Red Hat Society's in town

Have you ever heard of the Red Hat Society? I hadn't until a few days ago, when I read a short blurb in the local weekly paper. No, they have nothing to do with any variant of Linux, instead, they're a group modeled on the poem Warning, by Jenny Joseph. From their description:

Welcome to the place where there is fun after fifty (and before) for women of all walks of life. We believe silliness is the comedy relief of life and, since we are all in it together, we might as well join red-gloved hands and go for the gusto together. Underneath the frivolity, we share a bond of affection, forged by common life experiences and a genuine enthusiasm for wherever life takes us next.

So, why was it in the local weekly, and why am I mentioning it today? Because the local chapter of the Society has gotten together, and invited other chapters to join them, today in our fair town. Let's just say my drive into work was full of amazing sights to see, and I'm sorry I didn't have my camera. The pictures at their web site just don't give the full effect. I'm thinking about getting a hat of my own.

Later note: Their appearance was also covered in the local daily paper.

Bloggercon, part 3

I'm close to getting bored, but I know that there's a few people who are keeping track of the BloggerCon goings-on by checking here, so I figured that I should mention the latest.

When last seen, our guys had noticed that there was a hullaballoo about paying $500 (or about ten times what was generally considered to be fair), and they said that they were working on figuring out a better deal. I, like many, thought that they were figuring out how to bring the cost down to something more in the ballpark.

Nope, not even close! The answer is (drumroll, please) that 25 passes will be given away via a sweepstakes. Yes, really. They still plan to charge the full rate to 75 people who aren't lucky enough to win a freebie, meaning that this non-profit conference is expected to have $37,500 in expenses. That's for travel expenses for eleven speakers (all traveling coach) and infrastructure. No attendee meals are included in that—they're hoping that corporate sponsors will cover those. I cannot honestly imagine how they can spend that kind of money on a weekend-long con, unless that's some Friday speaker dinner and Sunday brunch (link to Google cache, because the original has, umm, changed).

Oh, and the second day of the conference/convention? While it was originally included in the cost, it's now a freebie open to the public. So, you're now getting less for your money than you were before.

CA Governor election

Tech writer stuff

Because I know I'm going to want this later, a link to Techwriter Stuff: Finally, Tshirts for Techwriters. Good gifts both for writers and from writers. I can think of at least one editor of ours to whom we should give this.

More on Bloggercon

The ruckus about Bloggercon continues (here and here, for instance), and something that everyone seems to be missing in the hoohah is that there are three types of conferences:

1. Academic: I don't know anything about these.
2. Professional: I did a quick check of semi-comparable professional conferences (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and found that they average from $50 to $467 per day. $500 is on the high side here, but not way out of the ballpark.
3. Hobbyist: the usual comparison here has been to Science Fiction fan conventions. I've been to a number of these (such as last year's WorldCon), and they usually cost less than $50/day (for example, the next WorldCon is approx. $40/day and the last Comic-Con was $15/day).

Here's the problem, in a nutshell: the folks Dave invited see themselves in group #3. They aren't academics, and they aren't professional webloggers. They don't work for companies or educational institutions that pay them to blog, or to pontificate about blogging.

The folks who organized this saw it as a conference for groups #'s 1 and 2. Blogging isn't, at this point, at the stage where group #2 is large enough to support a conference like this. Group #1 might be able to, but those aren't the people that were invited (or at least they aren't being vocal about it). Group #3 got the invites, and saw that the cost was waaay out of line for that group. Yelling and bitching occurred, because that's an outrageous price for a hobbyist convention.

One other thing that was blown: when you announce a conference, you should announce details about the conference. People want to know what it is they're going to get for their money, especially when this is the first time you've run a conference along these lines. According to this page, there's only two confirmed sessions, and neither is described in detail. Ya gotta tell people what they're going to get for their dollar.

And no, I still haven't gotten an invite. But I'm not holding my breath, as I can't afford it anyway.

In yer piehole, Nader!

Normally I frown on this sort of thing, but in this case, I just can't: Nader Takes a Pie in the Face in California. Are there pictures?

Arnold's campaign

This one's worth reading: Arnold's Bad Business - Is his campaign the new Planet Hollywood?

Does this work?

This is my last test to see if my PowerBook is working correctly. It's been 100% good today, so mentioning that in public will either cause it to fail or prove that everything's fixed now. I'm hoping for the latter.

Gore's speech

I hadn't gotten around to reading Al Gore's speech from last week; I'd just read the news reports of it. Those reports mostly said "Gore blasts Bush," which is true, but not at all complete. The speech is an excellent retelling and analysis of what's gone on in the past three years, in words that anyone can understand. Too bad that more people didn't get to see the whole thing. It's well worth reading the entire text; check it out here.

Blogging roundup

It's been a while since I've blogged about anything but laptop problems, so I thought I'd do a quick roundup of everything I've meant to blog but haven't:

• My current favorite for California governor: Don Novello.
• Al and Teresa are blogging about being invited to spend $500 to attend BloggerCon. Yes, $500 is too steep for a conference of this nature, and that's speaking as a professional conference watcher. But it could be worse... I wasn't even invited to spend $500.
  Oh, and if Maryam Scoble wasn't offered the job of organizing BloggerCon, someone seriously dropped the ball.
• Jeffrey and Carrie appear to be expecting a child, as are Mark and Dora. To them we say, congratulations! We also feel a need to point out that there are standards for baby names (ref. here and here), and as standards advocates, we expect them to be followed. Their attention to this detail will be appreciated.
• Meryl got a cochlear implant, and is reporting on her progress over at the Bionic Ear Blog. There are just so many ways that this is cool.
• I had a nice quiet birthday, nothing fancy, just the way I like it. Talked to Mom on the phone, went to Costco and Best Buy to pick out presents (Tom bought me Angel - Season 1, Babylon 5 - Season 2, and Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets), and we then went to see Seabiscuit followed by Zin for a yummy late dinner.
  Following what seems to be the family tradition, both my brothers left me voice mail on my birthday. I was actually hoping to talk to them (and even carried around my cell phone all day so that they could reach me), but my usual wonderful intermittant service didn't let them through. It was very nice to know that they both called, though.
  According to Amazon, someone bought me Babylon 5 - Season 3 for my birthday... but I have no idea who. I guess I'll find out after it's released on Tuesday, but to whoever it was, thanks!
• Sean's back home as of Friday night. He had a great time at CTY and recommends it highly. It's a little weird getting used to being a Mom again, though. It's been a very quiet six weeks.
• Jean and I made it out to the local Renaissance Faire last weekend, and now my back is peeling horribly. I put sunblock everywhere I thought I needed it, and wore a big hat, but putting my hair up meant that usually protected areas got burned. Ouch. It's my first bad burn in years. Time for me to go from being careful to being downright paranoid.
• As always, Tom's not keeping up with what he should be hyping, so I have to point to Access Healdsburg's new site.

I think that that's enough for one post, and my PowerBook should be back to me tomorrow, so it's nose to the grindstone time after that to catch up with everything that hasn't gotten done in the last two weeks.