More Chicken Soup....

... yes, Chicken Soup.

I am trying to ignore the silly people on the internets, and did so by taking the results of my BBQ chicken...  very nice, although fractionally over cooked... and turning them into a basic chicken soup.

Large heavy, deep pan.  Melt some butter, about 1TBS, add some garlic, leeks, onions and chives (it was all in the bottom of the fridge ok?) - brown slightly.

Deglaze pan with white wine or sherry.

Drop in the chicken carcas (with a fair amount of meat left on the bone), and cover with chicken stock and water... this was about 6 cups in the case of the pot I was using.  Bring to boil, and then reduce to simmer.  Add some herbs and spice - I added a little red pepper, some salt and pepper, oregano and garlic powder

I usually leave to simmer a while.

Remove the chicken carcas and take out the bones putting the meat back in the soup.

Add a dollop of heavy cream to taste.

Puree using the nifty hand puree thingy that a friend gave me as a gift.

Eat.

Mmmm....

Convention Economics

One of the persistent threads I'm seeing emerge from the general post Worldcon blood letting is about how expensive the Worldcon is to attend.  To paraphrase, 'if I'm paying $200 to attend, I expect them to be more professional' and 'people told me that to attend Worldcon can cost a $1000!' - the two implications there being that a) $200 is a lot to attend a conference, and b) $1000 is a lot to expect people to spend.

I have more sympathy for point b than point a.

I attend a lot of conferences for a living.  I speak at a few every year so I rarely have to pay the fees to attend.  But looking at the fees that get charged they range.  Just to attend the CES Exhibition space is $200 if you book late.  The conference costs a lot more than that.  The Open Mobile Summit in SF in November, a 2 day convention, is $1300 for early birds, $1500 there after.  Google I/O is over $1000 for a 1 day event but you get $1000 in electronics for free, so that's a bad one.  Mobile World Congress, the big one, is 750EUR for an Exhibition Hall pass and a conference pass starts at 2000EUR and goes up from there.

Basically putting on conferences and running them is an expensive pastime run by companies with large dedicated staffs and often run, according to people I know at IDC, razor thin margins.

The problem is, that isn't really the whole story.  

The Worldcon is going to involve flying (probably) - my flights to Chicago were $420 return.  I had accomodation sorted but typically even sharing I'd be looking at $300 for the 4 nights.  Then there's transit to and from the airports involved which ranges from $20 if I'd walked/public transit, $100+ with cabs.

Between money I donated to parties and drinks I bought in the bar and meals I spent about $400, so $80 a day (ish) for each day I was away.

Compare and contrast, my expenses claim for MWC this year which ran to $2,800 EXCLUDING flights.  Because if you're flying 5000 miles for an event, and dealing with customers and other stuff the money evapourates.

I'm only relating this to point out that by the standards of professionally run and operated conferences Worldcon is a bargain.

Now, does that excuse non-professional behaviour?  No, not in the slightest.  

Does this make worldcon elitist because it's selecting for wealthier (and read older) fans?  No.

To lose it or not to lose it...

Somebody on another thread... no, no link, I've decided not to play those games, made an interesting comment, to which I replied there, but I wanted to pick at it a little more and gather thoughts and input so I can rationalize how I'm thinking about it.

Initial quote: My complaint is not that Worldcon costs a lot of money. My complaint is that there are coordinators who are treating their volunteers badly. I don't think I have to run a convention to point out that screaming at volunteers is a bad practice and shouldn't be engaged in or encouraged.

The point I made, is that the 'coordinators' are themselves volunteers.  That's not to excuse people screaming at other people but the phrasing of this makes it sound like there's a professional management team abusing the people who volunteer to help them.

My other immediate thought was of the 'let he who is without sin case the first stone variety'.  Hands up everybody who has never lost it with a friend, family member or co-worker over something?    If you have your hand up, then I'll be clear you are a significantly better and nicer human being than I am.

Work is the easiest environment for this stuff.  There are policies (usually), sanctions(you could lose your job), and a formal environment.  That said, the former CEO of a company not a million miles from where I'm sitting would hold code reviews with his employees where he'd spend upwards of an hour, reading through their code and specs and telling them to their face what a useless piece of shit they were.  

Family is the worst, or rather the easiest for down and out screaming fights.  Maybe that's the Irish side of the family?  Although the Cockney side have their moments.

Having relatively untrained volunteers managing other volunteers is really pushing the envelope for trouble.  Especially if people don't perform.  Sacking a person from a job is a nasty thing to do.  I've let people go.  It sucks.  Hate it.  I recently had to do it again with a co-founder.  And sad to say, there was shouting on both sides.  Things are resolved now, but it was a pain while it happened.  

I've not volunteered to run conventions myself, but I strongly suspect that the ego-hit of being told that you aren't up to doing something you want to do is pretty intense and if that's handled badly, the prospects of a standing fight are escalated.  If you have people in the mix who come from work environments where the management style is, shall we say, brusque, then you've the makings of an internet flame war.

So where does this leave me?

Not sure.  Yes, people shouldn't scream at other people.  Let me know how that's working out for everybody.

And another thing...

In another thread, somebody is stirring about the Hugo Packet being poorly organized, the reason being the departure of the person who was doing it.  No, no more context, everybody knows the details, if not, mail me, and I'll give the basics.

Any ho.  The shit stirrer was making a lot of comments about the crap nature of the Hugo Packet, apparently it had too many PDFs over ePubs.

So.  Here's my question.

Ahem.

WHEN IN THE BLOODY HELL DID IT BECOME EXPECTED THAT THE FRIGGIN' CONVENTION WAS GOING TO GIVE YOU ALL A FREE SET OF NOVELS, SHORT STORIES, GRAPHIC NOVELS AND EVERYTHING ELSE AS A MATTER OF COURSE?

Ahem. Cough.

I mean, I'm glad they do.  It makes voting easier, but whinging about the format of something you're lucky to have?  FFS, there's $50+ worth of books there alone.  It's not so long ago, i.e. a couple of years, when you'd be expected to have read the books yourself, paid for out of your own pocket, and read fanzines, and looked at fan art and read short stories, in magazines you'd bought too.

Seriously, what gives people?

EDIT:  Now, I'm annoyed.  I didn't like Among Others myself, not really my cup of tea.  However, to suggest that it won because it was presented in a better format than the others is barking mad.  And then somebody else saying that they can't read Jo's work because she sounds snooty?

I need to lie down in a dark room for a bit with a towel over my head.