Live from Confusion
I'm in the fourth hotel (each in separate states or provinces) in the past seven days. Last weekend we went to Batavia to see my nephew Johnny for a hockey game in which he spent too much time in the penalty box. Then on Monday we went to Montreal for the memorial service of Dr. Riva Ripstein-Soicher, Merle's aunt. The Best Western in Kingston is a really nice hotel, with fireplace, huge rooms, wireless Internet. Although she was 84, it felt like a tragically young death; Riva was so active in so many ways that she had years of items left on her to-do list. From my perspective, her skate-dancing and mountain biking were just humorous pastimes, her piano recitals and poetry more interesting, but it was just the way she seemed to connect with everybody and know the right thing to say and do that put her in a class by herself. Riva looked after me for a few days in 2000; I spent a week at Lakeshore General in Pointe-Claire that summer with a thrombosis, then stayed with her a few days; that's why I had been on a cane at Chicon 2000. At the memorial service, we talked a little to Merle's brother Sam; Merle's neice Rachel is studying her M.A. in 19th-century literature at the American Univeristy in Washington, and her neice Joshua is working on a business degree at Seneca College. Benjamin is recovering from a work-related accident with his foot, and Naomi and Noah are doing well. I got a little bit of the memorial recorded on the PDA, and I suggested to Judy that she put together some sort of reference about Riva for the future. On Wednesday we had lunch at Snowden Delicatessen, which featured the usual ethnic improvisational performance art. At first glance this looks like neighborhood gossip, until one it becomes clear quite how many opinions people have and quite how dearly they hold them, all flavored with an accent heard in few places outside Long Island. And we got about a year's supply of Montreal bagels. The Troy Marriott is an actual hotel, not a crumbling ruin like the Van Dyke Park, which is giving a slightly different flavor to Confusion. The elevators here are merely inadquate, which is a great improvement over completely useless, though the trompe-l'oeil elevator is an interesting touch. I've been doing panels and spending time at a table for Cascadia Con. I sat on a panel about thirty years of fanzines, at which I mostly listened to Geri Sullivan and Joel Zakem, then a panel on movie trilogies, then a panel on how technology affects the creative process (showed off the toy), and finally a panel on the "Media Year in Review", where we didn't really talk about movies much but we did end up talking about comics for some reason. Tomorrow I'm on a panel about the "Tidal Pools of Fandom". Tonight I'm not throwing any party, which feels very odd. Ad Astra is having a party, but the party patrol is covering it. Chicago in 2008 is not throwing a party; the main crew (I guess Deb and Bob) couldn't make it due to weather. Having the laptop and the PDA have been very helpful. I can write in the car, in restaurants, wherever. I have finally submitted the interview of Melissa Scott that I recorded last year. Russell gave me a pruned list of program items for Ad Astra, which I am entering into the database. I knocked a few other things off the to-do list (not related to writing), so hopefully I can make more progress next week. I also got a significant update of the convention list at SF Site posted; it's got over 640 events listed now. But what's particularly interesting is that the web form is generating entries. I've gotten half a dozen web forms in the past week or so, a couple of which were completely new. It would be cool if I could get most of the entries from people coming to me to tell me about their cons, instead of me having to do research to find them all. What I really want in the long term is to help make it easier to run conventions, and thereby encourage people to start new ones. First I will start with my excuses for not keeping this journal up to date: Smofcon, Tammy's housewarming, Christmas, busy at work.I attended Smofcon because it was in Chicago, and as a Chicago fan and conrunner I had to show up at a local Smofcon. :) I happen to be a Chicago fan who lives hundreds of miles away, but I make as many local (Chicago) cons as I can; Smofcon was my twelfth. It was pretty much what I expected: I talked to a lot of people I knew well and some that I didn't, and I learned a few things. I'm inclined to say that I prefer a slightly less formal event like Midwest Construction. One of the interesting things was the poker game. I have very little experience playing poker with humans (we all play computer games, right?). I won about $12 on the weekend, and I discovered a couple of things: I overplayed my hands, and sometimes I relied on luck. Both of these things bother me, and are cause for future reflection.
