Arisia rundown

[jducoeur]

A few quick notes about Arisia:

Good panels this year -- lots of panelists, good topics, adequate focus. I found out at the last moment that I was the moderator for "The Annihilation of Distance", on the subject of social effects of the Net: that was fun and interesting, but big enough a topic to be a somewhat diffuse panel. The "LJ and Your Social Life" panel was a tad more rah-rah than I'd have preferred, but did spend at least a while getting into the meat of the subject. The "Keeping the Faith" comics panel was fun, if predictably geeky. "Remember, Remember, the Fifth of November", the V panel, was surprisingly good, maybe the best panel of the weekend: a really intense discussion of civil liberties, terrorism, civic responsibility and all those other things that the book was supposed to get people thinking about. (With surprisingly little grousing about the differences between the comic and the movie; mostly, we used those differences as springboards for more interesting debate.)

The new hotel is pretty, but a bit cramped. In particular, there isn't quite enough just-hang-out-and-schmooze space, and having to walk half a mile from my parking space wasn't ideal. I hope we eventually get back to the Park Plaza (again), but I've dealt with worse.

The Masquerade was truly excellent, although many of the best entries were the Zodiac presentations from Worldcon. Brian's giant Minotaur was (as is usual for Brian) a masterpiece.

Surprisingly few trailers afterwards, but I was rather impressed by the one for "Star Trek: Of Gods and Men", the "fanfic" movie in the New Voyages series. The acting and writing look fairly bad, but the story might be entertaining (a wide-ranging mirror-universe story, I think), and they had at least *three* real actors playing the mirror-universe versions of their characters (Uhura, Chekhov, and Tuvok, the Vulcan from Voyager). I'm not quite sure how they are luring them into playing in something that clearly has no budget to speak of, but it's fascinating to see the lines between "official" and fan-generated fiction blurring.

Missed the Lodge meeting (having gotten sucked into the Masquerade), but hung out for quite a while afterwards schmoozing with various folks, including catching up with shava23. Lots of discussion about the possibility of creating a Research Lodge for MA, and *maybe* having it meet at the various science fiction conventions in the area -- kind of wacky, but cool enough to be very interesting. baron_steffan, you interested in being put in touch with this?

Shopping was fine, although not very inspiring -- I'm afraid I've simply seen most of the usual Arisia dealers too many times. Bought my usual 2**5 buttons from Nancy. Primary expense was a couple of *fabulously* expensive cookbooks from Poison Pen: the new Scully translation of La Varenne and "Soup for the Qan", the big translation of period Mongolian cookbooks, as well as a new translation of al-Baghdadi. The life of the cookbook completist is an expensive one.

Oh, and Toscanini's new "French Press Coffee" flavor is really, really good, especially with Rum Caramel sauce on top...

Comments

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Lots of discussion about the possibility of creating a Research Lodge for MA, and *maybe* having it meet at the various science fiction conventions in the area -- kind of wacky, but cool enough to be very interesting. baron_steffan, you interested in being put in touch with this?

Interesting idea. Yes, please keep me in the loop. On the one hand, I have
always thought it intensely shameful that the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, the oldest GL in the Western Hemisphere, the GL of Paul Revere, the GL with a reliquary of George Washington, didn't have a research lodge. Outrageous!

On the other hand, having it meet at SF conventions? Ooookaaaay...I get
the odd connection between "SF fans" and "Masons who actually get
it" (said connection being "geek" %^), but some of us don't get to
SF cons. I hope by that you meant "SF cons in addition to its regular
venue".

[jducoeur]

Well, I think it's a matter of multiple interests getting overlapped by different people. Wor. Eliot, who is actually putting this together, is mainly focused on creating the research lodge, and hasn't been worrying too much about the "where". But of course, this coming up before a whole bunch of Masonic fen who are looking to do more of the same, means that the idea of holding meetings at cons was almost inevitable.

In practice, I suspect that yes -- it will wind up needing to have a regular venue. (Among other things, we totted up the plausible cons in this state, and there aren't enough to hold enough meetings, even if we held meetings at all of them.) But it wouldn't surprise me if it winds up assuming the "Arisia Lodge" responsibilities from Mt. Hollis, which currently sponsors it, and maybe has a meeting at Boskone and/or Readercon as well. It's sensible outreach: put the geekiest Masons in the middle of Geek Central.

