Planning, and Other Musings

Other Musings First, Just to Keep Things Interesting

Yeah, I've been quiet. Getting ready for WisCon ate the tail end of last week, and recovery from WisCon ate most of this week. But I've made progress on the current set of giraffe cozies kilt hose for Ron.

The lighted nacho sign looked good. So did the other party signs, if I do say so myself. The party at WisCon was Sunday night, and the text listing the day on two of the signs would have meant more work than I felt like doing, so I just skipped them. I need to come up with some new, bright, general party signs, to go with the nacho, popcorn, and slushy signs. I don't know if we do enough parties that we actually need new signage to prevent people from tuning it out, but it doesn't hurt. And I enjoy it.

The plan for tomorrow is to finish some housecleaning in the morning, in anticipation of relatives visiting on Sunday for Robin's graduation.

A digression: Graduation is early afternoon on Sunday. DucKon is/was Right Out.

No, I'm not going to try to clean the dining room, it's my workshop and not neat and that's all there is to it. Well, ok, I did make sure Robin took the garbage out this week, and I'll see what I can do about corralling the scraps thread clippings, but that's about it.

Once cleaning is done, I have some choices.

• Simplest: Put shoulder straps on the two copper-colored leather satchels that are otherwise done, and then put all the new stuff in inventory and put price tags on them.
• Slightly More Ambitious: Sew up the two black leather satchels I have cut out, and then proceed with shoulder straps for them, plus above.
• Alternatively: Make a covering for the big yellow tool bin, then proceed with the first point if/when I get that done.  

I had Ron and Robin wash some fabric for the bin cover, but I realized I need to dig out another piece and get it pre-washed. If that doesn't happen the cover doesn't happen. Robin has a short day today at school, I wonder if there's any chance of getting him to dig the fabric out before I get home . . . probably not. But if I get his help and get it down to the wash as soon as I get home (and keep tabs on the movements between washer and dryer), it wouldn't be impossible to do tomorrow.

Planning Events

I saw on one of the SCA e-mail lists that a website for one of the events later this year is up. I went to look, specifically at the merchant information.

Now, the thing about this event is that it's a multi-day event, to be held at a hotel. So I have certain basic expectations of information I expect to find.

Er. If you hit the "Merchants" tab, you get a list of expected merchants. That's it.

Nothing about merchant room times under the schedule tab. The list of fees lists a flat fee for merchants.

Nothing about how big spaces are, or if there's a limit on number of spaces. Nothing about merchant room hours or when merchants can start setup on Day 1 (hopefully before the merchant room opens for shopping). Nothing about overnight room security (ie: "room will be locked but yadda yadda own risk").

There was information listed on the contact page for the merchant coordinator, so I shot e-mail off asking my questions. But come *on* people, the only thing different for this event than most indoor SCA events is the question about room security at night (SCA events are typically either one-day things, or involve camping).

Maybe it's my exposure to SF conventions, where you get a nice sheet or two of information for the Dealer's Room that almost always answers all the basic questions. You assume you need to pre-reg, because the room is going to fill up, and the idea of showing up on Friday without ever having contacted anybody involved with the event, and expecting there to be space, is laughable.

Yes, there are some SCA merchants that work that way. It is getting more common to see merchant pre-reg information that says the only guaranteed reservation is a paid reservation, but the fact that they have to say that implies to me that some merchants still are pretty relaxed about pre-reg.

Personally, it makes my brain hurt.

A few years ago I wrote "The Opinionated Seamstress on Writing Event Notices", which covered a lot of this kind of thing. Can I whack people upside the head with it?

Hmm. I should go back and update that piece - when I wrote it I was still getting a lot of my event information from SCA kingdom (read: Regional) print newsletters, where space was at a premium. At that time web sites, with the ability to give your reader lots and lots of information were nowhere near as common as they are today. One update would be to say that the very-short and medium-length versions are what should be "above the fold" on your pages (and still in your newsletter ads). In my copious spare time.