It was very nice going to Tammy's housewarming. If one likes the whole living-in-the-suburbs thing, she seems to have one of the best versions of it, a "co-housing" community which is a sort of integrated development of a few dozen families who cooperate on issues like common areas (paths and roads, etc.), somewhat isolated (i.e. far enough to be not real convenient to walk) from anywhere else. (I say "if" as I can't understand why anyone wouldn't prefer an urban environment, but I guess that question looks different in Michigan.) If one defines success as having the things one wants where one wants them, she seems to have achieved it. Tammy's friends are even more techie than the people I work with, which is saying something; the number of different gadgets and wireless devices was really impressive. We were a bit amused when her oven reported a problem and requested a service call on its LED display. People tried rebooting the oven, without success. Marah and I were particularly amused as she had just rented the DVD of Terminator 3, so we joked about the "Rise of the Appliances".
I discovered why I felt a bit overwhelmed at work lately: when I was able to update my list of projects, I found that I had completed eight projects in six weeks. Only twenty-seven more projects to go. I'm looking forward to the holiday season to catch up on things while others are away. With my boss, the other manager in our group, and our VP on vacation, I'm pretty much in charge of things for a week or two. When this has happened in the past, it basically means I can catch up on email.
I just got my program schedule for Confusion. Looks like it's going to be a good con. I'm going to have to do some preparation for some panels. I'll also be able to visit other people in the Detroit area while I'm there (as well as some Chicago people who come in for Detroit cons). And the Ad Astra party patrol will have its first outside-Toronto party. I'm gratified that our efforts to broaden the horizons of Toronto fandom are bearing some fruit.
Also finished the preliminary draft of chapter two of Traitor's Home. It's a short chapter (since I'm closing it at the logical cliffhanger), but it still feels like progress. The reference site is also starting to grow nicely.
I have performed some very small tasks for the Noreascon web team. I look forward to doing more.
I'm also taking a course in "System Analysis and Design" starting in January, which hopefully will be more interesting than the course I took in the fall. Oh, about this web site itself: Seems people are reading it. I must make more of an effort to keep things up to date. I also need to figure out a way to incorporate comments. (Note that this is a homegrown thing, not some third-party application.) To that end, I've also been reading about CGI and Perl. Funny story: the book I have on this, I started reading a while ago and then I set aside. Well, I used a business card as a bookmark. So when I opened it again, I found the business card: "UUNET Canada, NCC Specialist..." which is five years, three or four versions of the company name, four job titles, and one work address ago. Nice to get back to some priorities. :) The book is amusing in its historical context, referring to the Mosaic browser and version 0.9 of the HTTP protocol; it describes Netscape as "new". So the sample programs don't work. So my plan is, in my copious free time: learn CGI and Perl, put some interactive capability into this web site, update the rest of the site.
To help me organize myself and accomplish some of the aforementioned goals, I bought a new Palm Tungsten T3. Nice toy, especially for writing. Unfortunately, I wasted Sunday passing a kidney stone (argh); consider this another creative excuse for not writing. The battle against entropy continues.
Last paragraph should have ended, ", baji-naji." I spent the remainder of Sunday reading Explorer. C.J. Cherryh is one of the few writers I really can't put down; I must recommend to friends to read this book (as well as the earlier five in the series). C.J. is coming to Ad Astra in April; it will be great to have her in Toronto. Especially as the last page of Explorer in paperback is an ad for Tanya Huff's Valor series, and just before that is an ad for Julie Czerneda's books. It's gratifying to see friends mentioned in the same breath as Cherryh.
