My baby moves at midnight, goes right on 'till the dawn. My woman take' me higher...

[hazelchaz]

My baby moves at midnight, goes right on 'till the dawn. My woman take' me higher...

Photos now online:
Thanksgiving Dinner 2007 with the Crosbys (22-Nov-2007)
Loscon 34: Friday (23-Nov-2007)
Loscon 34: Saturday (24-Nov-2007)
Loscon 34: Sunday (25-Nov-2007)
The picture of midnight_rocket is from Saturday afternoon.

Made it to loscon and back. ala_mokita asked a favor of me and animelosangeles: since the Con Suite crew wasn't planning to keep the Con Suite open at night, could we take it over instead of having a party in our room? After talking to library_lynn about it, I said sure, and could we get a fan table, please? So come Loscon, I spent the days on the main hall at our purple table, and Andrew Vo and one or two of his crew and I moved to the Con Suite at night.

I was mostly sitting solo at the table during the day, although there were people nearby to talk to, such as buddykat at the Conjecture table who was engaged by the end of Friday (Mr. Shirt proposed with a chocolate cake and a toy ring), and Nadine Armstrong who was so bored at the Arizona table that she stamped most of my Gallifrey One postcards. neo_serenity sat with me for a little time on Saturday afternoon, which was as welcome as a gentle rain after a long drought. I introduced her to a bunch of my friends that stopped by the table.

In the evening when Andrew was there, we went over what we needed to do for the Con Suite -- which meant a shopping trip or two during the weekend, to shore up the gaps in their supply -- and he and Jack and Jill (Friday night) made it work. I have every confidence that he'll do just fine running the Con Suite in 38 days, whichever room we end up putting it in.

I snapped a small number of photos in the Ice Cream Social, and I saw the Masquerade. I did a little bit of party-hopping, but not much as I kept magnetically returning to the Con Suite. We had it decorated, a little bit, with Anime Los Angeles posters and wall scrolls. On Sunday, Greg Hemsath sold me another 17 wall scrolls, so if I ever want to do up a room with wall-to-wall-scrolls, I can do it... wish I'd had 'em Friday...

In any event. "Sponsoring the Con Suite" isn't really a viable party option for promotional purposes, because a party on the party floor gets a lot more foot traffic. And the fan table gets more traffic still, because not everybody ends up going upstairs. Speaking of daytime traffic, I was startled on Friday by four or three people thrusting money at me for Animé Los Angeles members -- I wasn't prepared for actual membership sales at all, so I improvised using postcards to record their info and to serve as receipts. And I think I got another one on Sunday.

In fact... if I was going to try to wave the flag by taking over a con suite... I might like to do it Saturday afternoon. That's the biggest traffic period, at least at Loscon it usually is. Although the question remains of whether anyone will notice the message!

So what did we do differently than the daytime snack selection? Well, we bumped up the junk food quotient a notch or two. Basically it was about the same spread as what you've seen at our Peanut Butter & Jelly rooms at Anime Expo and Ani-Magic. More home-baked cookies and brownies, though, because Lynn was busy in the kitchen baking on Thursday. We looked over the Con Suite's selection of sodas, and about the only gap we saw was a lack of Cactus Cooler and a shortage of Mountain Dew. We threw in some Vernors Ginger Ale too. And by Saturday night, their stock of water was down to just one case, so we left that alone and Andrew bought some cases of water to serve instead.

More thoughts on the convention later, after I've finished typing in all my notebook's captions. I got a lot of them done for the first half of the convention before I pooped out; I'll work on it more later, and try to collect what else I want to say about the convention. A teaser, though: there are about 500 photos there, but I don't consider my coverage to have been up to my own standards...

Comments

[nolly.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I was just oblivious or what, but I didn't know anything was happening in the con suite in the evenings. More flyers or something might've made it a more successful promotional activity.

Con Suite sponsorship

[hazelchaz]

What we really need is to have enough people to sticker folks as they come in the door.

But even that is just a sop, because the Con Suite just doesn't get the same level of traffic as the party floor. I realize the 17th floor big suite is unsuitable because of the steps, but I really wish there was a way we could put the con suite back there.

Re: Con Suite sponsorship

[nolly.livejournal.com]

If more people knew there was a reason to go to 18, more people would go to 18. As far as I knew, there was no reason to go to 18, so I didn't. I was probably not alone in this. More/better flyers publicizing the sponsorship -- just like for any party -- would have helped drive traffic. Stickers are good for counting the people you do get, but less good for drawing more people.

Re: Con Suite sponsorship

[hazelchaz]

I'm sorry, I thought you meant you were oblivious to your surroundings when you were in the con suite at night.

[captserek.livejournal.com]

Chaz, I know you are putting captions on your many pix. To help you and perhaps remind you, the guy in the leather jacket, grey shirt and glasses is me. If you know this already from your copious notes, I apologize in advance.

