Looney Labs Rabbits Mailing list Archive

RE: [Rabbits] Con Check: June '07. Anyone going to these JUNE cons?

  • FromDavid Artman <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateFri, 25 May 2007 08:33:12 -0700
> I would've expected there to be a way to add
> cons in the same way that we can add the stores that we go to.

I might be wrong, but why wouldn't this link work for you:
http://www.looneylabs.com/contactus/submission_start.html

Choose the Convention radio button and fill out the ensuing form as
appropriate.

The REAL question, then, is "why doesn't submission to that go
anywhere?" because I know that I have submitted Trinoc*Con and MACE (my
two local cons) to that form, but they aren't shown on the roster.

Reading further in the mailing list replies...
> Looney Labs doesn't have the resources right now to deal with
> cons where there are not going to be Rabbits doing demos.

FWIW, I ran 12 hours of demos at both Trinoc*Con and MACE, per my Rabbit
Report. If I recall correctly, Hope Evey ran more than her fair share of
Fluxx games, too, at Trinoc*Con (hmmm... or was it MACE?). My demos at
MACE sold-out the supply of Treehouse at the con (which, admittedly,
wasn't a HUGE supply, but Sci Fi Genre's owners, for one, now carry a
lot more to these cons).

Carol, perhaps you could register the cons for which Rabbits submit
reports, even though it's sort of after the fact? Or maybe make An
Official Request/Requirement to Rabbits that they always "pre-report"
before they go, so that you know in advance and can post that
Convention to the roster and home page news, then they "post-report"
their events(s) for carrots and glory. No pre- and post-, no cookie...
uh, I mean, no carrots.

> And SuperFRED is a kluged together (over many years) home brew.

Might I be so bold as to suggest that the very inefficiency and lack of
features of your principle web, sales, and community relations tool
could very well be the PRECISE reason your time gets eaten up more than
you'd like?

For instance, this whole "register cons" thing shouldn't have a human in
the middle, except to confirm that folks aren't putting in garbage or
spam. I.E. The entry form for the database back-end should e-mail you
with the data and all you do is reply to it to confirm it's OK to show
(no reply in, say, a week = delete from DB without having ever
displayed it). One mouse click, not cut & pasting (or, worse,
retyping!).

Likewise the recent complexities and hand-management of Ziggurat Con
donations: it should have been the work of, like, five minutes for you
to add a means for folks to just "buy nothing" for the troops, to do a
cash donation that would end up worth ~25% more once you fulfilled it
with a balanced mix of near-at-cost products. 

Now, I recognize the the world's worst fightin' word is "should," so
please believe I mean well and am only pointing out what I've observed
over time. It's sort of a principle of IT that tools work for you, not
you for them; and that is a good gauge of when a tool is outdated: when
you spend more time working around it than doing your primary
business--you're not running Looney Labs to be a data entry specialist,
right?

Long story (rant) short, it might be well past time to "spend it to make
it," as they say. What opportunities have been lost while you and us and
others have done data massaging for SuperFRED or hand-coding and
-uploading site updates? There are a TON of open-source, secure
solutions for shopping carts, community news, blogging, content
management, forums, etc, etc that you could pay a very reasonable rate
to a developer to implement, from initial staging and testing to
migration and roll-out. You might even find a smart developer or two on
this list, who would do it for peanuts... err, carrots.

Hope this helps;
David