Oh yeah, Bouchercon. I haven't heard of any progress. Crime Writers of Canada and Sisters in Crime Toronto chaper have heard no real news; there has not been a Bouchercon committee meeting scheduled. Someone has suggested that it would not be prudent for me to be involved in a(nother) convention which has leadership problems. I am finding this argument persuasive. Rumor has it a contract has been signed for the Convention Centre, which pretty much means the convention cannot possibly break even. I have decided not to be involved in the convention unless two conditions are met: (1) someone on the committee asks me to work on it and (2) I see a believable budget. I would have liked to be able to help out, but it would be very difficult to start at this late date. So far the people who would ask me are working on distancing themselves from Bouchercon and/or are focusing their efforts on Bloody Words 2005 or other organizations and events. Do please note that I am by no means an official spokesperson, this is just what I hear third- and fourth-hand. Should anyone have more solid information about Bouchercon 2004, I'd be interested in hearing.
To close on a silly note: Merle's been asking me for a while to see what I look like clean-shaven. I told her if she got me an electric razor, I'd give it a try. She got me an electric razor for Christmas, so I shaved. (Last time I shaved, Jimmy Carter was president.) Jury remains out as to whether I'm keeping the look. I mention it here only to see who is reading this journal. So if you're not surprised when you see me, I'll know why. :)
Busy month.
Windycon was good. Got some positive feedback about Seattle; people like the idea of going to the Emerald City.
We got the torcon3.on.ca domain back up, which means the email is back and the post-con work can get started. Finally. Got rid of (as in handed in) a paper for my ITM class on Tuesday. It's a lame class, but it was a distraction. No more. I've been able to get to my to-do list.
I have completed the update of the convention list at SF Site. The list has over 600 conventions and can be filtered for location, date, and category. I also finished the chapter one of the new draft of Traitor's Home, finally. Registered for Boskone. (Marah says there's a Noreascon meeting. As she says, it'll be nice to attend an actual concom meeting for some Worldcon.)
On that subject, still no word on an actual Bouchercon committee meeting.
Progress, after a fashion.
I have written a draft of a travel article for the Noreascon web site. I have put together a draft of a programming web site for Ad Astra. I have submitted the domain registration change for torcon3.on.ca to restore the pre-convention status quo. I have finished the first scene of chapter one of the new draft Traitor's Home, fourteen pages. (Longer than I thought, but it covered a lot of ground.) I got the registration PDF onto the Bloody Words web site; the site still needs design, but at least it's got the minimum material.
Quick reviews:
Seems I'm behind on the journal. But the purpose of the journal is to keep a record of what I've accomplished, and I've had a good couple of weeks.
Albacon was extremely relaxing. Originally the plan was that Merle and Sue were going without me, but when the con moved to Lake George I just had to go. It was a place my family used to visit when I was a kid, and we still do; we were up on the Fourth of July, but it was kind of packed then. On Thanksgiving weekend (Columbus Day to Americans), Albacon was at the Roaring Brook resort; Marah and Andre went horseback riding. As a conference facility it lacked some amenities, the lack of restaurant or Internet being issues for some people. I don't know, for me, even though the rainbow of autumn colors (not to mention the actual rainbow that proceeded us up the Northway) or the backgrop of mountains doesn't normally affect me, the place just resonates for me. Anyway, Elaine Brennan asked me to help (Adina Adler) with the Noreascon web site; that'll be a really easy job, a reasonable way to decompress from Torcon. Got to chat with Lois McMaster Bujold a little and got to hear Leslie Fish sign, either of them alone worth the trip. I got to just hang out, talk with people. On the way back from Albacon we stopped at Saratoga, but we couldn't find any exotic Saratoga chips; we also visited my aunt outside Troy.
And (back to the point), being around writers and having time to think is always helpful. I found a way to restart the novel. Got a couple hundred words done at Albacon, got more done on the way back, and I'm up to 2000 words so far. The opening was a big hump; the old opening just wasn't solidifying. I'm happier with it, got more dialog and action earlier.
I'm surviving school. Managed to get both assignments in for the 7th, got through the midterm <sigh>. What the course lacks in intellectual challenge it makes up for in busywork, so it's actually moderately difficult even though I'm not actually learning anything.
