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Birth of the Centennial 
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In this thread I shall attempt to lay down for posterity the origins of the Centennial from my perspective. Since I was the instigator of the event, the initial part of the story will be a first hand account.

In 2002 David Silver made a July 7 posting in alt.fandom.heinlein wishing Heinlein a Happy Birthday. I had been a member of the society for several years without doing more than attending the occasional con panel. I had also been subscribing to the Journal for roughly the same period.

I may be a bit slow on the uptake, so it took the posting to finally awaken elementary arithmetic skills within me and I made the computation that a very significant date was 5 years away. And immediately I decided that something should be done on that date, because it represented a literally once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leverage a common numerology fetish (I refer to the 100 years, rather than the 7/7/7 repetition) into a renewed celebration of all things Heinlein.

I envisaged a convention - and July 7 2007 was a Saturday to boot, how much more auspicious could you get - with fans gathered in His name, and, selfishly, this convention would be chock full of the kinds of event that I most wanted to attend and only rarely found at other conventions. (This was later to be born out when members of the THC executive committee were repeatedly fretting about program content after I had assured them this was No Problem, so I proved it to them by coming up with fifty panel descriptions in an hour, at least 80% of which ended up more or less verbatim on the program.) But I reasoned that this would be an event for Heinlein fans, i.e., people like me, i.e., people who would find these events as appealing as I did. (Also born out through accounts of attendees.)

I anticipated creating a worldwide buzz; from the start I saw this as an international convention and expected people from around the globe to attend. I envisaged concurrent events that would put Heinlein's name in the public eye, such as spacecraft named after him, a Heinlein stamp issued, television documentaries and the like. (When my vision plane takes off, it reaches a high altitude fairly rapidly.) I always saw it as inevitable that such an event would attract a few thousand people (my naivete can be breathtaking).

I turned to the Heinlein Society and said, five years is not too soon to start something of this magnitude; what do you say? And they said, fine: you are now our Centennial chair; go forth and do Centennialesque things.

And for over a year, I did. I wrote articles for the society newsletter exhorting the membership to action; I promoted the Centennial through various online fora; I attended worldcons to meet with society brass and promote the cause of the centennial; and I attended the monthly online society board and chair meetings.

[To be continued...]


Tue Jun 02, 2009 10:48 am
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Tue Jun 02, 2009 5:39 pm
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[...Continued...]

Outreach was mostly limited to articles in the THS newsletter. I hoped to set up an organization based on a cell structure like that in TMIAHM (see http://heinleinsociety.org/newsletters/ ... Page11.pdf) in order to be able to delegate tasks effectively;and I drafted some high-level role descriptions which can still be seen at http://www.psdt.com/heinlein/ . That site was advertised in a mass email to THS members, but as you can see, never advanced beyond the initial communiqué. I wanted to contact the membership again but the THS secretary refused.

The lack of response was disheartening. The next year involved talk and not much else. I donated the domains heinlein100.(com,net,org) to THS, one of which still redirects to their web site. Some people did get involved: Mike Sheffield drafted his notion of the mother of all blood drives; Sam Kramer originated the idea of Heinlein on a stamp (which, sadly, never materialized); the Rules designed a logo.

The primary response, though, was from Alan Koslow, who suggested Kansas City as a location for the convention, based upon his knowledge of the fans there and its natural relevance to Heinlein.

[... to be continued...]


Wed Jun 03, 2009 5:19 am
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[...Continued...]

Shortly after I started the Centennial effort, Alan Milner became active in the society's executive and assumed a fundraising duty. Alan was very good at standing in front of a room of people who had paid to attend the society's worldcon dinner and asking them for money - lots of it. (I would then announce that I had plans to spend it. No money was ever allocated to the Centennial effort explicitly, aside from paying some of my Worldcon expenses, though.)

Alan understandably liked events that attracted high-rollers. As I continued to flesh out a vision of a convention, now suggesting Kansas City as a location, some tension arose between this vision and a competing vision in the executive of the Centennial being a black tie evening attended by a relatively few wealthy individuals who would contribute enough to bankroll the society for a long time. I did not see the two as being mutually exclusive but the influential directors began throwing up objections to solidifying convention plans. With under four years to go, I felt that we needed to book the location soon in order to lock down venue expenses and begin attracting aspects that depended on location, but the response was that the location could be decided much later, maybe a year away.

There were also objections to Kansas City. Alan Koslow had established a relationship with the fan group there (KACSFFS) and arranged at Torcon 3 for a Kansas City tourism representative (who was there promoting KC for Worldcon 2006, a bid they lost) to come talk to THS. The rep was given the cold shoulder, though, and the best I could do was arrange a meeting with Art Dula of the Heinlein Prize Trust. The rep provided videos and expensive information packets and was eager to answer questions but there seemed to be very little interest in the site.

I continued to press the issue, saying that we needed to pick a site and I was fine with an alternative if someone would suggest one and provide reasons, because my research had yielded nothing better. There was mention of Seattle - apparently there was some hope of courting millionaire Paul Allen and the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, although I never heard of any results - but there was no suggestion made that I could do anything with. This was immensely frustrating to me because I had brought Alan Koslow into meetings since he was the only other person demonstrating much enthusiasm for the Centennial and I had to keep telling him that we could not proceed. (A few people had responded along vague lines of being willing to do such-and-such, do please stay in touch, etc, but Alan was the only one being proactive and self-motivating.)

Finally, in fall 2003, with work pressures mounting and seeing no way to make progress on the Centennial, I resigned from the chair. Alan Koslow took over the role but I made no attempt to stay informed and I heard nothing from the society. I assumed that either Alan would break through the resistance to Kansas City, or the executive would implement their idea of a black tie dinner. The next society newsletter contained no mention of the Centennial.

[...To be continued...]


Thu Jun 04, 2009 5:08 am
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Thu Jun 04, 2009 10:02 am
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[...Continued...]

The newsletter following that (July 2004) referred to a "Centennial Celebration" without further details, so I assumed that something was being planned. Whatever was actually going on during this period will have to be related by someone else, because I heard nothing. I hoped that the event would be one I would like to attend, but that was the extent of my thinking on the matter.

Fast forward to January, 2005. (My memory of dates is not always accurate; it may have been a month earlier.) I received a phone call from Alan Koslow. I asked him how the centennial planning was going; he said there was none. He had been unable to get the society to move on his proposal, but furthermore - they had done nothing on an alternative. He was frustrated and wanted to move ahead anyway. I opined that it was too late to do anything now, given hotel lead times, but he said he had a good deal on a facility (the one we ended up using), and then said that Bill Patterson was interested in making this happen.

