The Thanksgiving Science Fiction Society was scheduled to hold a general business meeting on 2 October 2022. For lack of a quorum the official meeting did not take place. Various discussion did occur, both on the 2nd and on subsequent dates during October, in the "October 2022 meeting" Discord channel, and that is transcribed here. All conversations took place via text chat in Discord. This is a quick-n-dirty Discord transcript of the TSFS Discussions held during October 2022, made on 1 November 2022 by Keith Lynch. All formatting has basically been lost. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- From: "Keith F. Lynch" To: Dave Montuori Subject: Transcript of October 2022 TSFS meeting Date: Tue, 1 Nov 2022 21:45:31 -0400 (EDT) [ I'm declaring the October meeting finally over, given that it's November. So here's the transcript. -- Keith ] [ I agree. -- Dave M. ] Welcome to #october-2022-business-meeting! This is the start of the #october-2022-business-meeting channel. Herveus | Con Ops -- 09/10/2022 Meeting at 1pm on Sunday October 2. September 11, 2022 Poryshkin | Con Chair -- 09/11/2022 Gar, 2 October is still Capclave, and I'm running the Con Ops/Green Room October 2, 2022 Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/02/2022 I'm here for the meeting. Keith Lynch -- 10/02/2022 As am I Crystal Paul -- 10/02/2022 Present Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/02/2022 I messaged Herveus. Keith Lynch -- 10/02/2022 Maybe everyone but us is at Capclave. I did warn of the conflict at the previous meeting. Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/02/2022 I suppose we can report on things here, and check back later. Keith Lynch -- 10/02/2022 As requested, I forwarded your message to the WSFA list. Also to both PRSFS lists, and two newsgroups (rec.arts.sf.fandom and alt.fandom.cons). And to a handful of individuals. 1 Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/02/2022 Website/Marketing: I posted about Volunteers and Hotel deadline. I updated the Code of Conduct on the website, and completed the WordPress website to the best of my ability. We need to coordinate making it public. Crystal Paul -- 10/02/2022 Filking: the concert schedule may be lighter than last year. A lot of people I've contacted so far are either definitely going to be spending the holiday with family or considering it & will get back to me [1:27 PM] Filthy Pierre will be there & leading the HC, caroling, & B'way sessions. Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/02/2022 Good work [1:28 PM] I'm glad to know that we will have some music. [1:30 PM] Well, I have other things I could be doing this afternoon. I'll just keep an eye on the channel. Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/02/2022 I'm finally here, church ran late. Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/02/2022 Cool. As you can see, we don't have a leader. Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/02/2022 Shall I ping him? (edited) Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/02/2022 I sent a Discord message and an email. If you have another communication method, please use it. Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/02/2022 Text has been sent. [1:33 PM] Going to the laptop now [1:37 PM] Herveus spaced on the meeting again. He is on the road, somewhere north of Baltimore, heading to John Huff's place. [1:39 PM] Harv sez: "If people who have information to report could do so, it won't be a complete waste of time." But it does appear that we may not actually have a quorum. [1:39 PM] If there is ANY info on Programming, that would be really good to know. Crystal Paul -- 10/02/2022 @ Dave: See my comment on fiking above. 1 Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/02/2022 Anyone who has anything to report, please drop it in the chat so we have a record. Then watch this space (and presumably for the staff list) for discussion of rescheduling, which if reports have been dropped here ahead of time, could take place on a weeknight -- weekends were at a premium this month, and we could make the official meeting short if the reports are in hand already. Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/02/2022 Good idea. Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/02/2022 Since I'm here now, I'll do a quick Registration report: As of right now we have 42 people preregistered. Most of these are rollovers from previous years. I count 9 attendees who have pre-reg'd since January, one new vendor, and two comps (for Dr G and Halla who are "paying" by briinging the AV gear, as in years past). [1:48 PM] I have ONLY rolled over folks who have actually been in contact with the Registration department (i.e. me). I decided to wait until the refund request deadline (November 1st) before rolling anyone else over. [1:49 PM] I am also waiting to hear from @Yakira - Volunteers and Vendors for coordinating rollover of merchants, of which we have a few. [1:54 PM] Tech stuff pertaining to Registration: BEFORE Thanksgiving of 2022, I'd prefer to have a server lined up for the new Registration database, so that we can take pre-reg's for 2023 without using the old DB. I suspect that we could use the old one if we need to, but also suspect want to be completely migrated to the new DB by the end of December. [1:55 PM] Everything else regarding Reg does not need to be discussed at the October meeting. [1:57 PM] Switching hats quickly, Secretary report: Thanks @Keith Lynch for sending the September meeting transcript. I've been unexpectedly busy out the wazoo and have not posted it to the minutes website yet. Hope to have that done within a week. [1:57 PM] Methinks that's all I've got. Keith Lynch -- 10/02/2022 Speaking of roll-overs, I hereby roll over my Stephanie Burke proposal. Lets make her next year's guest of honor. She's female, Black, has a transgender daughter. And, oh yes, she's also a good writer. And her being GOH will attract Balticon refugees. I assume DrGandalf will have no objections, given that Balticon eventually exonerated her. Keith Lynch -- 10/02/2022 Nobody has posted in more than an hour, so I assume the meeting is over. I will wait a couple days before emailing this to give others a chance to post reports and to tell us the next meeting date. Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/02/2022 I think the idea is we will try to reschedule the formal October meeting. Hopefully we'll have a date for that by next weekend, so can you hold off until the 9th or 10th? [3:11 PM] But for right now I think you're correct and that we're done for the afternoon. (edited) Keith Lynch -- 10/02/2022 Will do. DrGandalf -- 10/02/2022 I guess I missed the meeting. Sorry about that. Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/02/2022 We didn't have a quorum. DrGandalf -- 10/02/2022 Or even a minyan 1 Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/02/2022 If you have anything to report, please drop it in the chat here. We'll try to reschedule the formal meeting, quite possibly for a weeknight -- official meeting should be short if the reports are all in chat already ahead of time. DrGandalf -- 10/02/2022 Nothing special. October 8, 2022 Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/08/2022 I did social media posts for the registration rate change Nov 1. [1:55 PM] @Keith Lynch Please share this message with WSFA your forums [1:55 PM] Don't forget to pre-register for Chessiecon membership. The adult full weekend price is $55. It goes up to $60 on Nov. 1. See the website for pre-registration options: https://chessiecon.org/membership.html October 11, 2022 Keith Lynch -- 10/11/2022 Done. Sent to the same places as your previous post. 1 October 16, 2022 Keith Lynch -- 10/16/2022 I just got a complaint that the hotel registration link pointed to by the Chessiecon web page doesn't work. That link is https://www.chessiecon.org/chessiecon/hotel/marriott.com/events/start.mi?id=1651068323084&key=GRP I have confirmed that it doesn't work. Herveus | Con Ops -- 10/16/2022 @Marilyn Mix | Website Keith Lynch -- 10/16/2022 It should be http://marriott.com/events/start.mi?id=1651068323084&key=GRP Marriott International Book Your Group/Corporate Rate | Marriott International Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/16/2022 @Keith Lynch @Herveus | Con Ops Thank you, Keith, for pointing that out. I just fixed it. Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/16/2022 The link on the Home page was correct. The link in the button on the Hotel page wasn't specified fully, so it added the root of the website. [1:18 PM] It will help me in the future when reporting bugs, to say what page the problem is on. Keith Lynch -- 10/16/2022 Sorry, I didn't know it was on the site in more than one place. It was the link on the page you asked me on the 8th to post the link to in various places. It was a PRSFS member who noticed the problem. October 19, 2022 Diamond Mystic -- 10/19/2022 Mythic Track update: tossing an update on here to quickly to stay more in the loop--in spite of some earlier technical and other difficulties on my end, I'll be formally scheduling the MT programming after work today after making sure I have the current grid schedule file (already in communication with Poryshkin on that via email). 