I spent Saturday celebrating Caitlin Wrigley's eighth birthday, and so missed the USS Hudson Bay meeting that day. So it goes.
I put together the core of a programming database for Ad Astra on Sunday and. As of Monday evening it generates a master schedule and individual program pariticpant schedules, which are the most important reports. More work to be done, but it's a good start.
Back to the to-do list.
Cheryl Morgan's extensive critique of Torcon 3 is found on her web site at Emerald City. It wasn't very complimentary, of me or of the convention. It could have been worse. There's a part of me that wants to respond to a few points, but it would either involve criticizing people I like and respect, and I'm just disinclined to do that, or it would involve criticizing people I don't, and plenty of people are already doing that already. A couple of things struck me about Cheryl's article. One is that she must not have talked to a lot of people who worked on the convention; that's not a general comment, it's just that there were some specific things that a lot of people would have said that I kind of didn't hear in the article. That is not in any way to diminish the substantive comment of her critique about the things that went wrong, just that I don't think she was able to get a clear picture from most of her sources about who was (or wasn't) responsible for what. I did speak to her, but from reading her article, I get the impression she mostly spoke to long-time SMOFs, who were unfortunately underrepresented on the Torcon committee and so in this case didn't have a direct picture of things that happened, compared to some people who were in the jobs. The other thing that struck me was that, while many of the mailing lists made a point of passing the URL around, I saw essentially no discussion of her article, which was different from previous years. This partly confirms my feeling that she didn't talk to some people in key roles, but it also suggests that the factual details of her article were fairly accurate, i.e. nobody is really inclined to debate those points. I don't mean at all to suggest that Cheryl didn't research the article properly; obviously she did do extensive research, far beyond what one could normally expect of a fan writer or a convention review. Just that there was a disconnect between the usual sources and the people who ran much of the convention. Nobody is talking about the article because people just want information.
At any rate, as far as my personal actions are concerned, I'm happy to answer specific questions, and I'm also happy to get feedback about specific issues. While I may show a "stubborn unwillingness to accept blame" for decisions that were actually made by other people that I specifically recommended against, I am willing to take responsibility for things I had some control over.
On Thursday, we held the monthly group therapy session for Torcon survivors (Andrew Specht called it the "Never-Ending Bitch Panel"), also known as the First Thursday pub night. Interesting rumor du jour: it was said that Stephen Christian (past chair of Ad Astra) wants to organize a bid for another Toronto Worldcon. Andrew Gurudata was also associated with this rumor; neither of them were present so this is unconfirmed. It was therapeutic, for me, to hear other people saying, "You should have..." in rants that I've been saying for years. Oddly, however, though I am one of the chief boosters of Toronto fandom, it appears that my role will be to educate people that they can't go too early. We were there until 11:30 PM.
Saturday was Rob Sawyer's party. Great party, as usual; if anything, it was a better party than usual. The party was so full from one end to the other that even the back bathroom had half a dozen people chatting. I chatted with Carolyn about their trip to Ireland. I talked with Evelyn Baker about Ad Astra, and suggested one role she could play that would be very useful is just to talk to Amanda Foubister as a sounding board and point of support. Odd things happened. People I didn't know congratulated me on my Aurora nomination this year. Later as I was talking to Rob, someone commented to him that he would have to make room next year for another Hugo, and Rob said we both would because I would be up for a fan writer award. I explained that I definitely wouldn't be up for a writing award in 2004 as I have really slacked this year (had some other project that occupied my time). But he observed that those awards are kind of lifetime achievement awards, which is partly true (but doesn't quite explain David Langford). But I would have to work quite hard for a number of years to be a serious contender in the category. We stayed until midnight; there were so many people there it took a while to talk to everyone we wanted to.
Linda Deneroff sent me her database, which turns out to be the Chicon database. It's really good; unfortunately, Access 97 isn't fully compatible with Access 2000. <Insert "Microsoft sucks" rant here> It's got a lot of really good ideas. The Seattle committee meeting is on Sunday; I have delivered preliminary reports for programming and for the progress report.
