On Saturday 03 April 2004 22:20, kreely wrote: > Main Positions Filled: > > Rob: ConChair, Hotel Liason, Marketing > > Mark: Treasurer, Webmaster, Also Credit Card, Dealers and Vendors. > Treasurer’s Report: Rob deposited $1,000 USD into account. > Unanimous decision to buy Ad Space from Akon. - $325.00 USD > > Sidenote: Wil Wheaton shows signs of Con Burnout and we have 2 outstanding > invitations that are at unknown acceptance status as of today. > > Stu: Transportation, Operations, Crisis Management/First Aide > > Kristie: On Site Registration, Gopher Herder (volunteers) > > Kreely: Emergency/First Aide, ConSuite (liquid Nitrogen fun) > > Troy: Emergency/First Aide, Panel Records, Net Admin, Mailing Lists, Badge > Printing
This should go on the website then. What email addresses does everybody want? We should contact the mario kart guy and make sure it's ok to put his contact info on our web page in regard to the game room. (Also, it would be nice if he could come to a future meeting where we hash out the details of the game room: layout, where the computers are coming from, etc.) I think Austin Bender has provisionally accepted the "Minister of Signage" position. > Rob ought to have the online registration completed this weekend. This > will include the Registration page, Confirmation Page, Payment (credit > card) page, etc. Working on it as we speak. You can see the live debug version at http://www.linucon.org/registration/register.py > As far as badge numbers go, Rob stated that he wants badge #0, Troy would > like #1, Mark would like #42, and kreely would like #4. I'll see what I can do. :) Hmmm... If I reserve 0-49 for concom assigned badges (where the GOHs and all the free registrations go) and then normal attendees get badges 50 and up... Then a special coupon code could be used to pick a badge number from the remaining list (the number could be encoded in the coupon code, something like "specialcode-42" to assign badge 42 specifically, and without the -42 it could just assign the next free one in that range... Hmmm... I'm trying to minimize the number of special cases, but in this case we specifically want oddball behavior... Think think think... > Troy will be working on a test run of tshirts. He did mention the fact > that he forgot to ask about colours. This will be sent back out in a > followup email from kreely. Transparent, with glow-in-the-dark lettering. Failing that, black t-shirt with... Oh, I dunno, forest green lettering? Any color on black looks decent, generally. (I happily bow to the majority in this one, I am not known for my fashion sense.) > If Novell is willing to pay for Howard Taylor to fly down here for the > Con, using his flight ticket from the Con for his wife, Sandra, would be > agreeable. Works for me. Even if they don't, the general rule of thumb is that a Guest of Honor gets a lackey flown in with them. At Penguicon, Pete Abrams got Trillian flown in, Eric Raymond got a ticket for his wife cathy, this year Wil Wheaton's bringing his wife, etc. Now you'll notice I haven't actually used the words "Guest of Honor" for any of our guests yet. "Featured Guests" is a marvelous weasel phrase to delay making decisions here, but we'll have to face it sooner or later. Penguicon has 5 guests of honor, which was pushing it but then we've had _really_good_ guest lineups, so it's worked out. Our original rule of thumb was that a guest of honor is somebody we want so much we're willing to buy them a plane ticket, but of course the Slashdot guys lived an hour away up in MIchigan, so we didn't have to. (We would have been willing to buy them a plane ticket if they hadn't, though...) Here in Austin, we have Steve Jackson living right down the street, who is our equivalent to the Slashdot guys. (We DID buy him a plane ticket for Penguicon, we'd have been willing to for Linucon if it had been necessary.) So he's a Guest of Honor (although he's toying with the idea "Host of Honor", but we'll worry about that later). I think we all agree that Eric Raymond, Howard Taylor, and Eric Flint are really cool as well, and them we are buying plane tickets for. (Eric Raymond plans to bring Cathy. Howard plans to bring Sandra. And if Eric Flint really wants to bring a second person, it would only be fair to bring them too. Domestic, not international, and we reserve the right