Posted by Alex von Thorn (142.77.200.165) on July 30, 2003 at 02:45:20:
In Reply to: Virtually No Worldcon Updates and it's only 30days away! Whats Up? posted by Disgruntled Dirk on July 26, 2003 at 02:12:41:
At the present time, our focus is on getting the schedule done in time for the pocket program publication deadline, which is August 7. We should have the program schedule online very shortly after that.
I'd have to agree that Steve Silver did a great job at Chicon (though I didn't see much of the actual con). Torcon is running about average in terms of our time frame. It's actually rather challenging getting the schedule together; there are a lot of dependencies. We can't send out the programming questionnaire until we have an almost-complete list of draft panel topics and an almost-complete list of potential panelists. We had a few delays, such as coding the questionnaire web site. We have over a thousand program ideas and nearly a thousand potential panelists; we don't want to list these as we're only going to use about five hundred of each. Most of the program participant questionnaires came back in the second and third weeks of July, so we haven't been able to begin the actual job of scheduling until very recently. Terry's got charts all over his walls now, and his group in Montreal is attaching panels to rooms and times and people to panels. (My job is mainly to answer questions to keep people from bugging him.) We are still even today getting lots of emails from people saying they can or can't come, which further complicates the task. If it had been up to me, we would have kept the membership list online and up to date and we'd have draft program information online, but these weren't my decisions.
I have been using a stock answer for complaints about how we are doing: Have you offered to volunteer to help?
Anyway, really, given a choice between getting the job done and explaining it, our responsibility is to get the schedule finished. That's what Terry and Rebecca and Rene are focusing on. There will be plenty of opportunity to figure out what to do when before the actual convention. We're going to have a lot of great stuff.
: The last time I saw any news on this Torcon Site was 6weeks ago and it was about Sars.....As if we want to hear more crap about that..I've seen regular updates on that subject and little else...Shouldn't they be more concerned about the people going to the con having a knowledge of what they will be seing? Woudn't that boost attendence drasically(hmmmm)? Some news on programming and events would have been nice by now don't you think?? Four years ago for Chicon they had the tentative full schedule up in mid July, and everyone was happy. Is that so difficult to do??? Ofcourse I know it takes incredible brains to coordinate and decide on topics for panels with such a narrow range as science fiction and fanasy(yeah right).
: Also, they took away the members list so now we have no idea wether or not distant friends will be going to the con....Apparantly a few sad individuals complained about there identity being released so they canceled the whole list instead of just removing these paranoid selfish sadsacks.... Truthfully, I am always happy with the outcome of the cons but I've seen a decline in quality of activities and programming over the last few years and it's frustrating because I can see how it could be so much better, and with little effort..