Silicon Parties (updated)
Michael Wallis
Dan ... if running a room party is more work or financial drain that
you or your group can handle, perhaps it's time to re-examine why you
do these things. Asking the net for donations of half people's salary
(even in jest) seems a bit excessive to me. (But what do I know,
right?)
Second, everyone attending Silicon, even the party floor, even at
night, should have memberships. It costs the people who work very
hard for 12 months to put on the con money to provide you the place
to party. It's usually considered common courtesy to join in the con
to help defray the costs of running it.
Thirdly, the ConCom and the Management of TimeCon had little to do
with the infamous letter that brought about your much publicized Rule
6. I think it's past time to harp on old (and resolved) problems and
move on. If YOU want the whole sorrid story, maybe you should ask
someone who knows a bit more about it, such as myself (Con Ops at
TimeCon '91 and Chairman of BayCon '92), LaMont Jones (Chairman of
Silicon '91), David Medinnus (Vice Chair of Silicon '91, Chairman of
Silicon '92), Craig Nicolai (Chairman of BayCon '91 and President of
Conventions of Time, Inc, the TimeCon sponsoring corporation).
Michael
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"I'd rather be building rockets!" |#include <Standard/Disclaimer.h>
Michael Wallis
> My information is that the concom saw the Rules before they were posted,
> and had the opportunity to protest the way it was worded, at the very
> least. The fact that they did not indicates either a very poor
> understanding of the English language, or a responsibility equal to the
> hotel's.
I'm sorry, but your information is wrong. While there have been
copies of that particular 'Rules' sheet out at past conventions, the
concoms have never had any input into it or control over it. The
hotel, until TimeCon, simply had them in at pile at Check-in. I
remember seeing one several years ago and complaining about it at the
time, but it's not a convention publication and there's little a
concom can do.
The reason why they were handed to people as they checked in at TimeCon
was because of an incident that happened at BayCon where a CEO of a
major corporation was checked into the hotel that weekend and had a
few problems with some of the less polite attendees. He wrote a
letter to his friend, the CEO of Red Lions Inn, Inc (as CEO to CEO)
and word came down from on High that Rules Will Be Enforced. Period.
End of Sentence.
The management of the Red Lion, understanding the fannish community
far better than the Corporate office, did what they could but there
were people from Corporate about during TimeCon (the next convention
up after the letter arrived) to 'check up on how they did'.
The ConCom tried as best they could to cope with both a Hotel
memangement caught between a rock and a hard place, and the fans who
were over-reacting with great enthusiasm. This has been discussed and
hashed out since then. We've offered to co-write or re-write any
future set of rules the Hotel thinks need to be distributed. At
Silicon, for instance, the Hotel has allowed us to wrrite the rules
in a fannish manner and include them with the Hotel description in
the Program Book. This will likely be the norm until such time as
someone pushes things too far and gets out of hand again, whereupon
non-local management will again try to clamp down.
Back in the Midwest, most of the fans seem to understand that a con
survives at a hotel only if they work with the concom to bend the
rules a bit without pushing things to the point where we get the
hotel and the concom in trouble. There seems to be far less awareness
of this, or far less concern about it, here on the West Coast. The
result is that sometimes thingds get beyond the ability of the concom
to smooth over. If fans were a little more appreciative of others it
would make the concom's job or running cons much easier and everyone
would have a better time, in my humble opinion.
Michael Wallis
> In either case, they STILL sucked. I'm sure we agree on that :-)
Yes, and they were poorly written (hell, they were poor English!),
but things have calmed down a bit on all sides and ruffled feathers
have been smoothed.
Now if we can just get the fans to put it behind them, life would be
a lot easier.
Mean Green Dancing Machine
[Lots of verbiage deleted]
Judging by your need to reiterate "the facts", you definitely never read
my original article on this subject. If, as you say, the Rules have
been available in this exact form previously, then the concom certainly
knew of their existence. Why was nothing ever done about the poor
wording?
You seem to create an artificial distinction between fen and the concom.
Are you a fan? Aren't you ashamed of a convention that had so many
problems? Well, I think we as a fannish community ought to feel ashamed
that we didn't restrain the more extreme members, but I also believe
that we should not be punished for that aberrant behavior.