Speaking of progress reports, I received the Interaction PR#1 in the mail on Friday. It is the first progress report I've seen that has no bid advertisements in it. I will speak to my friends in Chicago to correct this for the future, but it's really odd not to see either of the 2007 bids advertising.
Have to work on homework. Going to Albacon next weekend. It's going to be a busy month.
I went to my first Ad Astra meeting yesterday. Mostly just a "hi I'm so-and-so" meeting. I didn't get the impression that this group perceives a great need for change, which is at odds with the recruiting efforts they've done this year. The old dilemna: whether to work for positive change or not rock the boat. Odds are I will be having a few opinions over time. Didn't get to Word on the Street afterwards; I've got a cold.
The Ink*Specs seem interested in getting going again. My excuse was Torcon; now my excuse is catching up with all the stuff I put aside to work on Torcon. I'm glad Mici and Doug want to get started again and I hope to catch up with them. Fortunately, my class at Ryerson seems likely to be only a very minor distraction. <sigh>
I've started the programming discussion for Cascadia Con. I'm looking forward to building a proper database.
I've made a lot of progress with the SF Site convention database. It now filters on date, location, and category. There are three steps in building the list of conventions: checking the existing entries in the database, going through all the email, and researching web sites. I'm up to July 2004 in checking the existing entries. Once I complete this update, I won't need to code HTML pages anymore, I can just upload the whole database. This will make it much easier to keep up to date.
I have finished Angel Season One, and with that everything on the DVD shelf. I have a rule that I only buy one or two DVDs per paycheque. I have the Andromeda 2.4 and 2.5 on order, but 2.5 doesn't come out until October 7. My rule used to be "a DVD", but now it's more like "a boxed set" or "one or two related DVDs". Well, I have books to read too. :)
Strange rumors and unworthy thoughts
After a normal convention, there is a certain amount of post-con work and email to wrap up details, log lessons learned for future reference, thank the helpers, and so on. But Torcon was not a normal con.
On Monday, September 8, Michelle Boyce changed the DNS registration to point mail to her own server. This move was not announced to anyone, and as a result, email for the domain has been effectively cancelled for almost all addresses. I believe Michelle set things up so that everything goes to "info@" so Lance gets some things, but the division and department mailing lists do not go to the intended recipients, and the committee and talk lists are shut down. Peter Jarvis has confirmed that he gave no instruction to this effect, and he said that Michelle was not intended to have any post-con role. But the board of the Torcon corporation has decided to get involved. They are having a meeting on Tuesday, September 23 to discuss the problem. Any attempt to do any of the normal post-con work would require setting up some sort of communication channels to do so, and that's going to stir up a huge stinkbomb of argument; I'd just as soon wait. So for the moment, I am not the syster administrator and I can't respond to questions about email.
And yet, outside the board and division heads, Torcon generated a lot of goodwill and positive interest. Having organized the Moose party, I have become somewhat of a lightning rod for complaints about Torcon 3 and expressions of interest in Torcon 4. I had lunch with someone yesterday where the topic was discussed. It's very strange. Before Torcon 3, I thought I was the only person thinking about it as being feasible; now, it seems, I'm the one behind the curve. Perhaps we can schedule a very informal discussion at Ad Astra. By then we might even have a line on a source of funding (I kid you not).
Cascadia is moving ahead as well, also faster than I expected. We're still getting the web site up, but we are getting some really interesting proposals about possible high-profile program participants. I originally thought it was going to be like a mini-Worldcon, but now it seems likely that it will be a mini-Worldcon with a bunch of really cool extra stuff. Apparently, Seattle has a strong costuming community; it feels very much like home. :)
My ride is about here; we're off to Midwest Construction.
In the 21st century, people are doing these "blog" things as journals of where they were in their lives. Back in the day (that would be the mid-'90s), we used to call such things "web pages". We didn't need an SQL database with a cuddly front end to say what we wanted, we rolled our own HTML and posted to the world. So this is not a "blog", it's just a journal. All my HTML (and JavaScript and CSS) is hand-coded in a low-level text editor.