Captions

[hazelchaz]

It would be very helpful if you go to your picture and click on the thumbnail, scroll down and it'll give you a caption-correction form.

Thanks!

[celedraug.livejournal.com]

Chaz,

Yet again you rock. Squall told me Monday that you had already posted pictures and included the mythical husband of Wolfcat *giggle*

and the SHINY dress!

I updated several of the others for late Friday night with Maria and co. You had the single one for me labeled correctly, but missed the group shots.

Photos and ljs

[hazelchaz]

Wolfcat: E-mail is coming through slowly, so it may take me a while to get the captions updated. But please keep 'em coming.

(May I link from your name to your celedraug LJ, by the way? I don't know if I've already asked you that before...)

Re: Photos and ljs

[celedraug.livejournal.com]

Absolutely!

It's always nice to come down and see folks, if I ever win the lottery, people will know-they'll start seeing me more than once or twice a year! *grin*

Re: Photos and ljs

[hazelchaz]

Done. Incidentally, all the photos I have of you have one of the longer forms of your name (but not the longest one I know).

I try to be consistent, and absent any specific instructions I stick with the earliest version I have on file on the assumption that I wrote it down correctly the first time. -- So this means that if you want me to change it, I can do so for the whole website. (I try to steer clear of one-word names if at all possible, to prevent conflicts. See, for example, how many people call themselves "Raven.")

You might enjoy animelosangeles, if someone gives you a huge Christmas check...

[captserek.livejournal.com]

Chaz, I love the pix then again I am always looking forward to seeing who was at what con. Your camera got some great moments from your table.

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

As a drink comment, I didn't see any Splenda-based sugar-free beverages when I was there. For people who can't do aspartame or sugar, it's always nice to have some. I particularly like Diet Coke with Splenda, which is available at most grocery stores, or Pepsi One (which is Splenda-based and has as much caffeine as Mountain Dew), but barring that, the Hansen's Sugar Free sodes are Splenda-based. Usually I end up visiting con suites and going "Sugar, sugar, carb, sugar, aspartame...nope, nothing for me..." and not going back. (There are cons where I don't even know where the consuite is, in part because of that.)

I keep asking all the con suites about this whenever it comes up, so I thought I'd mention it.

Sugar free

[hazelchaz]

I should have thought of that when we were looking at what sodas to augment the stock with. I apologize for the lapse, as that's something I've done in the past. A lot of those Hansen's flavors are pretty vile; which one's your favorite?

We did go out and buy more water. That doesn't have any Nutrasweet...

Re: Sugar free

[trinsf.livejournal.com]

Oh, goodness, you don't have to apologize to me! I'm just trying to let folks know, someone at another con had suggested that I be all educational and stuff.

I'm pesky, I don't like the taste of water. *grin* I actually have problems with getting dehydrated because the taste of water makes me queasy. I drink a lot of iced tea at con restaurants. I don't expect people to like, have flavored water and stuff, I am just a Splenda crusader. Doesn't tend to affect insulin levels in the blood the way aspartame does for some people, and it doesn't break down at high temps the way aspartame does...*pimp pimp*

Re: Sugar free

[hazelchaz]

Well, in this case the apology is a public acknowledgement of "I'm not performing up to my own usual standards, and I should try to remember these things the next time out."

Splenda soda

[drarizona.livejournal.com]

Sorry that you missed the DietRite and PepsiOne which we had in the diet cooler (it might have run out at the time you looked in). Just a hint for the future, pop your head in the prep room and let your request be known (we might have a can or two still in the corner). Both the Suite staff and Chaz made soda runs and we both would have grabbed it for you gladly!
Forwarded Note from the Con Suite director - Lt. J.G. Smoothie

Re: Splenda soda

[hazelchaz]

Oh yeah, but lots of people (I see this at parties all the time) are quite hesitant to ask for something more than what's on offer.

So to encourage them to ask, a sign saying "Splenda sodas available on request" would help.

Another thing that might be useful is a shelf with a string of empty cans representing what's available. At that point, an "ask if you can't find it in the cooler" sign is less needed, because it's more likely someone looking for X will say "Hey, you're out of X!"

The Con Suite at Loscon usually has such a bewildering assortment of flavors that it's (a) difficult to keep all of them stocked in the ice chest simultaneously and (b) hard for someone taking over for just a few hours to be acquainted with what's there.

(I acknowledge that as a party host, I should have done my own soda inventory so I would have known if there were Splenda sodas, and if I should get some to augment the selection. But I wasn't taking charge of the con suite operation as a whole, and we were trying to get the room transitioned as quickly as possible. Changing the basic way the Con Suite was set up wasn't in the cards.)