Current Post On Trae’s Blog:
So I'm just going to come out and say it: My favorite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation is "Conundrum." It's episode fourteen of season five, and I just deeply love it.
I don't know if it's because I literally just assumed Erich Anderson's Commander McDuff was a random Enterprise officer of the week (which we saw quite often during the show) when I watched it as a kid during the original run, so the twist actually worked on eleven year old me. I don't know if it's because I just like a good "everyone has amnesia" story. I don't even know if it's just because it's a good Ro Laren episode. I don't know if it's just because we learn that Starfleet doesn't give a crap about lasers.
I just like it. It's neat.
And I rewatched it last night, and feel that it holds up -- which is why I found it deeply weird that the folks who wrote the episode actually think it's not that good. My favorite episode of the entire seven season run of the show was a failure according to the folks who wrote it.
And maybe, as a writer and creator, I should remember that.
Like the hardest part of releasing creative works to the public is that often, after a while, I'll start to judge those things far more harshly than when I first made them. Or I'll compare it to the potential I thought an idea had in my head. And if I don't reach that potential, I'll think of it as "bad" -- when it might just be slightly different than that idea. I have one hundred percent published stories that I thought were just sort of okay and later had someone tell me how much it meant to them to read it.
*cough*I Hate November*cough*
So I should make sure I remember Conundrum. That one of my favorite things to rewatch is considered one of those failures by its creators. That the things I make might have value, just not in the way I originally thought they should.
It's just sort of how things work out.
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Having once lost a venue two weeks out and being on staff of a con that we moved to an open working airport. This seems so much easier.
When your con is broke, ‘Almost nothing” is the right cost.
In this situation I’d perhaps have the “Mini-Bork One Day Con” at the Expo Center with the goal of fundraising, and then plan the real con at a real hotel.
At the least go do a walkthrough. Maybe it’s not as bad as you think it is. (Granted, maybe it’s worse). At this point, they shouldn’t ignore any options.
I have a feeling that I know where the con will end up…
Having seen what emerges when you move the shelves of a grocery store that’ve been there a while… it could be nasty.
I’m trying to imagine a converted grocery store into convention center and I just can’t, it always ends up way too small. If Bork Con is expecting less than 250 people it might work, but Bork Con seemed to be pretty successful before so I can’t see that.
Seriously though, how would there be more than 2 or 3 rooms in a converted grocery store?
There was a con that did this a year or two ago. You don’t really get rooms, you’d have to put up pole & drape.
poorly converted store? {flashes back to early X-Cons in Oconomowoc} Now that I think about it, X-Con landed there as a result of the Astor Disaster. “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”