1 2 Poryshkin | Con Chair -- 10/19/2022 Awesome, TYVM October 25, 2022 Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/25/2022 At the September meeting I said I would do a breakdown of the 2018 registrations to give us one snapshot of the prereg and reg patterns we at least had for that last in-person con. I have counted all the PRE-registrations now, and in very broad numbers I have: 126 general attendee registrations 34 vendor/vendor assistant registrations 77 guest/kid-of-guest/guest-of-guest registrations [6:04 PM] so, 237 preregistrations in total. I'll have a further breakdown of these later this evening. For now, on to counting the at-door registrations in 2018. Poryshkin | Con Chair -- 10/25/2022 Good work, that Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/25/2022 I'm guessing the guest and vendor registrations at the door will be fairly small in number... Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/25/2022 And very broad counts for at-the-foor registration in 2018: 1 (one) guest/kid-of-guest/guest-of-guest 1 (one) vendor 100 general attendees [6:25 PM] Total totals being 78 guests/guest-associates, 35 vendors/vendor-associates, and 226 general attendees or staff. [6:26 PM] I split these specific categories out because I fully expected guests and vendors to nearly all preregister. Which did happen. [6:27 PM] But at least for 2018, among everyone else, for every 5 that preregistered we had 4 at the door that did NOT. [6:29 PM] I'm going to investigate in a bit more detail this evening and post results here. In particular, in what date ranges did people tend to preregister or get preregistered, and breakdown of that by category. October 26, 2022 Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/26/2022 So... the first date range is effectively "At Or Before The Previous Chessiecon" -- basically by the end of November 2017. In that group we have 6 guests/guest-associates, 24 vendors/vendor-associates, and 39 general attendees/staff preregistered for 2018. [2:09 AM] After that there's a 5 month period (Dec, Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr) with no activity at all. [2:14 AM] During May through August 2018 we preregistered 28 guests+associates, 4 vendors+associates, and 11 attendees/staff. Most of this activity came from pre-reg'ing a lot of guests between June 3-8 and again on August 23. [2:15 AM] September 10-12 saw 4 more atteendee/staff prereg. No other activity in September until one transaction on the 30th, which I'm lumping in with the next batch. [2:17 AM] Sept 30 through Oct 17 had preregistration of 8 guests all in a single group, and 14 more attendees/staff. [2:19 AM] October 21-31 was predictably a little busy. We preregistered 3 guests+associates (all on Halloween), 2 vendors+associates (1 vendor, 2 tables), and FORTY (40) attendees/staff. [2:21 AM] November 1-5 saw 3 more vendors+associates and 11 more attendees/staff. Some of these may have been date weirdnesses for folks who actually started the prereg process in October. [2:23 AM] November 7-10 saw the preregistration of 31 more guests+associates. November 11-21 saw one more guest or guest associate, and 7 more attendees/staff. [2:26 AM] That brings us to the first day of the actual Chessiecon 2018. Friday, November 23 got 1 guest or associate (the last in that category), 1 vendor/associate (the last in THAT category), and 63 at-door attendee/staff registrations, of which exactly one (1) was for Friday only. [2:27 AM] Saturday, November 24 got 34 more attendees/staff, of which 15 were Saturday only. [2:28 AM] Sunday, November 25 got three (3) Sunday-only attendees. Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/26/2022 So to repeat the totals for Chessiecon 2018: 78 guests+associates, 35 vendors+associates, and 226 attendees/staff. About 44 per cent of the attendees/staff (100/226) registered at the door; about 26 per cent (58/226) prereg'd between October 21 and November 21; about 13 per cent (29/226) prereg'd between May 1 and October 17; about 17 per cent (39/226) prereg'd effectively at the previous Chessiecon (November 2017). [2:43 AM] One schedule note from Registration: I will be OFFLINE for most of this Thursday and Friday (10/27-28), ALL of Saturday (10/29), and most of Sunday (10/30). Possibly for a significant chunk of Monday (10/31) as well, not sure yet. I am going to a family wedding in North Carolina. After we get back to Virginia on the 30th I will catch up with as much stuff as possible before the rate change. Diamond Mystic -- 10/26/2022 Meant to say this earlier but was dealing with my own issues: thanks for they EXTENSIVE read-out on that Dave! I know it was no easy task, and even though doesn't effect my dept directly, should give us all the stats we need to to engage with planning/potential participant (in case they ask for past numbers) hurdles. As to mine: Diamond Mystic -- 10/26/2022 Mythic Track [hopefully] final scheduling update: all relevant fields on the shared G-docs programming spreadsheet for MT are now added--as well as annotated via cell-linked comments (mainly for disambiguation of time slots and also at-a-glance functionality to avoid "I can't see back to the initial left columns/tell which end is which anymore visual vertigo for those viewing on small screens/phones). I hadn't been added to the main group email listproc/replies until some days ago (which I failed to catch as well for a good while as I had gotten some last year?) and had plenty of my own BS on my end to deal with: so a thousand apologies for playing catch-up, but hopefully, that does it for now and gets me back to good (or at least square 1 not -1 or worse). The complete relevant track/event/presenter descriptions in word format have been sent via direct email to whom I believe is the relevant party @Marilyn Mix | Website if that ISN'T you/is also someone else (yes my brain was set to stunned for the past couple hours--and hey, only my 2nd time around and 1st in-person go round at this gig/post, so do pardon my dust while I improve to match the rest of you going forward--I may have stepped out for a bit, but definitely given all that's on the line this year, hell or high water, I am NOT stepping down): as made note of in that email, just let me know, and I'll alter course accordingly with that. That said I should be much better looped-in now, so if you need me, mass/group-emailing should be fine now, and I'm always a message away on here. Many Thanks. Dave/Evan(damont) | Registration -- 10/26/2022 A real fast check of the current 2022 list shows a total of 54 people, but that includes however many (or few) guests+associates and vendors+associates are already on the list, which honestly isn't many. What that number does NOT include is (1) anyone who did not respond to my rollover/refund request email, and (2) vendors who are rolling over but for other reasons didn't get rolled over yet on the Reg side of all this. Both of these will be rolled over after I get back from NC next week, which conveniently is after the refund request deadline. [10:17 PM] My immediate guess is that, if we have no more refund requests (we have gotten very few so far), we'll have a little over 100 pre-reg'd attendees/staff, which is shy of the 126 we had in 2018. I really really REALLY hope we get a lot of at-door folks. Like, 200+, which would be amazing but totally unexpected. October 28, 2022 @Diamond Mystic Mythic Track [hopefully] final scheduling update: all relevant fields on the shared G-docs programming spreadsheet for MT are now added--as well as annotated via cell-linked comments (mainly for disambiguation of time slots and also at-a-glance functionality to avoid "I can't see back to the initial left columns/tell which end is which anymore visual vertigo for those viewing on small screens/phones). I hadn't been added to the main group email listproc/replies until some days ago (which I failed to catch as well for a good while as I had gotten some last year?) and had plenty of my own BS on my end to deal with: so a thousand apologies for playing catch-up, but hopefully, that does it for now and gets me back to good (or at least square 1 not -1 or worse). The complete relevant track/event/presenter descriptions in word format have been sent via direct email to whom I believe is the relevant party @Marilyn Mix | Website if that ISN'T you/is also someone else (yes my brain was set to stunned for the past couple hours--and hey, only my 2nd time around and 1st in-person go round at this gig/post, so do pardon my dust while I improve to match the rest of you going forward--I may have stepped out for a bit, but definitely given all that's on the line this year, hell or high water, I am NOT stepping down): as made note of in that email, just let me know, and I'll alter course accordingly with that. That said I should be much better looped-in now, so if you need me, mass/group-emailing should be fine now, and I'm always a message away on here. Many Thanks. Marilyn Mix | Website -- 10/28/2022 sorry not me this year. @Poryshkin | Con Chair great job, tho. thanks John @Marilyn Mix | Website sorry not me this year. @Poryshkin | Con Chair great job, tho. thanks John Diamond Mystic -- 10/28/2022 Got it thanks.