That changed my mind about getting involved again. I said, "If Bill's part of this, then I'd like to play. Let's talk." So the three of us talked about this effort and very shortly, Bill announced that he was pulling in Jim Gifford, whom I knew by reputation but had never conversed with. Jim's first message to me was along the lines of "Who are you and what are you doing here?" and once I explained in my characteristically grandiose language, we recognized each other as kindred writers of the overblown prose school and hit it off immediately.

From this point on, other people can contribute a lot more of the juicy details from first-hand experience - in particular, I myself had no direct contact with the Heinlein Society beyond talking with some of their chairpeople who were sympathetic to our cause but could not openly support us for fear of the wrath of their boss. I will keep this thread going and prompt others to join in at the appropriate times.

We debated the venue - but not for long. Kansas City had so much going for it: It was adjacent to Heinlein's birthplace, was an old stomping ground of Heinlein's, and featured in several of his stories; it was geographically central to the continental USA; it was a second-tier convention city, meaning it was less expensive than first-tier cities like San Francisco and New York but still had adequate facilities and was served by many major airlines; and most critically, we had secured the support of KACSFFS, soon to be represented for us principally by Tina Black. Without local help we would have no hope, so the decision was not difficult. Alan Koslow visited the site to liaise with facility staff.
The downside of KC was that it would be a barbecue in July; but that also meant that facility rates would still be reasonable, and we didn't plan on spending time outside anyway.

Meanwhile, we worked out a tentative pecking order with Bill, me, and Jim being 'Cell A' in the executive, with Jim and Bill assuming financial responsibility which I declined to share in on grounds of marital diplomacy. Jim set up the non-profit org to "own" the event. I started a wiki to organize our information.

There was then one dramatic weekend that deserves recounting in minute detail by Bill and Jim, for that was the weekend that Bill revealed our plans to David Silver and Jim signed the hotel contract. Please step in here, gentlemen; you have riveting tales to tell.

[...To be continued...]


Thu Jun 04, 2009 1:41 pm
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Thu Jun 04, 2009 6:27 pm
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[Edited to fix egregious error flip-flopping the two hotels!]

The week we went public - one of the ugliest parts of the story. Sigh - here goes.

The basic idea to take on the Centennial project coalesced with the four of us - Bill, Peter, Alan Koslow and myself - sometime in February 2005. By May 2005, we were almost ready. Alan had done much legwork with the hotels, two different sets of them in KC, and we had decided on the Hyatt/Westin combo (over whatever replaced the old Muehlebach, site of the 1976 Worldcon that was Heinlein's last GoH appearance). We were waiting for the nonprofit corporation papers to be approved... and the day the state handed them back I signed the event contract with the hotels, faxed it off, and sometime later that day came the public announcement of the event.

We had expected that THS would be unhappy about our plans, but our collective assessment was that they (meaning David Silver) would stomp and shout a bit and then be done with it. We also had made some field surveys and believed, with good reason, that our attendance was likely to be around 2,000. So the venue and support was scaled to that level.

I won't detail David Silver's response. It's a matter of public record and others have filled in the less-public temper tantrums, threats, machinations and other behavior. (There is more to tell on that as well; we'll see how much makes it into this account.)

Our reaction boiled down to a serious case of *OH* *SHIT*. We had not planned for a battle with THS nor did we have the reserves (financial or otherwise) for a protracted fight. It was clear, though, within a few days, that THS was not only going to fail to support the effort but actively work against it. My first move was an attempt to withdraw the venue contract; the hotels merely laughed and asked for their $10,000 cancellation fee (for a contract that hadn't made it out of the fax machine hopper.)

So we got some legal advice while Bill and others worked on the higher powers - the Heinlein Trust representatives and others - and within the week we had decided to continue. THS's bluster was just that (they had no grounds to obstruct us or prevent the event from occuring). In the end we had no good choice but to continue and see if the path would clear.

The path never did clear, entirely. From that moment on, we battled the active counterpropaganda of THS, which divided the community, put important resources beyond our reach, alienated important potential big-name supporters and guests, and made every day of the next two years a sweating nightmare. We worked with too few people and too few resources as the days ticked down, straining to increase the attendance and reduce the hotels' expectations to meet somewhere in the middle. Never did we have the luxury of an assured thing - we were on the knife-edge of throwing in the towel and cancelling the event all the way up to June of 2007.

The event would have been a monumental task in any case, but having THS throw itself in our way, kicking and screaming and calling names, and refusing to even discuss cooperation until around January 2007 - that cooperation grudging and limited and only because bigger men than David Silver were twisting his arms - that pointless, divisive opposition almost kept the event from happening, and at least doubled the workload of the primary organizers for two full years, and acted to greatly undercut the scale and guest list of the thing.

I should point out, as I don't believe Peter has, that from the very first announcement we offered full participation to THS in the event planning and operation. We repeatedly sent offers to David Silver to manage a large part of the event (programming, if I recall correctly) on a shared-power basis. Other than that we built our foundation quietly and after establishing that THS had no plans for Centennial observations on their own, we never tried to exclude THS from the work, the planning, the management or the credit. The invitation was on the table from our first announcement and repeated in public and private many times. It was not withdrawn until the last months, when THS no longer had anything to contribute.

To the best of my knowledge, David Silver never even acknowledged the invitation. He certainly did not accept it. It was apparently more important to him to undercut our efforts - meaning there would be no Centennial event of any kind - than to join forces or even be passive about it. This sheer mean-spirited, small-minded attitude would have been shocking from any significant figure in the Heinlein community. From the president of THS, charged with furthering and enhancing Robert Heinlein's legacy, especially on that day... it was, and still is, beyond belief.

(His opposition didn't stop him from showing up, and it didn't stop THS goons from trying to hang THS banners all over the venue - which ended up in the trash or equivalent. I understand they had a very nice room party, for which they can keep all the credit.)

Because we failed to meet the contract minimums (about 50% more attendees and booked rooms than we achieved), we had to renegotiate the contract at a very late hour and under very unfavorable terms. Only by forcing the hotels to choose between a scaled-down event or complete cancellation with little recourse to a bankrupt nonprofit did we get acceptable terms. This, of course, meant we came into the weekend very much on the hotels's shit list, and favors and concessions were few and far between. We had NO credit at all and had to put cash on the barrelhead before they would so much as give us our personally-booked room keys. This was almost the breaking point for us, because we had counted on hotel credit for about one-third of the event, revenues to be acquired from at-the-door registrations and such. Without that credit, we had to hand over cashier's checks practically before we could enter the lobby. Many aspects of the hotel interaction became difficult and fractious because of their (not unjustified) distrust of us.

The interesting thing was that in all the advance negotiations, the [Hyatt] had been very accommodating and friendly, while the [Westin] was cold and demanding to the point of being nasty. We had attempted to limit the final venue to one hotel or the other, but neither was willing to let go of their piece of the action. So we came in having to hand over those cashier's check to each hotel, which we were able to do... just barely. It came down to an event angel writing a $25,000 check to cover the remainder of up-front expenses we had expected to get on credit. But we did it, all very much "just in time."

