Thanks for this mailing. I am sorry that no one has replied to it. It is a businesslike way of thinking and if someone in the UK had written what you wrote, then I would not have decided to get out of the QL community.
You write that making the QUANTA Magazine bimonthly was a tough decision, but that it may produce a better magazine. I suggested making the magazine bimonthly about 4 or 5 years ago. QUANTA was then in severe financial difficulties and their main suggestion for improving finances was to charge traders to attend shows (burst of laughter). In fact not only did they keep the magazine monthly, but they also insisted that each issue was exactly 32 pages, no more and no less. Think of the strain that must have been on the former editor, who had taken the job on temporarily while QUANTA searched for a new editor, but who then found himself as a permanent fixture. I don't think it unfair to suggest that QUANTA abused the former editor. A similar thing would apply to shows. One well run UK show a year on the American model was all that was needed. What happens in between is up to local groups. It does not even have to be directly QL based. Let's not call Ireland a QL show, but a QL piss-up, which is what it is. Nothing wrong with that. Some creative ideas can come out of a relaxing weekend. Equally a local group might like to run a fund raising activity for charity. Say, for example, one of their members had died from a particular illness then raising money for the appropriate charity would be a good way of honouring his memory. It would also help to bind the community together. It is about three years since there was a formal talk or demonstration at a QL show in England. Are we really saying that for three years nothing has happened in England worth talking about? I don't believe that, but if it is really so, then let's face reality and say the QL is dead in the UK. In fact we have lost the skill to organise true shows in the UK. It is no coincidence that if QL2004 comes it will be organised by QUANTA and one of the "old school" show organisers. It was the Manchester AGM that directly led to my decision to leave the QL world. First it took ages to get the date and place out of QUANTA. Then it was a two day show, which, apart from dinner, will be the same old hall, tea and coffee as before. I thought about it a long time. I have never enjoyed the second day of a two day show. Commercially it is always a disaster and by then I have spoken to most of the people I needed to see. I had a choice. Go only for the Saturday, This I could do as cheaply as £5 and for the first time in years I would make a profit at a show. Or go for both days. This would be at least double the travel costs and there would be an overnight hotel bill all for the second day in which I had no interest whatsoever. Goodbye profits. Goodbye a good feeling from a QL show. Manchester defined the limits of loyalty to the QL for me. And for those who think my £100 subsidy to the QL community is chicken-feed. then this is £100 after creative accounting. (If I go to Eindhoven I only charge £16 to Just Words! - the rail fare Amsterdam - Eindhoven.) I don't object to subsiding the QL within reason. I am not prepared to subsidise inefficiency. Geoff Wicks.
