[TriLUG] Tech Circus wrap-up

[Lisa C. Boyd]

On Mon, 2002-09-30 at 12:07, Paul Jones wrote:
> i have watched to the forums at the site and they have been cleared of 
> dissent several times. i agree some of the dissent was raw and even 
> offensive, but i doubt that i would post there.

I haven't been keeping up with the forums, but I personally am
interested in feedback. I just checked the forums again when John posted
this and I was a bit disappointed in the lack of posts. I've seen more
interesting - more detailed feedback on the lists. I'm going to pass
along what I've gathered from feedback without names or anything like
that - but where ever you feel comfortable giving feedback - you should.

> about the heat and blaming the gubermint. i have been to many dog shows in 
> the building in warm weather. the rolling doors were open and the big fans 
> are put in front. it's simple and helps a lot. for whatever reason the 
> doors were completely closed unless we begged to have them opened even 
> slightly. this is a show management problem not a state problem. the state 
> never represented the building as completely airconed. yellow shirts did 
> many good things and i don't blame them for keeping the doors down, but i 
> do blame folks further up the line.

This is a very good point. Saturday I know they had some of the doors
rolled up a little and that helped along with the cooler weather
outside. They told us Sunday morning to keep the doors closed however,
because people were coming and going through those doors. You can look
at this several ways. One, people were getting in without paying. Two,
we were trying really hard to get an accurate count of people coming in
and people going. "How hard can it be to count people?" you may ask.
Hard - I can tell you! Part of the success or failure of the show is
based on how many people come. Ok - so we can count the number of
tickets given out, but that doesn't take into account the people who
returned the next day. We did the best we could with couting, but even
something that should've been relatively simple was also a learning
experience. Lastly, there were not enough security/staff people to man
all the exits. There were a lot of small, expensive things that could've
walked right out those doors. 

I know that all of these issues are not something the attendees are
worried about - obviously the heat was. These are just some of the
things that may have prompted the higher-ups to make the decision to
keep the doors closed. Hopefully, next year they will find a more
appropriate place to handle all of these aspects or they'll be able to
better work inside the Jim Graham building.

> bob should appologize to the vendor groups for his remarks in news forge. 
> non-profits like community-lead user groups don't have gobs of $$$ or 
> even gobs of time (and much of this on short notice). they did fine 
> considering the vision of the show that could be distilled from (gawd save 
> me) powerpoint slides.

I absolutely agree with this too! From what I've heard him say, I'm sure
he was trying to be funny, but he probably didn't realize that it
wouldn't come across that way in a written article.

> on the other hand, my son had a wonderful time. he is a lego maniac, and 
> robot builder and a vr fan. he had a perfect 9 year old time on sunday and 
> asked if the show would be on this coming week end too.

I'm glad to hear that he had a wonderful time. I was surprised by the
number of kids that come through and were excited by the stuff inside. I
thought that was really cool and I hope it inspires them to learn more. 

Lisa B.