When we handed over the checks... we were treated like welcome guests and more by the [Westin], who had been downright hardass until that point. They in fact tossed in the Presidential Suite, where I and my family stayed and where most of the after-hours socializing and executive planning took place - I don't know how we would have managed without it. The [Hyatt], on the other hand, went from being friendly to being completely indifferent and impossible, leading to one angry confrontation after another. (Over such things as the $5,000 in AV costs they'd "forgotten" to include in the up-front billing... and we had to pay more cash up front to get them to finish outfitting the meeting rooms.)

So, that first weekend with all its outright terror and uncertainty ended up being the model for the two years that led to the event. But we all survived it, more or less, and the Centennial came off magnificently despite THS's best efforts - against everything including their own charter - to make it fail.


Sat Jun 06, 2009 6:52 pm
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[...Continued...]

Jim's covered a lot of territory there; I'm going to go back to the weekend I prompted him to discuss because I'm trying to lay down as complete a timeline here as I can, for posterity.

[If I leave stuff out, it's either because I forgot it or because I'm so focussed on what I had first-hand knowledge of that I don't want to steal someone else's thunder by being a secondary source.]

The hotel arrangements were made as late as possible; just over two years before a major event like that is really pushing it. The society's idea that such an event could be booked a year in advance seems ludicrous.

The reader might be wondering why we did not tell THS about our plans before this point, especially given that Bill was on its board at the time. The answer is simple: the society had had two and a half years to formulate a plan for a centennial event, and had not only not done so, but obstructed efforts to implement a plan. When Bill and Jim formed THC Inc., within a couple of months we had made concrete plans and were ready to book a venue. We were concerned that the society would bring the same stonewalling tactic to bear on our plans unless the plans had reached an unstoppable stage, i.e., the hotels were booked. So Bill announced the plans to David Silver literally simultaneously with the contract being signed.

The discussion between the three of us on hearing of David's reaction was very depressing. The hotels refused to let us cancel a contract without penalty, as Jim said - even though the contract was faxed to them on something like a Friday night and our attempt to rescind it sent around Sunday, i.e., both within the same time period when their office staff wasn't at work. If they hadn't been so bloody-minded, there would have been no Centennial. As it was, we decided that if we were facing a $10k cancellation clause, we would damn well wait until the last minute to exercise it (something like a year away; the cancellation penalties followed a staircase function). In the meantime, there was nothing to lose - so our weary rationalization went - from trying to make it work.

Many of the people who would reasonably be expected to be playing major parts in our effort were, understandably, holding chairs in the society, but didn't want to risk the certain loss of their position that would arise from openly supporting us. So they could only support us behind the scenes (there was one time when we were meeting with one of them on AIM at the same time he was also participating in a THS board meeting; it felt quite cloak-and-dagger). Kudos to Mike Sheffield for openly setting up the blood drive for us about a year out from the event. Furthermore, we could not contact the 600 or so society members who would be the most likely core attendees and volunteers. (When relations with David thawed later on, we got one notice to the society members in the mail a few months before the event.) The depth of our loneliness was abyssal.

And in the midst of this despondency, we had to get the job done. I got our first honored guest commitment (see the topic on Brian Binnie elsewhere in this forum). However, the first year was
marked mainly by interminable discussions about the basic vision of the event. I had to keep insisting that we return to that issue since we kept getting in trouble for not resolving it. There was tension surrounding the degree of fannishness of the event. We all recognized that Heinlein was an s-f author who transcended that niche (think Saturday Evening Post, for example) and that he had many admirers who were (a) not s-f fans, and (b) would be repelled by many fannish activities. We wanted them all to come, and for the mainstream, if you will, RAHfans to not feel like this was an s-f con.

That was pretty much agreed upon; what wasn't agreed on was the manifestation of it. The question of whether or not to have a masquerade came up over and over - nothing would scare off a rocket scientist faster than a bunch of women in body paint offering to share water, this was our nightmare scenario - and in the end we left it out completely mainly because it simply did not fit in the schedule. And you know, no one missed it. (By the way, we knew we would get rocket scientists because it was well known that Heinlein was revered in the private space business burgeoning in the Mojave desert and other places, where The Man Who Sold the Moon is literally required reading, just as Starship Troopers is in some military circles.)

And then there was the structure of the event. We originally envisaged a complex system of four tracks: Academic, Literary, Space, and Media. The Academic track would be what I thought of as Bill's nirvana and require referees for papers to be presented. The Literary track would basically be the "fan" track where everything not in the other tracks would go, all the sfnal discussions and sessions on Heinlein's life. The Space track would consist of sessions that might not even mention Heinlein but would be on topic because they would be about the blossoming of commercial space ventures - a field Heinlein all but jumpstarted single-handedly - and/or cutting edge or speculative space exploration.

The astute reader who attended the event will note that this more or less happened - I mean, you saw all those types of event there, right? But in the early days of planning, we were battling byzantine delusions of grandeur. We had endless debates about pitching these tracks as separate conferences that happened to take place conterminously and simultaneously. We agonized over how to structure the fees for each track so that people could sign up for one, two, or more. Jim came up with a badge scheme that exercised so many colors that door monitors would have needed spectrophotometers to decide who to admit. In retrospect the KISS approach we ended up taking seems so obvious but believe me, it was not arrived at quickly or easily.

The astute reader will also realize I left out the Media track. This is because it ended up getting killed. (The film room does not count; it was never intended to be part of the Media track.) The model for this track was DragonCon. The best description I can give is that it was to be everything Heinleinesque that was not the written word. If that seems a bit vague, well, that was the failing of that track; no one ever came up with a concrete enough description to make it sound worth keeping. After a year I announced that unless someone spoke up immediately and eloquently in its favor, I would consider it removed from the venue. And it was gone.

[... To be continued...]


Last edited by PeterScott on Sun Jun 07, 2009 8:59 am, edited 1 time in total.



Sat Jun 06, 2009 8:27 pm
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Unless someone has a particular observation to make or question, I think Jim's summary of That Weekend in May 2005 covers the ground adequately. I don't find myself with anything in particular to add -- except perhaps that my personal difficulty with David had been going on for quite awhile by that time.

Subsequent to the announcement, David kept trying to bully me off the Board of the Society, but you can't bully someone with empty threats, and I know enough about corporate law to laugh at his bluster. The upshot was that David and the Board graciously "allowed" me to finish out my three-term on the Board until the general election to be held at CascadiaCon that September. (Notice that was four years ago; David had then been Chair of the Society for two years, I think; he's still Chair). Between the biography, which had entered Revision Hell and the Centennial, I was going to have to triage the Society in any event. I didn't even attend the general meeting, but instead spent that time manning the lobby table that was jointly held by KCSFS and the Centennial, and the Society table they simply abandoned. To make a point.