My "harping", as you put it, serves several purposes. It provides
people with some amusement. It warns people of the dangers of
complacency against the threat of the Real World. It provides a
rallying point for iconoclasm. It reminds us that we *do* need to be a
bit careful.
Besides which, it's simply a good excuse for over-doing what we'd
normally do, anyway. :-)
--
--- Aahz (the *other* Dan Bernstein)
@netcom.com
Hugs and backrubs -- I break Rule 6
I'm not a programmer, but I play one at work.
Mean Green Dancing Machine
>
>Dan ... if running a room party is more work or financial drain that
>you or your group can handle, perhaps it's time to re-examine why you
>do these things. Asking the net for donations of half people's salary
>(even in jest) seems a bit excessive to me. (But what do I know,
>right?)
>
>Second, everyone attending Silicon, even the party floor, even at
>night, should have memberships. It costs the people who work very
>hard for 12 months to put on the con money to provide you the place
>to party. It's usually considered common courtesy to join in the con
>to help defray the costs of running it.
First of all, the name is Aahz, not Dan. Because I personally
disapprove of anonymity, I include my "real" name in my .signature, but
I ask you to treat my chosen alias with the same respect you show any
other person's name.
Secondly, I'd like to know how you resolve the two preceding paragraphs.
First you chastise me because I ask for money, then you berate me for
encouraging people to show up without buying a membership. Well, I just
re-read my flyer, and nowhere does it say anything about showing up
without buying a membership. And, we work hard at entertaining people
at our parties -- but we prefer the cost be only in time, not money.
>Thirdly, the ConCom and the Management of TimeCon had little to do
>with the infamous letter that brought about your much publicized Rule
>6. I think it's past time to harp on old (and resolved) problems and
>move on. If YOU want the whole sorrid story, maybe you should ask
>someone who knows a bit more about it, such as myself (Con Ops at
>TimeCon '91 and Chairman of BayCon '92), LaMont Jones (Chairman of
>Silicon '91), David Medinnus (Vice Chair of Silicon '91, Chairman of
>Silicon '92), Craig Nicolai (Chairman of BayCon '91 and President of
>Conventions of Time, Inc, the TimeCon sponsoring corporation).
I don't see what name-dropping is supposed to gain you. I don't think
you've read my article. I'll bet you didn't talk to the hotel manager,
either. See my next article for more on this subject.
Steve Simmons
>In article <6qNLBB...@clubzen.UUCP> mwa...@clubzen.UUCP (Michael Wallis) writes:
>Judging by your need to reiterate "the facts", you definitely never read
>my original article on this subject. If, as you say, the Rules have
>been available in this exact form previously, then the concom certainly
>knew of their existence. Why was nothing ever done about the poor
>wording?
Mike will undoubtably add his own comments, but this particular issue
I can speak closely to. It's based my 16 years of conrunning, for
whatever that's worth.
Every hotel is full of jerk rules. Most of them have to do with
liquor, but they're often all over the place. Those rules exist
because given enough people and enough time, *somebody* will do
something out of the realm of common sense and get the hotel into
trouble. The hotels lawyers then get into the act, and write a rule
that's broad enough to cover the situation. They could care less about
politeness or fairness, they're just covering their asses.
It has been my near-universal experience that the hotel will tell you
what their rules are and which ones they are willing to ignore. What
they won't do is put that variance in writing. That's so they can
defend themselves when sued or when the boss checks in and says "you
told them they could swim nude?" They've been real straight with me
about it and most MidWestern conchairs report the same experience. [[I
can't speak about Eastern, Western or Southern, but that'd because I
don't know nearly as many of those folks.]]
So imagine yourself in the sales managers office. You know about the
stupid rule, and he says "Yeah, we know it's stupid but corporate/legal
insists on it. Don't make it obvious and we won't worry about it."
Your choices are (1) accept his word, (2) walk. That's it -- the guy's
hands are tied. You may not like it, I may not like it, but that's
live in the convention biz. You can live with the stupid wording,
or you can go find another hotel. Be warned -- it's a long way to
go.
Years ago (yeah, yeah, I'm so old :-)) SF cons had a rep among hotels
for looking weird but being safe -- caused no damage, policed their own
people, and didn't cause problems. Now we've got folks fucking in the
lobbies and pitching dummies off inside balconies onto the tourists
below. Underage kids are getting smashed and the local cops threaten
to pull the hotel liquor licence. As bad as they need the business,
hotels are a lot more leery and a lot less tolerant than they used to
be.
