On 22/10/2013 22:21, Richard Mellor t/as RWAP Services wrote:
Thanks for the additional information. Pity I did not know this before.
What puzzles me is why Sarah wrote in the April/May magazine as if it
was almost a done deal and then they backtrack in Oct/Nov. Surely they
should have realised what the costs were in April.
Unfortunately Sarah often makes statements in the magazine that she
never delivers. This has happened too often over the website. I gave
Quanta very favourable coverage in QL Today only to find I had been
duped. That's why I have been so hard on Quanta's web failings more
recently,
I thought I had put this in my original suggestion - I never suggested
that Quanta fund the whole event.
In April / May, so far as I know, the Quanta committee had not
investigated any options for holding the event at all. I had made the
suggestion that they look at an event at Snibston in April 2014 (not
Cambridge) as part of the Leicester based retro computer museum's vintage
gaming weekend (which was building on the one they held there this year) -
which the committee seemed to be in favour of.
However, when I contacted Snibston, they were struggling to offer a small
room for a committee meeting / AGM. Talks could be held in the lecture
theatre but the cost came back as £1500-£2000 for the day !!
I then made a few enquiries to try and find a venue which could offer a
larger room for traders and a workshop - but even then, I was thinking of
an all Sinclair event to help cover the costs. However, every venue I
tried could either not offer anything, or were asking silly money.
My last attempt was to try the computer museum at Cambridge, which
initially seemed not to be ideal, as it is a bit out of the way, on an
industrial estate with what appears to be limited parking - however, the
museum have converted their large empty space into two rooms - one of
which is a classroom, the other the main display hall, and said that on a
weekend the courtyard outside is empty offering around 40 parking spaces.
A Holiday Inn has just opened over the road from them, and they eventually
came back with confirmation that the bus routes could drop people 5
minutes walk away. They also offered the cut price of £1000 for the
weekend on the basis that the museum could stay open to the public still.
The latter makes a ticketed event a little awkward unless you can cordon
off part of the main hall.
However that seemed about the best I could find....
Thanks again for the extra information. However it does not change the
point I was making. Quanta has organised enough two day events to
realise that they cost a minimum of £2,000. Usually you have to reckon
on paying £1,000 for the venue and then you have additional costs.
QLis21 had £2,196 in additional costs but there was a lot of
irresponsible expenditure - AA signposting, beads to the natives (Phone
trees) and the notorious "I am a Q--er" T shirts. Total cost £928. In
other words essential additional costs £1,268.
QLis25 is difficult to quantify as they have put other silver jubilee
costs in the account. The total show costs were well over £2,000.
Sarah wrote in the April/May magazine "we hope to provide an interesting
weekend". It was clear they were thinking of a two day show which would
have involved substantial hotel costs, particularly as in Oct/Nov she
named the two potential venues as Cambridge and Bletchley Park. They
should have known in April that there would be costs of over £2,000.
Then why the backtracking in Oct/Nov?
Quanta should have sat down in April and asked the question "What is the
maximum we can budget for a QLis30 celebration?" I think they would have
come out at a figure of about £1,000. Then you brainstorm about what is
possible and what is not possible for £1,000. Clearly it would have to
have been a 1 day event,
Best wishes,
Geoff
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