montreal has the Canadian-Screw-Up factor to fight against, and they've got the "I'll vote against anything that John Mansfield is involved in" curse.

I could see those things swinging the win to KC.

Screwing up Smofcon chips away at KC's sympathy vote, and also chips away at the idea that they're not going to have the same kind of screw-ups that Calgary and Toronto had (because they had, in miniature, similar programming problems).

So where does that leave Montreal? They're not Toronto or Calgary, and (when I've asked specific questions and presented specific problems) Rene has been really good with specific answers on how they're planning to avoid the mistakes of the past, not just "We're not going to make the same mistakes." They've still got John Mansfield, but some people realize there's a difference between the real John Mansfield (difficult and abrasive as he can be) and the bogeyman that his serious detractors make him out to be.

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kevin-standlee.livejournal.com

I wonder why I've never had any real difficulty with John. Yes, he can be a pain, but he's right most of the time. He works really hard, and the Worldcon he chaired was in one of the more isolated (for North America) locations and still turned out pretty well, I think. (I'm biased, as I was deputy chair.) Heck, it even had innovations like being the first Worldcon with a web site. (Alas, now lost forever.)

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I've never had any difficulty with John (of course, Robbie was the person who introduced me to him). He got hit pretty hard for his role in how Due North played out, but I later heard that the reason he gave the impression of having done so little was because Randy was trying to keep John out of the loop because he was afraid John would cause problems.

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I'm trying really hard to say this as diplomatically as possible, but just because you and Kevin have had no problems with John doesn't detract from the legitimacy of the problems that other people have had with him.

I am very hesitant to post details in public, but there really are legitimate reasons why many people ~~would rather spork themselves in the eye~~ will never work with him again.

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Oh, I totally understand that John's eminently capable of being obnoxious and condescending, and I also understand being unwilling to work with/for someone after problems.

I just find the draaahma about how eeevil any particular BNF is tiring. I've met far too many fannish scapegoats. In most cases, there's somewhere between a grain and a boulder of truth behind the reputation, and I may after examination find myself unwilling to work with the person, but the reputation is still almost always overstated.

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I can work with people who are merely obnoxious and condescending. I'm not thrilled about it, but it takes a lot more than that for me to refuse to work with someone.

I do understand how tiring it can be to listen to people's whining, especially since most of it is overstated. But some of it isn't, and the legitimate complaints can easily get lost amid the "he said, she said" whining.

And you don't know me well enough to know whether I'm whining because one time John was meeeaaan to me and I'm an oversensitive wuss, or whether he has really done things that border on evil. But I hope you at least acknowledge the possibility that it may be the latter.

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Hmm. It is hard to speak out publicly, but to be fair the problems in KC do not reflect how the Worldcon would run because most of the staff will be from out of town. Also the problems were precisely because a Smofcon is so easy that only a few people run it and they take it less seriously, and a couple of issues have a disproportionate effect, particularly when program is affected.

City to City and Montreal wins, except on the expense end. I loved the city myself, but the Montreal bid has plenty of problems too. The local fan base is almost non-existent and the tiny local cons are not Worldcon compatible and will be barely involved anyway. Also, many of those involved are the same people who messed up Torcon III -- which is a big issue, particularly since those issues were not only at-con, but continued after the con. There are also signs that a go-it-alone approach is likely again and that's about the worst thing a Worldcon committee could have. There are more issues too. This is far from clear-cut to me.

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I used to be well-connected in midwest fandom; I lived in Milwaukee for 6 years and went to a lot of conventions in that time. As I mentioned to

auroraceleste, who recently moved to KC, I've known many of these folks for over a decade. They were (and still are) regulars on the I-35 con circuit that includes KC, Des Moines and Minneapolis.