So, we survived Torcon. In some ways, it doesn't feel different afterwards. I'm still working on a lot of stuff, I'm still planning for the next convention. And yet there are subtle changes. I'm sleeping six hours a night, instead of four, and I'm getting to work earlier. When I click on email lately, sometimes I get a very strange error message: "Sorry, but you don't have any new mail." And working on Cascadia is completely different, not just because of the time frame, but it's a heck of a lot easier doing one job than it is to cover half a dozen. And Chicago is going to be so much easier to bid for; fandom already knows that Chicago has a good crew, and the Chicago bid has a crowd of people ready to hit the road.
In 1996, a long-time observer of the scene told me that Worldcon politics were nasty, Toronto fandom politics were nasty, so a Toronto Worldcon would be the worst case in terms of getting the thing organized. If anything, she understated the problem. And yet, most of my core objectives were accomplished. We were able to share Toronto itelf, our city and culture, with global fandom, we shared some of the strengths of Toronto fandom with the rest of the world, and rather to my surprise, Toronto fandom learned there are bigger things going on then their local issues. It's unfortunate that we didn't get a lot of Toronto Trek and Ad Astra people into Torcon as volunteers, but a lot of people that I've talked to have realized that they should have been, and there's much more willingness to work together than there's been in previous years. This started happening throughout this year; Ad Astra showed a change in direction in March. TT was very late getting into the game; even at the July convention it seemed like they were going to let Torcon go by, but a productive conversation arose among several parties after TT and I think a lot of misunderstandings were cleared up. At the Moose party and at First Thursday, people weren't licking their wounds, they were talking about what they would do next time.
First step for Cascadia is to recruit a few senior advisors for programming, then start working on specifications for the programming database. Some people will say, "Why didn't you have a database for Torcon?" and all I can respond is that if it had been my call, we would have. One of my earliest recommendations had been to get the database issues resolved early, so that it was in place before the serious work started. But it still helped clarify my thoughts about a couple of things. One is that the core database needs to be distributed; it needs to be available to a group of people so that others can contribute ideas and identify problems. Another is that I want to do a proper from-the-ground-up database design, or to put it another way, I don't want to take an off-the-shelf database and use it unmodified. I have a pretty good idea of what kinds of inputs and what kinds of outputs I want. I want to play with test data so that the applications will be solid by Noreascon, so that next year we can focus on getting the job done.
Seems I'm going to Albacon. I like going, but I'm short on vacation days for some reason. But when I heard it was going to be in Lake George, I had to go. My grandmother used to like going there for cruises on the lake. My family tried to visit on the Fourth of July, but the place was jammed, nowhere to park in town at all, so we ended up going to the outlet malls. Wasn't the same. Also Lois McMaster Bujold will be there; she's the best storyteller in SF lately, so that will be cool. I'm also planning to go to Midwest Construction next week, Windycon in November, apparently Smofcon in December, and Confusion in January. And Rob Sawyer's party in October, of course; should be prime for gossip.
Don't know what's happening with Bouchercon. There has not been a committee meeting of any kind, to my knowledge. Future years' web sites are up, but so far nothing for 2004. The core elements of the mystery community in Toronto--Crime Writers of Canada, the Sisters in Crime chapter, the Bloody Words concom, the publishers--are out of the loop. Current indications are that Bouchercon 2004 is going to make Torcon 3 look like a model of organizational effectiveness. Hopefully this will get sorted out. Mystery fans do not have the same enthusiasm for politics that SF fans have.
Anyway, the primary purpose of this journal is simply to record progress on writing and projects. Little progress to report. I started working on Traitor's Home again. I need to update this web site, the SF Site convention list, the Bloody Words web site; I'd like to finish transcribing the interview with Melissa Scott that I took at Confusion, and I want to work on fiction. Back to work.