IF Gathering at NoShowConf: followup

Got it. I was also in that group on the ground floor (though unable to attend its two? convocations), and your speculative summary of its fate appears to be more or less correct.

As far as I know, there was only one actual meetup and it kind of fizzled from there. The fact that I’m not a very proactive Facebook user probably has something to do with that.

For what it’s worth, an email group (Google Groups) has served us in Boston pretty well for organizing meetings.

-Kevin

The problem is honestly that the group’s leaders (myself and two others) have two main concerns at the moment: a) graduate school (timesink) and b) running mediumdifficulty.com (extreme timesink.)

That said, I’d love the opportunity to get together and meet folks - but one of the reasons it ceased being updated was the lack of apparent interest in the region.

If we start planning now, having a live xyzzy’s would be possible. I’d push for April/May and try to void any other large conventions that people might choose over our meetup.

I doubt we’d know who would come before the nominations, but those are done in February I think. But before then we could arrange for a small auditorium and a block of hotel rooms. We could do the awards on day 1 and a demo fair on day 2 with panels on both days.

I will add that if we would agree on Chicago, I would volunteer to lead the effort and fund a large part of it. If we settle on Boston again, that eats most of my cash up for traveling.

David C.
www.textfyre.com

It’s awfully tempting (if not a particularly good idea) to hold 'em in Seattle, since three of the four organisers live there. (Not that I think this is a particularly good idea.)

One of the things I like about the XYZZY awards as currently constituted is that it’s possible for people in diverse countries to attend and accept their recognition. I am not sure a live ceremony featuring a much smaller percentage of the nominees would be nearly as appealing – or as representative of the diversity of the community. (IMO.)

This is true; also, it’d be quite difficult to maintain the feel of the thing in person. A lot of the fun of the ceremony is the illusion of some wacky version of pomp and circumstance, which we don’t have the props budget for in real life.

Definitely; I suppose an addendum to my previous post is that “if it’s going to be either/or, XYZZYs or central location/date, choose the central location/date.”

Or there could be two events, one main and one auxiliary, kind of like when we did two PAXes.