"I feel pretty, oh, so pretty, I feel pretty and witty and bright! And I pity any girl..."

My photos from Costume College are online. I took 500 photos, printed them out and gave them away. Click on the picture of bovil and friend to see them.

EDIT: If you see your picture, feel free to give me more caption info explaining your costume. Just click on a thumbnail to see the large-size image, then scroll down to the fill-in form.

Costume College. As you may know, I'm a minimalist costumer -- I made my own bear ears, and that's as far as I got. Costume College is a program-heavy convention, run by the Costumers Guild West. The relationship of the CGW Board to Costume College is comparable to the relationship between the laconiv Execomm and that convention -- the board runs the convention, it's not an at-a-distance thing the way the LASFS or SCIFI board relates to Loscon or L.A.con IV. So this means that if I have any suggestions on what might improve Costume College, I should direct them to the CGW Board. Or to some members thereof; if they agree with my ideas they can take them and run with them.

So who's on the board? I don't know. I know of two members. Mrs. Joyce Saunders (Gordon's wife) is the Ambassador-at-Large. It's specifically her job to listen to suggestions. And there's a new CGW Vice President: colleency. Welcome to the Establishment, Colleen!

Costume College is sort of a three-day (or so) intensive seminar weekend. But it's also a convention. I think some of the board don't realize it's a convention, though, and think it's just like a slice of a college campus.* There are a bunch of Costume College regulars who are also Loscon or Anime Expo regulars, or otherwise have connections to the sci-fi or anime fan community. Probably more than they realize. Perhaps they should do a survey, if they haven't done one recently? "In the last three years, have you attended any of these? __Loscon __Baycon __Westercon __Worldcon __Anime Expo __Anime Los Angeles ... other s-f conventions you attend: ______________ other anime conventions: ______"

Oh, what was I doing at Costume College? (Taking pictures, obviously.) The reason I went is because I'd promised we'd volunteer at their convention in return for the chair ("dean") Lana Bailey and crew helping with the animelosangeles Costume Repair Station. Rebecca Metzger, Volunteers head, gave us a list of open volunteer slots and we filled most of the unfilled slots, including most of the hours at the Costume Exhibit. The Costume Exhibit is an easy post, but it's boring: most of the day, most of the other members are tucked away in classes and workshops and lectures.

But the Costume Exhibit is important. It doesn't get a lot of continuous traffic, but people do stop in when they can squeeze in a few minutes between classes.

Okay, I've got more things to say, but I'm going to break this post up into a couple of chunks. Next topic: Hospitality.

*It's not just an educational event, because people convene -- they come together to see each other and be seen and meet new friends, and to wear costumes even when it's not time for one of the specific dress-up events.

"...who isn't me tonight. I feel charming, oh so charming, it's alarming how charming I feel..."

Suggestions for Costume College: move Hospitality downstairs, to 180 (relocating Ops to Boardroom), and extend the hours earlier.

Room 180 is the suite that Gallifrey and animelosangeles used to use for their con suites. The problem with moving Ops to the Boardroom is that at Costume College, Ops is more than just Con Ops -- it's also Program Ops/Tech Storage. So perhaps the Boardroom isn't best for it, but it could go into a regular guestroom, because they'll need to be able to roll tech equipment carts in and out.

Certainly, a daytime Con Suite won't get a lot of traffic. It'll be as boring a post as the Costume Exhibit, with people dashing in to get a bottle of water and a piece of fruit, and maybe a roll or a peanut butter sandwich to eat on their way to their next class. And if we have that, we should have an obvious place inside the Costume Exhibit where they can put down their food while they browse the costumes. (The exhibit was in 184/186, just down the hall from 180.)

(I say "we" because it's looking like ala_mokita and I are going to volunteer at Costume College again next year. We'll bring books to read and hang out in the Costume Exhibit, and watch the pretty costumes go by.)

So it comes down to people. In order to open the Con Suite/Hospitality earlier in the day, it needs someone to run the room. And a slight budget increase -- might not need to be that much if it doesn't get a huge amount of foot traffic -- and the convention's hotel liaison might need to make sure it's okay to serve snacks there. But I think it would be a worthwhile addition to Costume College.