Rene headed program ops at Torcon and was one of the fixers who did a good job. From what I've seen from the Montreal bid, the folks who I saw actually causing the problems at Torcon aren't anywhere near the Montreal bid. Well, OK, Terry Fong is on the bid committee (and has a chance to show at Nippon07 whether or not he's learned the lessons of his mistakes in programming) and Peter Jarvis is on the bid committee (but from what I hear of board micromanagement, he was more saddled with problems that he wasn't allowed to do anything about rather than causing them).

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As I recall Program Ops was headed by

tammylc at Torcon III and she is the one who did all the rescuing, not Rene (I was on her team, and I believe Rene was there too). Rene was Deputy Division Head of Program as a whole I believe. Rene seems a capital fellow though and I like him plenty. He was at ConQuesT selling pre-opposing memberships which is just fricking cool, you have to admit. However, as I have said to him personally in several conversations, on this bid I have many reservations. If I thought he would rule this Worldcon I might lose a couple of my reservations, but I doubt he will.

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Rene is the face I always saw at the Program Ops desk (and as a participant, I was there several times a day to make sure my rooms and times hadn't changed) and one of the faces I saw passing out updated schedules at the parties each night. If he wasn't running program ops, he was definitely pulling his weight in the department.

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It was the people in the back room doing the saving. All credit to Tammy I assure you.

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I am not trying to take anything away from

tammylc's work.

Being the public face is an important job, though. Keeping the program participants at a low simmer by answering questions calmly and consolidating and prioritizing requests lets the crew in the back room get their jobs done.

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Agreed. I was meant to be one of the guys sitting out there (we did it in shifts) but we ran short of 5-min-gnomes and I ended up running up and down instead, because I was able to do so, and stupid enough ;). Lost a bunch of weight at Torcon III ;), mainly because it was so spread out and often I was the only one on duty when there should have been three... Oh, and my 5-2-1 rule was mostly a 5-3-2 rule as a result. I needed those extra meals and showers.

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I lost 12 pounds in less than a week. I think I was following the 3-1-1 rule, where the one meal was a hot dog grabbed off a cart.

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The South African crowd, most of whom I had not seen since 98 or before, got together for breakfast every day and several suppers, and that, along with my ex's desire for nice restaurant food while in a big city, forced my hand some -- thank goodness. But also the Program Ops, for those of us not in the office at night, was a day job, and though I did work several parties at T3 I always had a supper gap and a breakfast one too, and my ex probably brought me lunch a time or two. I was lucky I guess, plus I'm guessing you overworked T3.

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I'm guessing you overworked T3.

Gee, ya think? :)

Although, really, only 4-5 of my jobs were at-con...

Stuff had to get done. People kept calling me asking me for stuff because they knew it would get done that way. I couldn't very well let the balls drop because I was hungry or tired.

When people complain about Torcon, I know that I did everything humanly possible within the sphere of influence I had.

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No surprise there, on any of that. However eating and sleeping should still get squeezed in some, no matter what. It needs to stay fun.

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That's a matter of perspective. People are still bitching about Torcon 3 1/2 years later, long after I've caught up on food and sleep. So any potential problems I prevented were worth the temporary sacrifices I made.

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People are still bitching about the art show problems at Chicon2k (enough that it hurt the recent Chicago bid). People are still bitching about the mess that was the Atlanta Dragon*NASFiC, and that's over a decade ago. People are still bitching about Nolacon 2, and next year will be it's 20th anniversary. Fans have long memories, particularly when it comes to bad experiences.

I don't think Torcon 3 even came close to the fiasco that Nolacon 2 was. I didn't hear anybody comment that they had to leave the con to have a good time. For all its flaws (and I was directly impacted by several) I had an excellent time. Still, the delayed publications and the program that needed to be almost completely rescheduled were both high-visibility screw-ups that won't be forgotten by the average fan.

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I agree completely with everything you said.

But my point to

thirdworld is that, from the inside, I could see how much better Torcon could have been. I also saw how much worse it could have been. There are people who worked our asses off (quite literally--I lost 12 pounds over the course of the con) to fix or prevent as many problems as possible.