to fly them in baggage class...) So judging by our flyers, we have four guests of honor. Now let's go through our pending invitation list: If John Kovalic agrees to come, he's a guest of honor. If Fred Gallagher agrees to come, he's a GOH too. (The plane ticket rule.) That would put us at six. If we invite Wil and he agrees to come, he's obviously a guest of honor. (I realise this would be squeezing in a _lot_, but on the other hand if we've got SJ and Kovalic in the same place, it's a crying shame not to invite Wil.) That would put us at seven potential Guest of Honor. Now we could call Evil Stevie a Host of Honor so that technically we had six Guests of Honor, which is slightly more manageable and probably what we should do. Each name definitely belongs on our flyers... This is why I've avoided the words so far, but if you guys don't mind us having 7 X of honors, I'm all for it. I suppose we could weasel our way around it with titles (Gaming guest of honor! Okay would that be Jackson or Kovalic? Comic guest of honor; Kovalic, Piro, or Howard? Linux guest of honor; Eric or Howard? Author guest of honor: Eric Flint, Eric Raymond, or (if he can come) Wil? They clump. Then again, we WANT them to clump, so we can put them on panels with each other...) Not a major issue, just something I haven't resolved yet. I should bug Tracy up in Michigan about this... > Troy needs to add to the mailing lists the following lists: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [EMAIL PROTECTED] needs to be double checked for operational status. > > An Archive for the mailing lists needs to be worked on. Yup. I haven't got time at the moment, anybody else wanna take a crack at it? > For the liquid nitrogen ice cream shows, we need hazmat and cryogenic > symbols that can be displayed for those who do not pay attention. Troy > will check with World Trade for information on obtaining these. Well, not hazmat. Nitrogen gas is one of the most biologically inert substances there IS. (Okay, you can get the benz, but not from what we're doing.) It's specifically the cold. If "hot" isn't hazmat, cold isn't either. I just like the word "cryohazard". Unfortunately, it's not a common enough hazard to warrant a symbol, it seems. Liquid nitrogen is apparently pretty safe if you're not an idiot. The UT staff guy stuck his finger in it three times to show me that. You've apparently got a couple seconds before your skin cools down enough for the liquid nitrogen to actually come in contact with it; before that it boils instantly and creates a vapor barrier to protect you. But if you close your hand around it it'll burn you instantly (the grenade principle). And actually pouring a stream of it ON somebody will use up the protective heat pronto.) But the only guy I heard about being seriously injured by a small amount of the stuff was some idiot who tried to drink some to impress his friends, which is Darwin Award territory... I tried googling for "cryohazard" and the only real hits were somebody using it as a login name, and a couple "do not touch tongue to pipes" type things buried deep in bureaucratic PDFs. So worst case scenario, we can probably make up a cryohazard symbol and print our own stickers. Who knows, maybe it'll catch on. :) > Con Suite: Check with Stu for location of mass amounts of Pocky. Check > with Planet Anime for Bawls. Rob has 11 cases of Blenam Ginger Ale. Red > and Gold capped. I originally got 8 cases of red cap and 4 cases of gold, but I broke out half a case of each for consumption by myself and my roommates. (It's easier not to touch the rest for six months if we've got a supply that we can touch.) If anybody wants to try some, I still have a few bottles of each left, I can bring one of each to the next concom meeting. I may be able to pick up another dozen cases or so on my way back from Penguicon. (By detouring through south carolina; south on I-95 and then west along I-20.) You can also get it shipped thorough the mail, but shipping just about doubles the price (real glass bottles, they're heavy and fragile) and several bottles got smashed in the process the one time I tried it (I think I got four cases and there were three smashed bottles. Trust me, you do NOT want to deal with broken glass mixed with soaked cardboard while trying to clean off containers you expect to get a drinkable