That event was, incidentally, my first meeting with Tina Black.


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Before we get too far from it, I wanted to get in a few comments about the conversations at the very start, in January and very early February 2005, that led to the project being reactivated. It's a pity Alan Koslow isn't in on this conversation, because he was a prime mover in this part of the action.

My memory of this specific point is a little hazy, but I think Alan Koslow contacted me out of the blue when I was getting re-established in San Francisco in December 2004. Might have been very early January. We covered a lot of the ground Peter has already laid out.

Now, January 2005 is 30 months from the time of the event, and it would be a very short schedule to pull things together -- not impossible; it was, in fact, the very last minute at which it would even be possible to consider doing -- and would only be possible to consider if we didn't have a long ramping-up to do on hotel contracts. There would be a certain amount of catch-up to do, but the typical con-planning schedule for a two-year lead-time gives a six month period or so when things can be built up slowly; we would simply have to use our various skillsets to collapse that first six-months of work into a shorter time-frame. Hard work but not impossible. And there is some flexibility in the process. The WorldCon in 1978 didn't actually get a set contract with its hotels until something like six months before the event, for example -- but we risked having the hotel sell itself out from under us. Long story. Another time.

My urgent question for Alan, thus, was, how "ready-to-go" were the hotels? The Society had treated the Sales representatives very discourteously at Torcon. If we had to rebuilt bridges burnt, it might not be possible at all. Alan's reply was that he had been continuously, though on a slow scale, been bridge-building all through the intervening period, because he commuted from his practice in Iowa to Kansas City frequently enough to maintain contact easily. He also assured me that the Kansas City fandom was reasonably well-disposed to the idea, even though the Centennial might interfere with their bid for a worldcon. (we had another scheduling conflict -- Westercon, which serves the entire western half of the U.S., had scheduled for the Centennial weekend. A preliminary contact with the administration of the 2007 Westercon showed they were willing to move off that weekend to avoid conflict.)

Now local, on-site support is utterly essential for a distributed event management, but I was less concerned with on-site support and local contact at that moment than with the hotels.

Alan's assurance was that none of the five or six hotels in the KC area were booked for that weekend and the sales and catering staffs (the people that take point on such events) were very open to it and eager to discuss having it. More than that, Alan had sketched out enough of the preliminary information that must be given to hotel sales and catering departments that essentially no background fill was necessary. Hotels could be very close to a turnkey operation -- would not need any long-range ramping up.

That decided me that it was possible, but we would have to move very smartly to stay within our window of opportunity. Alan had been in touch with Peter Scott; I suggested he bring Peter on board and I then contacted Jim Gifford. I had been keeping him apprised on a low level that something was afoot -- generalities. Peter knew the people in the Society, including me, but he did not know Jim, so our first meeting -- was it a conference call? I think so; Alan much preferred conference calls, even though others had other preferences -- introduced them, with what results you know.

We found ourselves in substantial agreement and worked out the next steps to accomplish -- which would involve incorporation of a 501(c)(3) corporation to sponsor the event, timing of hotel negotiations, and so forth. I asked everybody to hold off setting things in motion until I could be certain we would not be stepping on something in process by the Society, by putting a direct question at the February Board meeting -- which typically took place on the second or third Monday of the month. ISTR it was on something like the 21st that month, since Valentine's Day interfered with the usual timing. Now, understand, as a founding member of the Board of Directors I should have been aware of any plans that existed, and I wasn't aware of anything, but by that time David Silver was talking with Alan Milner and would spring things on the board, so I had to ascertain if even Milner's black tie event was planned to go forward at that time. So I put a very general question at the Board meeting -- was the Society planning any even or kind of event for the Centennial weekend? After some back and forth, David gave a simple and unequivocal response: there were no plans currently to do anything on that weekend. I went back to the furtive four and said, it's a "go": set things in motion. And ISTR Jim fiiled the basic paperwork for incorporation within a matter of days. We also decided that we would not make any kind of announcement at all until we had basic ducks in a row: the incorporation paperwork had to come back, and we had to have at least a letter of intent from a hotel. Any kind of interference with those two factors could potentially spoil the whole project, and it's very easy to throw off a hotel negotiation by having a third-party [who shall remain nameless, but not for long] raising insinuations that might have no basis in fact but make them jittery. Same for incorporation; if someone were to drop even a phone call or an anonymous letter to the California Secretary of State saying that the corporation was being formed for shady purposes, it might not be approved (always assuming one part of the Secretary of State's office talks to another). So it was simple discretion that dictated no announcement be made until the basic factors were in place.

Hotels naturally occupied first priority. I vaguely recall I may have been the one to start the ball rolling in the Society two years before. My original concept, two years earlier than this point, was to have the event at the Muehlbach Hotel, which has a lot of biographical resonances for Heinlein, to say nothing of having been the site of his third Guest of Honor appearance in 1976. David Silver had essentially put all actual planning on hold, even after agreeing that the event concept might be viable, by saying there were other places that had equal or equivalent appropriateness -- and Los Angeles, of course, was one of them. I would have lived with another choice, but the practical consequence was that no choice was ever made, and I suppose that was David's intention.

Coming into the new project, I was still favoring Kansas City and the Muehlbach Hotel. I had to be talked out of it, and that is one of the things that happened in the months between the go-ahead and the announcement. There's little point in trying to reconstruct the discussions on a point-by-point basis, but essentially the Muehlbach was booked going into that weekend and couldn't give us the latitude we needed for build-in, and that was that. I believe there was a certain over-expensiveness and inflexibility in other factors, too, but memory is vague on the details. But the upshot was that we began looking at the cluster of hotels where it was eventually held. Alan took point but eventually, when a decision on the Crowne Pointe and Westin was reached, turned the finalization of contract over to Jim Gifford. I listened to discussions thereafter but was not much involved.


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[...Continued...]

The joint discussion is jogging my memory; keep it up, gents. Yes, I do recall now that Bill was the first to suggest Kansas City, almost immediately, in 2002. He was particularly fond of the Muehlbach for historical reasons. Alan Koslow came up with the idea again independently later, and did much more with it. I was not central to the hotel choice, but I do recall that the contract with the Westin and Hyatt looked very good and reserved an inordinate number of conference rooms.

Here's an interesting tidbit for those of you who haven't done this before: when booking a convention, hotels basically give away the meeting space. In return, you must guarantee a certain number of people booking guest rooms, and catering receipts. Our meeting space included at least one giant exhibition hall that we ended up relinquishing; any event taking place in there would have seemed like an anthill in a cathedral.

The penalties for not meeting the quotas are quite severe.

