arisia | Events at ARISIA '03 (Reply)

Qucik notes on ARISIA '03 - This is an excerpt from my journal. (I thought I would let you know so those subscribed to both don't have to wade through my ramblings twice.)

ARISIA went pretty well. Skip, at the last minute, finally came through with the comps for my department. Well most of them anyway, I don’t know if Angelina’s ever got straightened out. This made Friday easier for me. My event participants were nice enough not to all show up at once, so I was for the most part able to get people settled as they came in. i Sebastiani put on a wonderful performance. They ran a bit late, but fortunately the WGOH (Harry Turtledove) seemed to enjoy watching the performance and wasn’t annoyed at having to wait for his reading to start. Actually Harry was fantastic all weekend, very easygoing and pleasant to work with, all our Guests of Honor where.

C got sick on Friday, which kind of left me on my own. Well at least I thought so at the time. If I had read the schedule correctly I would have known that Noel, not C was on Friday night. Somehow there seemed to be plenty for me to do and take care of anyway, so I guess it was a good thing. At some point we will need to get together and compare notes. I’m real sure Noel wasn’t just sitting around, which means that there must have been other things happening that I didn’t hear about.

ironfinch took care of the ballroom and he and C (who was feeling better by that time) got Sissorkiss set up for their show, which I hear went well. I personally went to the bar where I discovered that: 1) martinis are a mixture of alcohol and alcohol 2) the one waitress that Swan Court had working is probably an Alzheimer’s patient 3)If you watch the bartender in much the same way that a puppy watches a hamburger at a BBQ, he will eventually get nervous enough to sell you a drink so that you will go away.

It turns out that Harry Turtledove has a Masters Degree in Byzantine history. I have never been interested in cornering an author to talk about their books. For the most part I either like their books or not and either like them as a person or not. One does not necessarily connect to the other. I guess I learned this early in life working as a DJ and doing interviews with "famous" people. People are, in the end, people and talent alone does not make someone a worthwhile person. I’ll never make a good groupie. I really would have liked to have a couple of hours to pull him aside and geek about Byzantine history though. Groupie no, Geek yes!

Friday night’s period dance went well. Then again, I was expecting it to. Angelina knows what she is doing. Saturday’s dance went well too. Both the attendees and the DJ (AddamBombb) seemed to have a lot of fun. The people running the Saturday night LARP were a no show, but SEER Productions stepped in and ran a LARP on pretty much no notice. I understand they did a good job too. There was some confusion about balcony use which eventually got straightened out, I’m sure to no one's satisfaction.

telynor (the Harper) put on a wonderful concert on Saturday. I actually got to stop in for a few minutes to listen. You have no idea how happy I was to find out she had sound. Making sure that sound is set up in advance for the Terrace room will definitely be in my notes for whoever takes over next year. We didn’t have sound for either of Harry Turtledove’s panels. Both of the slide projectors broke, but one of the tech crew went home and pick-up one. This ended up canceling one of the Lisi’s children’s book readings, but everything else was able to go on after that.

Once again the NERDS did a great job with “Junkyard Wars”. I was elsewhere, but I understand they had good attendance and 5 or 6 teams competing. The reports I got back were all favorable. This year’s task was to build a device to shoot an object though a basketball net styled bucket hung off the balcony. The masquerade had some nice entries; I hid and watched them on TV. It was nice. I only got called down to the ballroom once. The Rocky Horror crew put on a great performance Saturday night and was kind enough to shove me off to bed when I fell asleep during their teardown.

Sunday happened. Rumor has it that giant Icehouse game took place in the ballroom. Rumor also has it that it was fun. I was in Terrace getting things set up there. I’d like to say that the filk one-shot concert went off without a hitch, but truth is that we had to move them to the ballroom at the last minute and it was just too big. Fortunately there were people with a clue there and rather than present from stage they moved the whole thing to the stage, audience and all. That seems to have worked out well. Next year they have requested that they be given a better-sized room, preferable one that they can keep through dead dog. It seems like a good plan, something else to remember to put into my notes.

The Sunday Sundae some how happened. The hotel staff showed up and miraculously rearranged the room and the Ice Cream show-up right as we were supposed to open the doors. I still have no idea how many people come through. Friday night I was up to taking head counts, by Sunday I didn’t even think of it. Usually we can tell by how many tickets were sold, but because of the silly ribbon contest that won’t actually give me the numbers. I think it was about 50/50 between purchased tickets and people with silly ribbons. We had planned to send the leftovers up to gopher hole but, in spite of ordering twice as much Ice Cream as last year, there weren’t any. We did add non-dairy Ice Cream to the choices available, which seems to have been a success.

If anyone has any comments of suggestions about any of the EVENTS that took place at ARISIA, please let me know. We have a staff debrief next weekend and I would like to pass on a good set of notes to the person handling events next year.