beverage out of afterwards...) Still, this site has the contact info if anybody would like to try: http://theacf.com/blenheim/ It WAS a while ago, and I"m told they've improved their shipping processes (and commesurately upped the price) since then. I believe HEB Central Market also carries Blenheim now, but they charge over a dollar a bottle. I can get it for somewhere around 60 cents/bottle (plus tax) if I buy by the case from any of the local south carolina retailers that stock it. And it only adds a couple hundred miles to my trip if I'm driving back to texas from Pennsylvania anyway. And I've got a station wagon... :) > Positions not filled > > Dealer Registration: Now allocated to Mark Halelujiah. > Table Allocation: > Vendor Liason: > Fan Tables: > Artist Tables: We need to contact that art show person from ConDFW. Mark: do you have the contact info for her? > Green Room: > > Programming: > Panels > Art Show > Masquerade/Cosplay > Dance > Banquet > Gaming Rooms (Paper and Comp) Um, I think Troy was willing to be the programming umbrella dude at the moment? > Publications: > Web: > Program Book > National Marketing: *thought this was Rob? * Yes, me. Web is also me and Mark. > Minister of Signage: Allocated to Bender (Austin) > > Priorities: > Registration > Dealer's List > Program Head > Volunteer Coordinator: *wait, isn't this Kristie's area? * > VC needs to email [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mario Kart Guy) Volunteer Coordinator is indeed Kristie's area. That was in the original email that went out to the list. I'll post my updated version after I finish this email. > Guest Liason for Howard Taylor will be Ryan Bemrose. Cool. Do they have an email address? (Don't need to post it to the list, we just need to have it...) > Someone needs to remind Troy to contact Vendco about soft drinks for the > Con Suite. Hey Troy, contact Vendco about soft drinks for the con suite. Would this be cans, bottles, or a soda fountain? (I'm told soda fountain's cheapest. Penguicon just got lots of cans from Sam's club, which let them return the extra unopened flats afterwards. Nice of them...) > Rob was going to check into Water Joe. There are lots of competing brands now. Water Joe was the first, but the company seems to have stopped trying to expand. Their water source is in Wisconsin, so they're mostly north. http://www.waterjoe.com/getjoe.html Their mail order rate is $19 for a 24-pack: http://www.beveragesdirect.com/products/waterjoe/?aid=10 Again, driving to pick it up in person, it should be possible to get it for about half that. Or, if we want to bump the price back up just a bit, we could get our own labels on the bottles: http://www.waterconcepts.com/artwork/artwork.html http://www.waterconcepts.com/contact_us/Contact_Us.html It seems to cost about $200 to do a custom label run, plus the price per bottle of the water joe itself. If we get about 1000 bottles, the per-bottle cost of the private label would be 20 cents. (Thoughts?) > Troy and kreely will work on making a batch of caffienated soap before the > next meeting. If successful, this can be made and put into the little gift > bags for Con Goers. Cool. We should try to do a batch of liquid nitrogen ice cream at the next concom meeting. Mark and I can probably work on that... > Bags: Troy will do some checking and see if plastic or cloth will be > cheaper. Actual canvas can be pretty cheap too: http://www.branders.com/sp/froofree05227/Promotional-Cotton-Canvas-Tote-05227.html > Rob made mention that he can get 50 or so books from Eric Raymond. These > can be used as gifts for the first 50 registrants. Dunno the exact amount: more than 20, probably less than 100. > Troy needs to call Eric Flint. (local Baen Author) > > Extra lackeys will be needed for Panels. I'd guess we need to seriously start recruiting pannel fodder about 3 months before the con. Before then, we don't really know who we'll need, because we won't have a good idea what panels we're running... > More information needs to be gathered on local Austin gun ranges for Geeks > with Guns. Stu is doing this? > If anyone else has more notes than this, please post them. Right now, I’m > working on memory and Troy’s notes. I'll post mine next. > Thank you… > > Kreely (btw Rob, I prefer kreely, but Lisa is my irl name) Kreely I can REMEMBER. :) Rob
