(no subject)

[jazzfish]

Gah. Rant about Tcon for vt_komainu composed and wiped, because I am a twit. The short version consisted of "I'm sorry, I forget that there are people who are still idealistic about Tcon, but my experiences as staff were unpleasant. Ask Emily for more details, although she'll talk your ear off."

Reading went decently well. Attendance consisted of the Tuesday Night Music Club plus Ross and (later) Shawn Lassiter. Stuff was read. It was cool.

In retrospect it's just as well that I didn't finish Kierkegaard for today; Bliss is sick. Not that I'd be able to get back to sleep, though.

Comments

Re:

[tango.livejournal.com]

I asked at a Spiel meeting if Spiel wanted a room or was willing to go in the Fest Halle with everyone else - the response I got, with the President there, was that Spiel was willing to go with everyone else.

[jazzfish]

By "Room" do you mean a hotel room, or (to use last year's example) the behind-the-bar room? If hotel room, then yeah, fest hall with the rest of gaming is definitely the way to go. Space issues aside, that way we don't get told "Oh yeah, and now pay us for your room" like we did two years ago. OTOH, if you mean the behind-the-bar room then ... then it's clearly out of my hands. A bad judgement call on the president's part (imo) but his call to make.

Re:

[tango.livejournal.com]

It was meant like a behind-the-bar room.

[(Anonymous)]

I know I'm randomly barging in on a private conversation, but as Tucker wasn't there and I was... The consensus went something like "If there is a room we'd use it and be happy to have it but it's up to you guys." This is for two good reasons:

Mainly: We're Spiel. We bring games someplace, we play them. The minimal politics and minimal effort involved in that is a reason Spiel exists and continues to exist. It requires games, a place, a communication vector, and a quorum of people. That's all. Our "official leaders" are required to do only slightly more than your average slug, most of it throwing out irrelevant university mailings, and we like it that way. I've been in and around enough other clubs imploding, alienating members, bifurcating, stopping and starting up again, and the cause has always been either the work involved, or the politics of the work involved. I like it that Spiel can avoid these things, but it does make it difficult to interface with Technicon's facet of reality, where 3-6 months of heavy planning end in 3 days of event, versus around 5 minutes per person of casual planning -> several hours or more of event. End rant.

And complicating factor: A significant number of Spiel-attendees / Spiel-officers in attendance at the time were also involved in Con at that time and had other ideas for uses for that particular room / any similarly sized room. Certainly those people weren't going to fight tooth and nail for that room to be taken away from, well, them, and the rest of us were even less likely to start fighting tooth and nail *against* other people in the room we tolerate reasonably well. (Note that we are apathetic in the first place.)

So in sum: If we have a room, we'll use it. If we have to engage in politics or do work to get said room, we're probably not interested. The grumbling you hear is just the natural grumbling of those who would prefer to have a thing fall into their lap and are disappointed when it doesn't. The people saying, "I will boycott Technicon because they are rat bastards" are generally those who have tried to care and make effort and been chewed up and spit out by the politics, rather than those of us who have chosen not to try. As one of the latter, I give T-Con my $28, I get a college reunion with some provided entertainment, I'm basically happy. I can understand very much why the others aren't, and that's why I don't get involved in the first place.

--Kayla

[cxi162.livejournal.com]

The people saying, "I will boycott Technicon because they are rat bastards" are generally those who have tried to care and make effort and been chewed up and spit out by the politics, rather than those of us who have chosen not to try.

I will agree with pretty much all of your post except for the above. It is my opinion that there is very little politics involved and most of it is simply due to personal issues with individuals that get blown out of proportion.

[jazzfish]

It is my opinion that there is very little politics involved and most of it is simply due to personal issues with individuals that get blown out of proportion.

*shrug* You say tomato, I say evil red fruit. If the way to get things done is to ego-stroke Certain Individuals, then that sounds suspiciously like politics to me.