As Bill said, Tina Black came in and represented KACSFFS by herself for quite a while. Our meetings were irregularly held via AIM chat sessions with the logs published as minutes. It wasn't until about six months to H-day that I realized that these weren't getting the job done fast enough, and pushed for voice chats (which we were able to hold via Skype). There was some resistance to this: text chats were seen as desirable because people could do other stuff at the same time. To me, that was their main deficiency. True, they allowed people to consider their responses before posting, but they were also limited by people's typing speeds, and the lack of nuance available in such a restrictive communication channel. We never would have made it without moving to voice chats, in my opinion; they were at least four times more efficient.

Up until that six months before the event was the wandering through the desert period: trying to get people interested in an event beyond the reach of their calendars, trying to establish critical mass, trying to find honored guests and volunteers. Somehow we decided to keep going past the next penalty escalation point; someone else will have to fill in how we arrived at that decision. I do know that Jim underwrote the event to a degree he is too modest to enumerate, but I know it has four digits in it. As it was, our attendance just about reached the renegotiated break-even point and he had the opportunity to recoup a small amount of his losses but instead donated the slight surplus (which did not reach four digits) to a worthy Heinlein cause.

We all met in Anaheim in August 2006 for LACon IV, the worldcon, to promote our event and make contacts. For a number of us, these were our first face-to-face meetings: the first time I had met Jim Gifford (but I nevertheless announced myself on the house phone with "FBI, Mr. Gifford; take your hands off the girl and open the door"), and the first time Tina Black had met me (she described me as "younger and perkier" than she had imagined).

Jim got a suite and hung out a shingle; he showed Heinlein-relevant DVDs into the night. Any apparent impact we had, however, was virtually invisible in terms of signups; not enough even to bankroll the trip. However, we did some grand strategizing, and approached a few potential honored guests in person. The weight of the Society's fatwah on us leaned heavily, however; we could not persuade Messrs. Niven and Pournelle that we were a going concern; and then the battle for Spider Robinson began. Jim and I repeatedly made impassioned arguments about how much Heinlein's memory meant to us, and eventually he came around. And as anyone who attended knows, he was the life and soul of the party. We totally vindicated ourselves in his eyes, and he told us so several times when it was done.

[...To be continued...]


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Let's see: before skipping over the remainder of 2005 I wanted to get in a personal view of an important event -- to me. In late March 2005 I had gone off to the American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association annual meeting in San Diego this year to present as usual. While there I developed a high fever and infection in my foot. I am diabetic, and prone to infections in my feet. I didn't want to goto hospital 600 miles from my home base so decided to tough it out and go immediately when I got back home, a couple of days later.

Bad mistake. By the time I got home and checked into hospital that evening, the foot was swollen and gangrenous; they removed my right little toe, the entire process, the next morning, while getting the infection under control and pincushioning me with insulin. They had me on a vacuum drain system for two months, so I missed spring entirely, but was able to sit up and work after three or four days. Unpleasant, but confined to bed, I was able to get a fair amount of work done.

The reason this relates to the centennial, however, is that it adds to the amount of cash Jim Gifford had invested in it, something no one has ever talked about. Some time earlier, the Giffords realized that my consultancy with the University in Santa Cruz did not carry health insurance, so they put me on payroll for Audrey's Bridges Behavioral System as a consultant. (And I actually did consulting, too, but that's not particularly relevant except to indicate this act of kindness was not a scam or way around the employment laws or anything of that nature).

There was cash out of pocket for them to do this, and on the numbers it was a life-saver, because by the time they got through with all the hospital billing, it was a quarter of a million dollars in fees. If I had not had insurance, I would have been liable for 100% of that. But becase the insurance companies and the medical establishment are in a vicious conspiracy, the insurance company accepted payments about a tenth of that cost and called it quit (except for my deductible -- I paid about $2000 out of pocket).

The insurance arrangement came to an end in 2006, but it had done what it was supposed to do, and I shall not cease to be grateful for them making it possible to get over that particular rocky place.


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[...Continued...]

I started keeping logs of our AIM chat sessions in October 2005. The meetings were roughly weekly and an hour each time. Barbara Trumpinski-Roberts had joined us on a regular basis, and Teresa Robinson soon came to most meetings. Lisa Edmonds D'Amico showed up from time to time to discuss the Academic track, which we referred to as the Summit.

(Before anyone asks, no, the chat logs will not be made public, will never be made public, and neither will the wiki where we organized the event. Too many personal and candid discussions. And bad puns.)

Many discussions surrounding honored guests took place: who should we invite, who should invite them, and which tier did they belong in (determined compensation offered). I pushed for big names to be committed as soon as possible so that we could publish advertisements (most advertising appeared quite late and at least one prozine failed to include us at all in their supposedly inclusive con calendar).

I assumed the position of meeting chair out of an overweening desire to keep things moving and a fetish for Robert's Rules of Order, so I was the bad guy harassing everyone to stay on topic and getting Bill to discuss things other than cooking. Brad Linaweaver dropped by and did a lot of string pulling behind the scenes. Tina Black started organizing local key positions like recruiting Joyce Downing for registration.

Jim bought and populated http://www.heinleincentennial.com and created several logos for us to vote on... I believe the winner was the one that someone *cough* earlier described as a "Klingon tactical display". Jim's professional graphics expertise really made the event - just look at the souvenir book, which was 100% his project from beginning to end. Whether it was that book, the badges, or the vinyl banners, he knew just what to do.

[...To be Continued...]


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[... Continued...]

One thing that marked the period leading up to six months prior to H-Day was the disheartening series of let-downs in volunteer commitments. A number of people assumed various positions and then went AWOL. It got to the point where I started to think that taking on any responsibility for the Centennial meant that someone would shortly be swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle.

I won't name names, because they may have had perfectly good reasons for dropping off the face of the earth. Our fundraiser, high-profile guest liaison, and program chair vanished into the ether like so many short-lived atomic particles. After the last one I reluctantly took on the position of program chair myself and came to be profoundly glad that I did so, because I was able to realize my vision for programming much more effectively than if it had to be relayed through another person.

The first thing I did was set up a Microsoft Access application for tracking everything in programming. I was surprised to find that no such application was already available. (I am working on making mine available for other groups.) Geekly, it is a simple problem in relational database design: One table each for guests, rooms, schedule slots, and talks. Then the program is just the appropriate set of relationships between rows in those tables. Add some user interface logic to populate pick lists, and reporting and export formats, and voila. I had wasted considerable time contemplating a web interface for achieving this so that anyone on the committee could manipulate the program, but that was a black hole of effort for negligible, arguably negative, advantage - a single gatekeeper of the program can wield much more business logic than any computer program ever can.