"...And so pretty that I hardly can believe I'm real. See the pretty girl in that mirror there..."

Suggestions for Costume College: Move the CGW meeting to the beginning of the convention, and have some kind of closing ceremony at the end of the con. I agree with bovil on this one: put it at the beginning of the meeting, so people who care about that sort of thing can make plans attend, and it won't get bogged down with gripe-session fodder. And the CGW business meeting shouldn't be combined with "Orientation" either! The CGW meeting on Sunday lasted three hours; colleency left after two, which is why she didn't learn she'd been elected VP until she received my text message congratulating her.

And is the hotel liaison following up on the deteriorating quality of the food service? I hear the Tea was worse than last year, which wasn't as good as the year before. And why no hot carbs in the breakfast buffet? Someone ought to secret-shop the hotel -- go over there on a couple of consecutive Saturdays and see what they're serving in the breakfast buffet. Have they downgraded their offerings on a general basis?

Someone at the Dead Dog party was talking about the exclusive/non-exclusive aspects of the Gala. The Gala is a banquet that you can buy tickets for, at $80 a head I think; after the food's served, they open the doors to anyone who wants to come in and dance. Should the whole event be an exclusive affair, because as it stands it's just a very expensive meal? Should they abolish the dinner aspect entirely and just have a dance? My thoughts: Leaving aside the decline in the Airtel's customer service, the banquet and the Tea (and the food that Hospitality orders from Room Service) are important because they represent a significant revenue stream, and are the main reason why everyone gets free breakfast included in their room. Consider, the room rates for Costume College were $10/night less than what animelosangeles enjoyed, and breakfast was included.

Everything in the contract is a matter of trade-offs, and F&B is really, really important. If I could figure out a way to funnel more F&B money to the animelosangeles without breaking the bank, I'd do it... Our Tea last year was an experiment along those lines, by the way.

So I say, keep the Gala and maybe the Tea. Crack the whip on the hotel and get them to give you value for the money, sure. Look into that aspect when negoitating with the next hotel -- the Airtel's too small to stay, and there's reportedly only one year left on the current contract.

Which brings me to my next idea, which isn't original either: gotta find a new hotel. Why? Costume College is surely outgrowing the Airtel. Costume College 2007 filled up in September 2006; Costume College 2008 filled up before the end of the day on Sunday. I'm not suggesting any fundamental changes to the structure of the convention's program, which consists of a mix of open items and limited-signup $$ classes. But clearly a larger facility would allow more classes, lectures and workshops to be added, limited and otherwise. Some things could be put in larger rooms, but I don't think that's really an issue -- more small breakout rooms would be ideal.

I don't know how many room nights the convention had. If this were a convention like animelosangeles, I'd estimate fewer than a hundred. But I'm sure it's higher than that -- lots of people brought their machines and worked on their costumes, sometimes up to the hour of the event they wanted to wear them at. One of the really nifty features of the Airtel is the design of the rooms -- every regular guest room in the main hotel has a little built-in desk area that's perfect for setting up a sewing machine. But even if they get one room night per member, that's only 300 and change: not a huge carrot to offer the hotel.

My understanding is that Sandy Rhymer's still Costume College's hotel contract negotiator. Trained by Bobbi, and Christian considers Sandy to be better at it than he is. So I expect that Sandy will get C.C. a good deal, provided that Sandy has a clear understanding of what the CGW Board thinks is important in the next contract... I think Sandy spends most of her C.C. weekend in the Marketplace (Dealers Room) at the Alter-Years table, so I don't know if she's keeping on top of the situation during the convention itself: is there an on-site liaison assisting Sandy?

[I have some unanswered questions about how the convention runs, that I could find out by consulting a staff roster -- but I wasn't a member, I was just a volunteer. Handy, because it meant I could volunteer and not spend the money (which I couldn't anyway, they were full), but that meant I didn't get any of the materials everyone else got.]