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totientWarning: self-congratulation follows...
Two years ago, I sat down with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
folzgold and his college application essay and showed him how to take an existing piece of writing and give it a spine transplant. I made him slice the previous draft into tiny little bits, and then reassemble it onto the entirely new outline I had him write. What he wound up with had the texture he started with but gained punch by being built on a new structure, and it worked. I really admire Jacob's writing and I was really happy that I could add another tool to his toolbox.
That process is what I'd like to think I did with Arisia this year. The convention has the same feel as before, but it's on a more solid footing. I fixed a bunch of underlying structural problems in ways that could have been tremendously disruptive, making radical changes to our budget and space usage and information flow, but (mostly) the old texture transplanted on just fine. And I think it worked, too. We put together a great convention, and we made it look easy. Now we can think about where to go next.
In a funny way, Arisia was anticlimactic for me personally. I think it's the part where we made it look easy: by January, I had transformed the concom into an organization that not only could but inevitably would spit out a terrific convention. It was nice to sit back and enjoy the ride, but it wasn't the same thrill as at the Mini-Arisia when it wasn't clear what we were going to pull off.
Two years ago, I sat down with
folzgold and his college application essay and showed him how to take an existing piece of writing and give it a spine transplant. I made him slice the previous draft into tiny little bits, and then reassemble it onto the entirely new outline I had him write. What he wound up with had the texture he started with but gained punch by being built on a new structure, and it worked. I really admire Jacob's writing and I was really happy that I could add another tool to his toolbox.That process is what I'd like to think I did with Arisia this year. The convention has the same feel as before, but it's on a more solid footing. I fixed a bunch of underlying structural problems in ways that could have been tremendously disruptive, making radical changes to our budget and space usage and information flow, but (mostly) the old texture transplanted on just fine. And I think it worked, too. We put together a great convention, and we made it look easy. Now we can think about where to go next.
In a funny way, Arisia was anticlimactic for me personally. I think it's the part where we made it look easy: by January, I had transformed the concom into an organization that not only could but inevitably would spit out a terrific convention. It was nice to sit back and enjoy the ride, but it wasn't the same thrill as at the Mini-Arisia when it wasn't clear what we were going to pull off.