This electronic approach - rather than the white-board-and-many-index-cards suggested by some - meant that the program could be modified until the last possible minute and the export still sent to Jim for printing in time. I am inordinately proud of how programming turned out due to this: one of the reports listed all scheduling conflicts for speakers and it was relatively easy to tweak until it was empty. Thus I was able to ensure that Robert James and Bill were kept maximally busy, for instance. The program content was a combination of suggestions from the executive and submissions from invited parties or those who just got wind of what we were doing; although when I look at the program (http://www.heinleincentennial.com/pdf/r ... _final.pdf) about half of the sessions have titles and descriptions I came up with in a couple of creative binges.

Programming was laid out along these rough lines: The space track would be chronological: present on Friday, immediate future on Saturday, speculative future on Sunday. The only possible organization of the "literary" track was to try and put certain things earlier such as "Heinlein 101" that logically belonged early. When there was a keynote event nothing would be scheduled opposite it; we owed that to our keynoters.

The amount of available programming soon made protracted discussions about providing lunch and dinner slots moot; it was necessary to keep going through those and push the boundaries of the available time on Friday morning and Sunday afternoon; heck, we even had programming on Thursday night. If we had had the number of rooms we had originally contracted for and the size of attendance we had originally anticipated... I'm not sure what would have happened. Probably we would have kept the same number of simultaneous sessions and talks and consolidated the rooms into larger spaces. I had a notion of repeating talks so that people who missed any due to schedule conflicts could pick them up later but there just wasn't room to do that. (I think we managed to repeat one session; anyone remember what it was?)

Recognizing that people might come up with session ideas at the last minute, and also that there might be "unsavory" proposals that we didn't want to put on the program but neither wanted to refuse outright (although I don't think any of these actually materialized), we designated one room for DIY programming (what technical conference attendees will recognize as BOF space). I don't know if it was ever used for its intended purpose.

[...To be Continued...]


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Last edited by PeterScott on Wed Jun 10, 2009 9:01 am, edited 1 time in total.



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[... Continued...]

In March 2006 the executive cell recognized that it didn't have enough resources to manage everything and there was considerable friction brought about by just the general frustration at trying to get stuff done. Bill or Jim brought in Tim Kyger, a fan in the Pentagon (!) as a nominal ringleader; Tim ended up basically pulling off the entire space track. I think every space guest aside from Binnie was there at his invitation; he knows all of these folks. He knows bigwigs at NASA - rounded up the administrator, for heaven's sake. That deserves some kind of medal. He was the one who got Diamandis - look where that went. Tim plugged away at these people until we had a stellar line-up - I mean, I've never seen a group of people like that together. Maybe at the ISDC. But at an s-f con? No way.

My original vision for the space track was a Woodstock of commercial space, held at the cusp of the breakout of the field (okay, so we've got a little more cusping to go; hang in there). Leaders in the field hanging out together bouncing ideas off each other, doing deals and exchanging ideas. And thanks to Tim, we got that. What a privilege for a bunch of space fans to be able to take part in that. Even more, many of the speakers themselves remarked to us how much fun they had hanging out together.

2006 saw Keith Kato come on board - what a pleasure it was to work with Keith. The man just gets the job done without a word of protest and is always fun to be around.

There were many discussions about security - the Dorsai were repeatedly suggested - and how to partition and police the area. Ultimately we opted for extremely simple entry points and a lot of trust. *Lots* of discussion about static displays of various kinds - how could we get "realia" of Heinlein from the Santa Cruz archives? I and most of the committee had been there and sat at Heinlein's chair and fingered Heinlein's keyboard, and these things should have been displayed behind a velvet rope at the Centennial; alas, this was not to be, and Bill can relate the gory details.

[... To be continued...]


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I cannot tell a lie: It was I who browbeat/begged Tim Kyger into coming on board as chairman, just as happened in 1978 with Iguanacon. Him personally dragging in the aerospace crowd was a side benefit.

The short and wearying version of the Heinlein realia is that by the spring of 2007 I had been trying for more than a year to organize a traveling Heinlein exhibit, but the various institutions involved flaked out repeatedly. It was supposed to start with the SF museum in Seattle, and move on to the Butler Public Library, with possibly a stop at Kansas State University where James Gunn is an influential academic. But even after we whittled the exhibit down to a 6x9 footprint (essentially just the desk recreation), the SFM finally turned it down. All they were interested in was manuscripts, and though the Santa Cruz archive might have made some copies available, they're not going to let the original mss out of their hands except, a remote possibility, to another Special Collections and Archive.

In the spring of 2007, the Bates County Museum e-mailed me saying they were interested in having a Heinlein exhibit, and it became possible to put something together between the Archive and the BCM. So I made an introduction between the two archivists, Christine Bunting and I forget the other's never-to-be-sufficiently-damned name. The proposal I sent them was that the BCM people take possession of the shipment of realia -- a stripped down recreation of Heinlein's working desk plus this and that -- at Kansas City; they would supervise setting it up for the weekend at the Centennial, then the Centennial would help them move it for its long installation at the BCM. I would put together a written docent tour identifying all the this-and-that, that would be the explanatory self-tour for the Centennial, which would then be moved to BCM with the realia, so it would be nearly a turnkey operation for them.

Instead the two archivists arranged between themselves for the realia to be shipped directly to BCM, cutting me and the Centennial out altogether -- and foregoing all the identifying material. Both of them knew the circumstances; both knew what they did was extremely unprofessional. So Christine Bunting had her ongoing revenge on me personally (and thereby proved I was talking sense when I pointed out the opportunities in professional plumbing if she wasn't going to do the job of a Special Collections Archivist).


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To follow on Bill's tale, I was tangentially involved right at the end, when we found we were not going to get the material for display at the Centennial and that it was under strict orders from Christine to go directly to the BCPM (Bates County Pioneer Museum), do not pass Go, do not truck with those shady characters in KC. Bill understates the sheer nastiness here: BCPM would have never been considered a final destination for these priceless items had it not been for Bill begging it on behalf of the Centennial, benefiting BCPM as an almost wholly unearned prize.

That the BCPM director and CB would conspire to cut us out of the loop says so many things; that CB was willing to dispose of this material to a tenth-rate county museum is one part of it; that this tenth-rate institution would stoop to carnie-level machinations to get it is another.

What few people know is that the director of the BCPM had the gall to contact me and want us to send people over to Butler and Bates County and BCPM to see their shiny new treasures. I managed to forget about the request completely; I recall a plaintive comment later that she was surprised we hadn't directed anyone her way.

I do know that when I visited Butler that Monday, I didn't even bother to find out where the museum was located. The Butler Library, already gifted by the Heinleins, received the large stage banner and some other mementoes from the Centennial.


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[... Continued...]

Something that needs to be mentioned at this point but will require the input of others to properly document is the story of the "conferences within the conference" - the Science Fiction Research Association and the Campbell Conference. I had very little to do with these long-running events beyond scheduling their rooms; however, I do know that they made the commitment to share our venue early on to our mutual advantage, and we were grateful for their support.

