MediaWest*Con
MaryB
I conducted a few months ago here and on a few other online services as
well as the Internet, about the MediaWest*Con hotel room lot--ah,
assignment policy. While I now freely admit that my sole motivation in
conducting the survey in the first place was to find out to what
incredible and bizarre conclusions that some people might jump to about my
motivations (a smashing success), I did come across some surprising
results.
Of the approximately twenty replies, only two seemed to be in active
support of the room assignment system. I say 'seem' because the two
respondents seemed a lot more interested in telling me what my problem
was than in actually answering the question. Of the remaining replies,
I was surprised to discover that the main assumption that was being made
about who would respond to my survey--that is, that only those disgruntled
by having not gotten a room via the new system would bother to respond--
turned out not to be true at all. There were two (yes, two) people who
confessed to having not gotten a room under the system, and both had
immediately signed on with a friend who had gotten a room because all
the people who intended to room together submitted separate applications,
enhancing their chances of getting at least one room. The rest of the
respondents were split about down the middle, between those who _did_
get a room under the system and those who would have never gotten a room
under any circumstances, because they could never know from one year
to the next whether they'd be able to attend the con in the first place.
The primary objection in all thoses cases was that the system didn't
address what the respondents felt was the real problem, which was that
the hotel rooms only went to those people who could plan on attending
the convention a year in advance. For those who couldn't plan that far
ahead, the new system is no better than first-come, first-served and
certainly no fairer.
I didn't hear from anyone who felt that they actually benefitted from
the new system over the old one, though it would have been nice to get
a response like that just to get a little balance and I still wouldn't
mind hearing from someone coming from that perspective.
Mary Bloemker
ma...@aol.com
