(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: Devil's advocate for panels

[jazzfish]

Sure; other perspectives are welcome.

The problem is that it's sometimes hard to find the balance. (snip)

This is very true. But I feel like social boardgaming (as distinct from role-playing or wargaming) has had a bigger presence at Tech in the past few years, and that it can be a draw at Tcon much like any given panel. And last year I think it was; there were *always* (except for 2-10 AM) upwards of a half dozen people in the room, and not the same people.
The lack of room this year can apparently be traced back to Kayla's post above.

Sadly, this is a problem with the function space.

Agreed, in a big way. (Then I say "Maybe it's time to leave B-burg" and someone says "We're here for the students and the money that Tech will give us" and I say "That sounds shortsighted" and then we agree to disagree, as I have neither the time nor inclination to research the budget situation and draw my own conclusions.)

On Spiel panels: this was kicked around a couple years ago. It never got anywhere that year due to apathy; it was never revived because, when Emily submitted write-ups for scheduled games/tournaments, they were ignored and/or rewritten for program book, and it seemed like a lot of effort to go to just to be ignored. Plus programming has, in the past couple of years, been done at the last minute by con staff, and no one on our end was willing to figure out who it was, figure out who on our end was willing to run panels on what, and get all that information to the person doing programming *and* convince them to add it in.

The room copay is also a neat idea, and we might well be up for that next year. Depending on how the politics on our end shake out, of course.

Again, thanks for your input!

Re: Devil's advocate for panels

[vond.livejournal.com]

I think last year and this year as well, we've discussed how nice it would be if we could use the multi-club aspect to get over the $1500 Event Funding cap. The general response has been "we're not sure", because we've thought that that cap might be applied to a single event.

As for leaving town, it's not short-sighted at all, if you understand the actual goals of the con. Technicon isn't supposed to grow into a massive ubercon with thousands of attendees. We're not trying to make money. We don't want to become a corporate entity or an offical nonprofit. We're trying to stay under the radar of the IRS, and under the umbrella of Tech's tax status. If the goal is to make a good business, we should start from scratch with a new name (for back-tax reasons), incorporate, elect a board, etc. Or you could just try to help Rising Star grow, since it's already setup for all these things that Technicon isn't supposed to be. This is my understanding of why Tcon won't leave (besides the things you said, of course).