Another matter I also have little information on is the story contest, run by Susan Satterfield but likewise deserving of mention.

Jim got Arthur C. Clarke completely on his own. He should tell that story.

We decided that we would not have a "con suite" - a staple of s-f cons, to be sure, but whose main purpose appears to be to provide free junk food around the clock. After all, it's not like we had any shortage of places for people to congregate and chat. And we were distinctly short on volunteers to staff such a room, and needed people to look after Green Room supplies. Finally, we were really close to a food court with lots of choices of much better food. Likewise, we provided no support for private room parties - there wasn't much time for them anyway, and the hotels had rather draconian forkage and corkage rules. We weren't going to stop them, just not encourage them. Again, no one minded.

[... To be continued...]


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[...Continued...]

And then there is the list of guests who almost made it. Dana Rohrabacher. Apollo astronaut David Scott. Not to mention another Apollo astronaut, Buzz Aldrin. (Yes, we were actually in contact with him, and he said we could say that he was coming. He didn't actually say that he wasn't coming until the event happened.) Robert Silverberg. We expected columns in Analog from Jeffrey Kooistra and in Asimov's from James Patrick Kelly. (I'm 99% certain neither of those happened but if I goofed there, someone let me know ASAP please.) We tracked down Richard Branson, who sent his regrets at not coming. The distinguished list of not-quite-guests goes on and on. Tom Hanks. Nichelle Nichols...

I mention these so that people get an inkling of the fact that the amount of work that was done was in fact many times the amount of work that was required. If all we had done was all that was necessary to produce the result you saw, we would have been able to take vacations. In fact, we were vastly less efficient than that. Much more work was done on various wild goose chases than was ever visible. But in our defense, only part of this can be ascribed to wanton immaturity and inefficiency. Most of it was simply due to the need to sling a lot of mud at the wall and see what stuck.

And then, there was the Gala preparation. I think the genesis of this event originated with Jim; certainly Jim ended up doing most of the planning and execution. We decided not to do a masquerade, as I said earlier (making it Heinlein-relevant would have been a picayune exercise in bureaucracy and if there had been only a few entries it would have been memorable only for the hole it left in people's schedules). Given the earlier comments about the Heinlein Society's original plans for a black tie event, having a catered dinner seems slightly ironic, but remember, we weren't imposing a dress code, and we weren't asking for money. We envisaged an evening of varied entertainment and it would take all evening, so people had to eat... what other choice was there?

[...to be continued...]


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[...Continued...]

I have only one more pre-event story to relate... and I can only relate part of it unassisted. Recall that our cancellation penalties with the hotel followed a staircase function. We were several months out - I don't remember exactly when - and we hit Crisis. We had nothing like the number of hotel rooms booked that we needed to make our contract and we were facing a massive penalty that would have fallen almost entirely on Jim's shoulders because it would have bankrupted anyone else, if not him also.

And if we didn't cancel right then, it would get even worse.

The hotels were demanding large deposits on a schedule according to their interpretation of the contract. Money we didn't have. Money which would have crippled our financing at that vulnerable point. And we had about three times as much function space booked as we could possibly use.

Jim had a come-to-Jesus conversation with the hotel, the outcome of which was, we got our terms changed. Thank God he knew how to negotiate such things, because I would have folded like a frightened kitten. He convinced them that coming after us for a penalty they wouldn't get was not as profitable as reducing our contracted quotas so that they ended up with something.

They were Not Happy.

The real story of that time, though, is how close we came to canceling the event entirely. I told Jim that it was up to him as the one on the hook, and I would support whichever decision he made. But our attendance at that point was pathetic. Somehow we managed to get enough signups later on to raise us to the level of respectability and avoid being crushed by the hotels. We got there only on a leap of faith, folks. I had at least one keynote speaker asking in curt tones where the two thousand attendees he was led to believe would be there were. But that got patched up eventually too.

We were head down and fully committed to making this happen as the calendar bore down on 7/7/7...

[...To be continued...]


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Speaking as one who fully intended to attend the Centennial since before it was officially announced, I find this horrifying. Hell, I woulda booked two or three rooms six months in advance if I had known how close to the edge you guys were. I'll bet a lot of other folks would have, too. I am a habitual procrastinator and, as usual, waited until about 7/1/07 to finally book my and my son's flights and hotel rooms. I was worried that the rooms would all be booked when I finally got around to it, but was pleasantly surprised that the Hyatt still had plenty of availability.

Edit: Just checked - I booked on June 25th.

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Just a placeholder entry here - I really do intend to chime in here with some big parts of the story. I need to open up a little block of time.

I wanted to say, though, Jack, it wasn't down to a few people booking rooms - it was a shortfall of hundreds of room nights from the targets we needed to hit. Parts of my knuckles are still white from that week.

More soon.

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Sat Jun 20, 2009 4:54 pm
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Sat Jun 20, 2009 7:21 pm
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I'm not entirely sure where to pick up the thread here, so I will enter a few short topics.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE was someone we dearly wanted to have at the event, but he had stopped traveling more than a decade earlier and had just given up live video links - his health would simply no longer permit it. When contacted, however (I had a tenuous correspondence with him regarding Heinlein, so I had the smallest hook on which to hang a request) he was instantly agreeable. It came down to him finding time in his schedule, almost a year later in March 2007, to record a brief address. There were various stumbling blocks such as his request for us to pay shipping and other minor costs, which in the end were brushed aside. He and his staff did not have time to edit a final version, and so entrusted me with creating a final cut. This turned out to be no small obligation, as Clarke's health was poorer than most suspected - the late stages of Post-Polio Syndrome left him able to speak and function only in very short bursts. I received about 20 minutes of raw footage which included several retakes of each part of his speech. He frequently ran out of energy in the middle of sentences and had to pause and restart. I can say that his professionalism paid off - he knew his limitations and when he hit a wall, he simply stopped, composed himself, and make a clean restart of whatever sentence he was struggling with. Although the editing job was extensive, it was also easy to seam together his short efforts into a coherent flow. I put in many extra hours on fine details of lapping one cut into another, and the final result shows only one or two noticeable edits in its three minute length. I felt I had the obligation to fulfill his trust to the very limit and not let his disabilities obscure his message.

I was shocked at his concluding statement, and having heard it many times, was carefully watching the audience when it was projected on the big Gala screen. He did not say so long, or good evening, or any of the other placeholders for "see you sometime again"... he very firmly said, "Goodbye," with the demeanor of someone who knows the end of the road is very close. It was tremendously moving and there was the expected ripple of slight shock through the audience. ACC lived only nine months more, and the Centennial address was one of his very last through any medium.