For example, I offered to do the restaurant guide in November 2002. I was assigned to do it on July 19, 2003--a month before the con. I had about three weeks to do all the research and writing before getting it to the layout person, who had a similarly insane deadline to get it to the printer.

Ken Smookler tried to convince me that it was impossible, and to concentrate on putting something together that could be used online at the Info Desk. I insisted it could be done, and it was--I did it by working 20-hour days for...I don't remember for how long, it's all a blur. But it got done. It wasn't perfect (there are certainly things I'd have done differently given more time), and the blackout put us even further behind and caused it to be a day late. But it was pretty good, if I do say so myself, and we wouldn't have had it at all had I not given everything I had to get it done.

And given fandom's long memory, I'm convinced that temporarily sacrificing some food and sleep was well worth it.

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The restaurant guide was very good, and...

...after the crap-fest that was the ConJosé restaurant guide (I work mere blocks away from the SJ convention center and know the neighborhood well), a bad restaurant guide at Torcon III would have just added insult to injury. It was a good place to put your efforts.

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Thank you. I still love hearing that people liked it. :)

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Not sure I agree, since the main at-con bitch was programming and it was too late to fix that. The bitching was going to happen no matter what once the heartbeat of the con had been affected. However I will say thanks for your efforts. Many fans put in many hours rescuing things. But next time take care of you.

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I couldn't have fixed programming, true. But from my perspective, no one is bitching about the problems that we prevented from happening. It's well worth some food and sleep.

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I don't know... I mean I really like my food and sleep ;).

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Rene was at the Program Ops desk *because* Tammy, Rebecca, and a few others were the ones working on the schedule grids behind the scenes.

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boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com

Well, OK, Terry Fong is on the bid committee (and has a chance to show at Nippon07 whether or not he's learned the lessons of his mistakes in programming)

From talking to him, I think that he knows what his mistakes were (being in over his head and not knowing enough to ask for help early enough was the major one), and has an idea of what to do to correct them. As you say, we'll see how Nippon works out.

He and Rene keep trying to recruit me, FWIW. I keep resisting. ;) Not because of a lack of confidence - far from it. I just have enough going on at the moment and I don't want to find myself burning out. (I honestly don't know how I survived this year's experience of chairing one con and co-chairing another, three weeks apart. It might explain why I'm having so much trouble these days waking up on less than nine hours of sleep. ;) )

and Peter Jarvis is on the bid committee (but from what I hear of board micromanagement, he was more saddled with problems that he wasn't allowed to do anything about rather than causing them).

Yeah, Peter was pretty much a figurehead.

And FWIW, I've always gotten along with John Mansfield as well. I'm not exactly sure why. *grin* I get along fine with Linda as well.

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Yeah, after hearing all the crap about John, I expected him to have green skin and giant warts and be breathing fire. Then I met him. So much for the "green skin" myth.

In the long run, I find the folks I can argue with and gripe at much easier to take than the delicate flowers who wilt under any criticism.

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But Peter was the one who appointed the un/underqualified problem children. The Board certainly did micromanage, but Peter isn't completely blameless.

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boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com

Well, as Chair, he ends up with the responsibility/blame for many things, of course.

I don't recall if he was responsible for appointing anyone below the Division Head level, though. I know I appointed all of my own Department Heads, some of whom I chose on my own, though some were offered to me by people who knew them and one or two were already on the committee doing other things, and volunteered. The problem I was faced with was that many of the qualified people (and by "qualified", I mean "people who have headed departments at Worldcons before") were already in other positions by the time the Member Services Division was created and I was named Division Head. Apart from Ben Bowring, who screwed up what was probably the simplest job there was, the people under me did pretty well under the circumstances.

That being said, yeah, there were a few Division Heads named who probably shouldn't have been, or Peter should have been stronger at dealing with problems before they got too big. But by the time they got that big - which was fairly late, as I recall - he was probably well into "the Board will handle it like they're handling everything else" mode.

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