From: Tina Tawdre (dlvdisc@geekbabe.com)
Date: Sun Sep 21 2003 - 16:47:10 CDT
Hi Yvonne,
My goodness, that was indeed blunt. You hardly sounded like my old
Little Sister. But that's OK. :-)
A healthy debate on this topic is exactly what's needed and what was
missing from the original planning, where too much discussion centered
on how hot each week was and not enough on more important
considerations.
>The dates were discussed in the DLVorg group. It was no secret, and
>anyone attending DLV with email access could have joined in the group
And objections were raised then during the planning process, but this
issue seems to affect more of the general membership than it did members
of the ORG group. After the general dates were announced as final on
8/31 several people (independent of me) started to wake up to the
Mother's Day conflict and the first objectsion started coming in on
9/12. I only started talking about it again when I saw that there were
others being affected also.
We've seen several people who are negatively impacted by these dates.
With 8 months still to go, you can predict the impact of Mother's Day
with clarity. In this entiere month of September so far, I haven't
heard anybody say they would be negatively impacted by flipping the
dates to 2 weeks later after Inter-Op. Only 1 person has said that they
have even scheduled their vacation time at work. The ORG scheduling
discussion centered around the questionable idea that there was a
noticable heat difference in 2 weeks. In the notes I saved, I can't
find references to anybody saying they couldn't do those later dates.
Would this change actually hurt anybody or are we tilting at windmills?
In the past, IIRC, we've always talked in terms of scheduling your
travel (making reservations, buying non-refundable tickets, etc) as
occuring around the first of the year, after official hotels are set.
That advice bears repeating. Is it remotely possible that anyone is
buying airline tickets 8 months out?
>However, a decision was made, popular or not, but much thought was put
>into it to accomadate as many as possible. If the dates change
>everytime when a group cannot attend for some good reason, with the
>size of DLV growing, we may never be able to set a date that is
>comfortable to everyone.
But that's exactly what we already do - schedule around special
interest groups, some very small in number. My point is that more
current and potential attendees are affected by this Mother's Day
issue than any other "special" group.
There hasn't been a significant amount of elapsed time since the dates
were announced. I've addressed lengthy comments on this 'schedule set
in stone' fallacy to the ORG newsletter, which I imagine will come out
again pretty soon.
><snip> Can there be any other possiblities than changing the
>official dates?
>A good alternative was brought up, which was to adjust the dates to go
>to DLV as much as you want to, and leave friday or saturday if needed to
>go home to celebrate mothers day.
Then you're missing the best days. Why spend all that money just to
turn around and go home when DLV is hitting full throttle?
><snip>
>Also if this is the case, to those that are affected, please step up to
>the planning plate. DLV is very flexable. How about those unable to
>attend Mother's day weekend try to start planning second-track events
>during the early part of the week (or for the weekend before DLV for
>that matter) for those that can attend at that time? For instance some
>pre-pre-pre DLV events or get togethers, or shows.
To include the previous weekend with official activities would make DLV
nine or ten days long. And if you publicize these pre-pre-pre
activities enough so that a sizable number of people show up, then
you're moving the focus away from the proximity to Inter-Op (the tech
convention) that drives much of this planning discussion in the first
place. If you're willing to consider that much of a slide, why not
slide in the opposite direction away from Mother's Day and start either
the week of or the week after Inter-Op? To my mind, the key to have the
biggest turnout at the end of DLV is to have it end on a weekend that
isn't Mother's Day.
><snip>
>As far as the DLV concept changes:
>My understanding, Annie is one of the founders of DLV, is at the helm of
>DLV, and has done, to me, a beyond excellent job, spending untold many
>many thankless hours on this event. If the DLV concept was designed to
>be before or after a tech convention, and a 'vacation' and not a
>'convention', then so be it. These are the parameters we will work with.
>
Sounds good to me. Let's just do it AFTER the convention and avoid
Mother's Day.
And, for the record, I haven't proposed any DLV concept changes and I
haven't heard anybody else do that either within the context of this
discussion.
Best Regards,
-- Tina
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