Anyway, I'll pass your contact info on to Wor. Eliot as an interested brother. I assume your pobox is still the one to use?

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

Surely a legitimate, recognized RL would be expected to have regular
Communications in a fixed venue. On the other hand, information and
experiences in holding an irregular lodge meeting at an SF con should be made available to SCA brethren perpetually trying to set up a lodge meeting at the Pennsic War.

Yes, is now and (presumably) forever the address to use.

[ladymacgregor.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't necessarily assume that the "SCA Masonic group" would be the only ones interested in a Research Lodge. There are a great number of Masons in the RevWar hobby - all history geeks as well - and my guess is they would *love* to get involved with a Research Group (as you say, George Washington and all that). However, I would also guess that none of the guys I know would be at all interested in an SF con. What about someplace like the Shriner's Auditorium right here in Wilmington?

Should I post something to our group, to see if Masons are interested?

[jducoeur]

I wouldn't necessarily assume that the "SCA Masonic group" would be the only ones interested in a Research Lodge.

Oh, none of this has anything to do with the SCA, save that a few of the key people are SCAdian. I suspect that the meeting-at-Cons thing won't happen except rarely, although that will probably depend on who is interested.

Should I post something to our group, to see if Masons are interested?

Sounds like a fine idea. Tell me if anyone is, and I'll dig out the relevant contact address...

[rosinavs.livejournal.com]

Um, the Park Plaza wasn't crowded? Granted, I wasn't at the new place this year, but I thought it was pretty crowded.

[jducoeur]

Moreso this year. The new hotel is "small and tall" -- the passing space on any given floor is modest, especially due to the enormous open atrium up the center.

So yeah: significantly more crowded than the Park Plaza has been since The Old Days of Boskone (which was a lot bigger than Arisia)...

[hungrytiger]

I hope we eventually get back to the Park Plaza (again)

I was assuming that that wasn't an option. No real basis for that, but given that (as I've heard it) the Park Plaza broke their contract with Arisia in order to land a more lucrative, better profile event, I would think that we wouldn't want to go back there.

I agree that the Ziggurat wasn't optimal (poor elevators, limited floor space, and the lack of commuter parking being major concerns) but I had thought that it was a matter of this being the only big hotel they were able to get on limited notice after Arisia lost the Park Plaza. As Marsy and I commented, the Ziggurat is designed to host 2 or 3 wedding-sized events, not full on conferences. Given the limits of the space, I thought they did pretty well.

I'm hoping that Arisia isn't planning to return to either venue in the future, but instead goes somewhere else altogether.

[jducoeur]

but given that (as I've heard it) the Park Plaza broke their contract with Arisia in order to land a more lucrative, better profile event, I would think that we wouldn't want to go back there.

Perhaps. The rumor I heard (no idea if it was true) was that some other Con-like-object had messed the place up, and they decided that they didn't want Cons there. Wouldn't be surprising if that was true, nor the first time that's happened to us -- these things seem to come in cycles, and we just have to roll with it.

I'm hoping that Arisia isn't planning to return to either venue in the future, but instead goes somewhere else altogether.

Possible. But as we've seen in the past, there aren't all that many venues that are (a) the right size for a distinctly middling convention, and (b) not so stuffy as to freak out. My suspicion is that options are limited...

[hungrytiger]

Quoting from text I found on the Arisia website...

"For their own reasons, the Boston Park Plaza Hotel notified us in February [2006] that they wouldn't sign a contract with us for 2007. There are various rumors about why they chose to do this, but the BPPH never officially told us why.

[snipping text about how hard it is to find good hotels in Boston given the parameters they were looking for and why they ended up selecting the Hyatt as a reasoable alternative]

We have a signed contract for 2008, and we're looking for other options for 2009 and beyond, but just in case we have the our weekend penciled in at the Hyatt for 2009 and 2010."

Full text at: http://2007.arisia.org/WhyTheHyatt