Re: Conventions

Brian Henderson wrote:

On 05 Oct 2005 22:00:49 +0100 (BST), Thomas Womack
<twomack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


No; but the surplus tends to go to the next convention down the line,
rather than to reimburse every cost incurred by the committee in
putting on the convention.  I get the impression that being a Worldcon
head costs several thousand dollars over the years leading up to the
Worldcon, in travel to and accommodation around planning meetings if
nothing else, and that there are enough people prepared to regard this
as an expensive but fulfilling hobby rather than as something needing
reimbursement that it's rarely if ever reimbursed.



If the costs incurred are not paid for, then there *IS* no surplus.
They're passing on money that should pay for current expenses.  Seems
to me like some people need to take Business Management 101.  I know
that when I was doing a lot of con planning, etc. I'd never bother
with trivial things like mileage or food or anything like that, but if
I was going to sink several thousand dollars into renting hotel space
or anything like that, they're getting a bill and I'm going to get
paid back!

Of course they are. I think we have people talking past each other here. Many of us (including me) are interpreting your discussion of convention expeneses as "every expense incurred by the individuals working on the convention, including our own personal travel and hotel and other related expenses." In the above paragraph, I think you're saying "If I pay personally out of my pocket to rent the function space, the convention had better reimburse me for it."

Nobody that I know of has a problem with the latter. It's the former that is mostly unstainable. But in fact, it's a poor idea for someone to personally pay for anything other than de minimus expenses out of pocket. In the case of renting function space, the payment should go directly from the convention to the facility, not via someone's personal account, unless it's very impractical to do so.

Examples of the distinctions I'm drawing:

When the Bay Area in 2002 bid was in Australia, a member of the bid committee who had an Australian bank account put up her credit card to deal with the in-Australia expenses -- mostly catering -- of our promotions there. The Bid committee then reimbursed here for the expenses she incurred on our behalf paying for the (expensive) catering.

She also rented a hotel room in which she stayed during the convention. The bid committee did _not_ reimburse her for that hotel room (or for my hotel expenses, for that matter), even though the primary reason she (or I) was there was to promote the bid. Nor was I paid the (>$1000US) cost of flying to Australia for Aussiecon Three. That was my expense, not the convention's. But if my employer sent me to Australia to do some supply-chain management work (that's the field in which I work), I would expect my employer to pay for the airfare, hotel, meals, and local transportation. It's quite rare for a convention to pick up those expenses for the people who put on the convention.

When it came time to pay the San Jose Convention Center our facilities deposit, that was a check drawn on the convention's main bank account.

I get the strong impression that you and some of the other people in this discussion are using the same words to refer to different things.

--
---
Kevin Standlee
http://www.livejournal.com/users/kevin_standlee/
.

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