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The Arc of Infinity
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| | Subject: | CONvergence 4 Days | | Time: | 12:57 am |
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| There is a Four Day FAQ that's been posted. I think that's covered most of the issues.
I know that it is way too short notice for the meeting that we're planning for Tuesday, October 7 -- honestly, I think we all would have liked much more notice as well. It turned into either having way too short notice or no meeting at all if we were going to have the meeting before our PR1 deadline. So we thought we'd try our best with what we had -- which, sadly, isn't always good enough for some people.
While I've said that I don't think lj is a great forum for this, I'm certainly available in lots of ways and have taken on board the thoughts and comments of a wide variety of interests and people. I think the FAQ does a pretty good job of explaining the major things we've thought about and are continuing to think about. As I've said before, what I'm trying to figure out is how to take advantage of the benefits of four days and mitigate against the disadvantages -- figuring out what sort of compromises and trade offs we need to make, and how we build on what we learned from last year.
The idea is that we can't make the hotel bigger in space -- but we can make it bigger in time, and give a bit more breathing room. We're also not expecting that people can make it the whole time -- perhaps you have to work on the Friday, or you have a family Fourth of July gathering on Saturday, or whatever.
It's definitely a challenge -- I've been averaging two meetings a week for the last two months. I don't expect that to continue forever -- but it's been important to meet with departments and the other directors, as we try to move CONvergence into the next phase of its existance. And there are a lot of adjustments as we try to figure out how the organization works with new Directors with different skill sets, and how we can have the convention continue to be a success for many, many years to come, and we're going to need a lot of help, just like we've always had. | comments: 17 comments or Leave a comment   |
| | Subject: | Political Thoughts | | Time: | 09:08 pm |
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| First, I noticed that Michelle Bachmann was "worst person" on Countdown tonight...
and really, I wonder what sort of world you are in when the "gotcha" journalist for Sarah Palin is Katie Couric.... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | So how does John McCain thing of GWB? | | Time: | 09:02 pm |
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| And who is the flip-flopper?
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| | Tags: | convergence | | Subject: | Conventional Financial Explanations | | Time: | 07:17 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/juicy/cutealiens/thoughtful_a.gif) contemplative |
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| As we've been talking about moving CONvergence permentantly to four days, it's been a bit obvious that lots of us don't really understand how the finances of the organization work, and when the proceeds of the convention move to the Misfits part of the organization to be spent on sending scientists and writers to schools, or planning for space camp, or funding the year around events.
Misfits has a lot of financial security right now -- we survived crisises in that part of the organization several years ago, and I think it's taken a long time to get the organization right and I think it is still a work in progress. I'm excited by the inititive to set up a Space Camp scholarship, and I want us to have a solid amout of financial stability.
One way that we help with that financial stability is that the proceeds raised by CONvergence won't actually be spent by Misfits until over a year after the convention it was raised at -- so the money raised in 2008 won't get spent until the fall of 2009. That means we have a lot of recovery time in case something goes awry; if we have one year where something goes wrong, the organization will survive because we'll have over a year to prepare for it.
It means if we take a risk -- like we did in 2008's expansion to four days and a huge additional guest list -- we can plan ahead for it over a couple of years and have the Misfits budget stay relatively stable. It also is an insurance policy against all of the risks that might hit one individual convention. And most of those aren't things that we do -- you could have severe weather, or a total economic collapse, or a disasterous relationship with the hotel -- and we'd have time to adjust and react, including replacing members of the board if there was massive irresponsibility on their behalf.
And it turns out, perhaps because we spent so much time planning ahead of time to not make as much money in 2008, we made a good amount of money for the organization and the financial status of the organization is very strong and we didn't need the money from 2007 to help pay for 2008. We're generally very conservative when it comes to the money we spend and budget, so we can have a very strong and finacially stable organization that isn't just a 501(c)3 in theory, but can actually do good in the community at large.
I think it is very hard to run both a year round organization and a large convention -- I've frequently seen conflicts and tensions because of it, and not just in one organization or location. One of the reasons why I think the twelve member Board that we have today where we have the two regular subcommitees of CONvergence Directors and Misfits Directors is good because I think that lets most of the major details get done by small enough commitees that they can make decisions relatively independently well within their spheres of responsibility, but then also have a larger group of peers that can deal with the entire organization. It's not perfect, and I think there's still an unfortunate legacy of the original organizational structure that I think didn't work particularly well.