Heck, Conclave used to schedule a nude swimming party. The hotel
unofficially supported it to the extent of supplying paper to cover the
pool windows (indoors in October in Michigan) and instructing the
security guards it was a private party, badges only. The only thing
they insisted on (besides covered windows) was a Red Cross certified
lifeguard. I'd hate to think about how that'd go over today.
--
"When I was in high school, the sensual aspect of electrical equipment
appealed to me. I can remember the smell of burning insulation . . . "
-- Robert W. Lucky, "What's Real Anymore?", IEEE Spectrum, Nov. 1991
Mean Green Dancing Machine
>
>So imagine yourself in the sales managers office. You know about the
>stupid rule, and he says "Yeah, we know it's stupid but corporate/legal
>insists on it. Don't make it obvious and we won't worry about it."
>Your choices are (1) accept his word, (2) walk. That's it -- the guy's
>hands are tied. You may not like it, I may not like it, but that's
>live in the convention biz. You can live with the stupid wording,
>or you can go find another hotel. Be warned -- it's a long way to
>go.
I'm not really interested in re-posting the entire article but I'll
quote here a couple of the Rules. This is to make clear that *no*
lawyer worth any money would have approved these Rules, because of the
legal problems ensuing from the wording:
2. On the first complaint of a party room, the room will be
evicted and all the occupants will be escorted off property.
[Could someone please explain how to evict a room? No fair answering if
you're from CalTech. :-)]
9. No pranfanity gestures will be allowed on any part of the
clothing. Violators will be escorted off property for the
remainder of the Con.
[What's a "pranfanity gesture"? Is it okay to put one on my forehead?
Is the word "fuck" a gesture?]
ho...@aic.nrl.navy.mil
> I'll quote here a couple of the Rules. This is to make clear that
> *no* lawyer worth any money would have approved these Rules, because
> of the legal problems ensuing from the wording:
On the other hand, they could very easily have been written by some
semiliterate hotel management droid, full of sound and fury,
signifying the amount of money that droid is worth. Probably all the
syntactic idiocy was left in because everyone who noticed it thought
it helped to poke fun at the semantic idiocy.
> ... 9. No pranfanity gestures will be allowed on any part of the
> clothing. Violators will be escorted off property for the
> remainder of the Con.
> [What's a "pranfanity gesture"? Is it okay to put one on my forehead?
After you're in fandom for a while, you start to notice that some fans
are somewhat wider than others. Some other fans are considerably
wider than you could possibly hope to imagine. These ``pranfans''
(from Latin *prandium*, late breakfast) are known for their propensity
for staying in the hotel restaurant snacking until all hours. True
pranfans, wishing to remain true to their etymological roots, sit down
to breakfast and just don't leave. In case they don't show up at the
dance, shimmying like a convent full of sisters Kate, go take a peek
in the restaurant.
Just say, ``Mo'!''
Dan Hoey
Ho...@AIC.NRL.Navy.Mil
Kiran Wagle
>quote here a couple of the Rules. This is to make clear that *no*
>lawyer worth any money would have approved these Rules, because of the
>legal problems ensuing from the wording:
>2. On the first complaint of a party room, the room will be
>evicted and all the occupants will be escorted off property.
>[Could someone please explain how to evict a room? No fair answering if
>you're from CalTech. :-)]
And while you're at it what exactly does "of a party room" mean? Does
a party room have to file the complaint?
>9. No pranfanity gestures will be allowed on any part of the
>clothing. Violators will be escorted off property for the
>remainder of the Con.
>[What's a "pranfanity gesture"? Is it okay to put one on my forehead?
>Is the word "fuck" a gesture?]
It seems that only the clothing is forbidden from making these
"pranfanity gestures." (How can a person put a gesture on her clothing?)
So what's the big deal? If you can't keep your clothing in line, then
leave it at home! :) [Which is what these Rules seem to be...]
--
...kiran
_____...@copper.ucs.indiana.edu______(812) 332-5589
From the corrections column in a July Fresno, CA _Bee_:
"An item in Thursday's [issue] about the Massachusetts budget crisis
made reference to new taxes that will help put Massachusetts 'back in
the African-American.' The item should have said 'back in the black.'"