I'm neither Finance Director, and they're really the ones to ask about specific details of our finances. And with one of the finance directors stepping down next year, we've had a lot of good groundwork for the future that I hope we can build upon. | | comments: 26 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | convergence | | Subject: | Ok kids, here's the story... | | Time: | 11:21 pm | | Current Mood: | contemplative |
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| As many of you may know by now, the CONvergence Directors (ie, the 7 directors of the Minnesota Society of Interest in Science Fiction and Fantasy that are responsible for the CONvergence convention) have been evaluating the success of this year's four day convention and seeing if we can take advantage of that going forward.
I'm very happy to say that the entire 12 members of the Society Board of Directors unanamously voted tonight to instruct "the Convergence Coordinators to move forward with a four day convention unless the Convergence Coordinators determine it is unfeasible."
Does that mean that it's a done deal? Not entirely. We've been examining all of the issues, and are continuing -- how does it impact our volunteers? How does it impact our registration? What is the impact it has on the financial status of the organizaton? What does it mean to the hotel? Can we learn anything from other conventions? Arisia, of course, is one example, as a convention that by all indications is very much like CONvergence.
We've been meeting with our departments and will continue to do so -- but I think what has surprised me is how many of our departments found the additional day more relaxing and less stressful. Are there any show stoppers?
There obviously is a time line though -- and the convention itself will have formal communications on this subject as we go ahead, which this absolutely is not. We know that there are issues and concerns for some people -- and there is a potential for this to be divisive, as we've already seen in some of the online discussions over the last couple days. I don't really think online is the best place for these discussions -- which is why we've been having small meetings with our departments, and we hope to have other meetings and discussons as much as possible before we have to pull the final trigger. We've been thinking about a lot of different issues -- and they all interconnect. And we've got a lot of different subgroups to consider --- concom, volunteers, attendees, the organization as a whole.
As I've been telling departments in the Events Divison, our goals really are to find ways to take advantage of the benefits we discovered this year as a result of having a four day convention -- which are many (talk to Mainstage, or Cinema Rex, or CSL) -- and mitigate against the challenges. Those are the kinds of things we're looking at right now -- what are the tradeoffs? I think that's the case no matter what we do over the next couple of years.
Do I have concerns and doubts about this? Absolutely. Tons. We're looking at a lot of different issues, especially as we look at where the convention and organizatoin is going over the very long term -- how do we handle growth? What do we do to keep this community healthy for a very long time? Many of these things are the same whether we do three days or four days -- and there are absolutely risks no matter what we do. I've got concerns, doubts, and fears about where we go with this organization no matter what -- especially since I want something in this geographic area for someone like I was when I was fourteen or fifteen and went to my first science fiction convention. I'm proud of an organization that is working on helping bring science, or literature, or whatever into the school system. I think, in its small way, this can make this life a little bit better -- for people to have more fun, learn new things, help people find friends and family. I've got concerns, doubts, and fears, but I also have a lot of hope and optimisim.
We've been doing a lot of listening and will be continuing to do so -- really. We've had years of people shouting "five days", after all, and this came from many of our departments telling us that it was easier to have that extra day. At the same time, I can understand that there are challenges of individual expense, and what all of this means on the negative side is something we are considering as we move down this directions
I'm thrilled with all twelve members of our board of directors; people I consider my friends and allies -- we don't always agree on every point, but we're all there because it's a special organization and event that is evolving and hopefully improving all the time. The conflicts are inevitable -- especially because we've all got a passion for this organization and convention. That's why we spend a lot of our personal resources and time on it. It's a really very special thing -- one of the things that I'm very honored to be associated with. It can be hard and emotionally challenging -- because we all have something that we've invested a lot of our emotional time in, and we want it to be more successful going ahead as it has been in the past.
This isn't really something that I want to get into here as a huge public debate in a yes/no fashion-- I'm even more convinced that this is a horrible place for debates after the last couple of days. What I'm interested in this in a problem solving method -- how can you take advantages of the benefits we found of a four day convention and decrease the disadvantages? What are the cultural changes, policy changes, and event changes that we need to do. I don't think we can go back to a three day convention "just like we had before" -- we learned too many positive benefits from four days to just go back to that. But how do we best take advantage of those lessons? Those are the questions we're asking, and will continue to ask as we move forward. | | comments: 18 comments or Leave a comment |
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The Arc of Infinity
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