When it came time to introduce the Clarke address, I took my only turn on the Gala stage to do so... and had the misfortune to follow one of the most vibrant and dynamic speakers of the entire event. I had my prepared statement, but standing there before the lingering crowd-buzz, I noted, "I had never met Peter Diamandis before this weekend, and while I hope to maintain a connection to him and work with him on future projects, I never... ever... want to follow him on stage again." (I've gotten few bigger laughs on a stage and treasure that one.)

THE GALA PLANNING is something Peter has either mercifully forgotten or is deliberately underplaying. We had the stage, we had the audience, we had the "acts"... all that remained was to organize them into a smooth 3-hour program that didn't stack the wrong things together and moved from small things up to the bigger ones and to a proper finish. We took this very seriously. We thought about it a lot. We... somehow didn't get around to it until most of the dinner guests were seated. We wrote the evening's program on an old envelope, or something very much like it, in about ten minutes of frantic collaboration, less than half an hour before the metaphorical curtain went up. Chuck Coffin's excellent toasts were thought up and added at that time; Chuck was as surprised as we are but rose to the occasion, even getting into a delightfully snarky exchange of political wit with MC Robin Wayne Bailey.

I sincerely believe in "all right on the night" - 'cuz folks, I've been there.

CON SUITE... The exchange above between Peter and Tina about the con suite, and lack thereof, provide a viewport into the internal organizing wrangles. From the beginning, the majority of the Cabal wanted to dispense with traditional con trappings - con suites, masquerades, several other things - in an attempt to keep the event inviting to non-Fans. Let's face it, people outside of sf con-goers find the organized fandom and con world pretty bizarre. We wanted to leave off the stuff that "couldn't possibly be omitted from a con!!!" but had no real function at this mixed-audience event. The sf crowd, represented by Tina, who was speaking for the critical assets and participation of the KaCSFFS members, fought bitterly for these "must haves," and the rest of the council fought just as bitterly to shed them. In the end, a few fan faves were included, but the masquerade was dropped and the con suite was as much a victim of finances as anything else. The notion of a con suite has a place in an sf convention; as Peter noted, it would have served mostly to drain our precious war chest, divide the focus of our event, and appeal only to, well, erm, the freeloader crowd. Casting as few aspersions as I can here, the sf con crowd tends to run on... well, mutual freeloading and support, or (kindly) sharing to a common benefit... but we had to run on a more businesslike structure that would actually pay for the event's costs. So Tina is right, we'll disagree until the last day about it, but in the end the event was very close to exactly what it needed to be for all participants.

In my next installment, the ugly details of the terms renegotiation with the hotels.


Sat Jun 20, 2009 7:30 pm
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Sat Jun 20, 2009 7:51 pm
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The very bottom line is that we didn't have the budget to keep a foodie-and-drinkie room stocked for three days, especially not at hotel rates - and one of the things that went right out the window in the renegotiation were any of the waivers of corkage and forkage. It was only possible of discussion when we had the right to bring in a few $k of our own food, and that was so firmly tossed by the hotels in rewriting the agreement that it bounced twice. The hotels wanted something absolutely insane like $25/gallon for coffee service alone, which is why we had the water service in all the meeting rooms they graciously provided as part of the package. We did not have something in the neighborhood of $20k to provide the function, and I would bet a bill with multiple digits on it that no sf con in the last ten years has provided a con suite with food and drink at hotel rates. Bringing in a few $k of munchies is one thing. Providing a commercial-rate catered buffet is quite another. We couldn't do it. Couldn't. It would have been a $20-30k venture, used only by a subset of the attendance.

There was also no convincing argument to maintain such a room. Exclude every reason they are a sine-qua-non at cons, and you're left with... bupkis. No professional, trade or other gathering I've ever attended had such a room, excepting special ones such as for press covering a trade show or rooms hosted by one show sponsor or another to puff themselves and their wares. It's just not done outside the fandom world. Whether we were right or successful in positioning ourselves outside fandom, or at least straddling multiple worlds, we had no basis for feeding and watering the masses who were all ostensibly adults and capable of feeding and watering themselves.

Which is a philosophical aside; we could not possibly have afforded to do it. We provided a central social room; it had to, and did, serve.


Sat Jun 20, 2009 8:32 pm
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Well I thought it was dashing, myself....


Sun Jun 21, 2009 4:55 pm
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Having watched the very painful gestation and birth of the Centennial from a very close perspective, I think it needs to be said that the Kansan City Crowd Tina headed, (as well as the founding fathers - Peter Bill, Jim and a very few others but they were the three I heard form the most) and not very many other people pulled together an absolutely impossible miracle out of a hat full of well, hubris and audacity, really.

And it actually worked. Even when I had the gravest doubts (as in Oh my God there was not enough money to even cut the losses to a point where ANYONE could pay them if we backed out) they pulled it together and made it work. Even when they had temporary fits of sanity and quit trying they almost all came back and saw it through. They did this despite the incredible strain on their families, their finances, and their careers. I doubt there is any way to tell just how much went into that effort and the guiding principal that it had to be a tribute worthy of RAH never wavered.

The people here telling the story are being FAR too modest. They in fact DID pull off the Little Guy who saved the world in spite of the hordes of Orcs (and there was even a Sauron, if you think about it) and a huge deficit in time and money.

So here is the real question - what impact did that have? Will there be a life changed (or many) because of that event? Will one more person go out and do something "Heinlienian" because they took part in something where for once they were not the only hopeless geek there who actually thought maybe the application of brains to a problem could make the world a better place - and then do it?

Because isn't that the legacy we would like to give to RAH?

(There - the secret's out)

Audrey


Sun Jun 21, 2009 5:24 pm
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I was not underplaying the gala planning; I am taking things more or less in order and haven't gotten to the actual event yet.

I must reveal that in the 6-9 months before the event, everyone in the executive quit at least once. (I'm not sure if I actually quit out loud, but I know there was one weekend I spent planning on turning in my notice on the Monday.) I played go-between talking people down off the ledge and smoothing over differences. (Face it, I didn't have the graphic arts talent or deep pockets of Jim, the space industry contacts of Tim, the Heinlein knowledge of Bill, or the KC organization of Tina; I had to find something to do.)

The darker side of the dynamics of that group are best consigned to the vault of history with a timelock marked "To be opened after our deaths." From my point of view the disagreements were tempests in teacups because everyone wanted the same thing - the greater glorification of Heinlein - we were only at odds on how to achieve it, and only in minor ways there - so I maintained the belief that accord was always achievable, but boy did we sometimes go through fire and brimstone to get there. And it shows now, in the easy nature of the friendships we have forged. We have faced our demons and conquered them together; we earned our stripes the hard way and paid for them with sweat and tears.

Anyone who thinks that is overblown rhetoric was not there and is missing the point. Trust me, it is not exaggerated.

If you saw my last address to the ballroom you know that I believed - and still do - that one day posterity will recognize our event in a way that has not yet been realized. It was little short of miraculous.


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Mon Jun 22, 2009 11:09 am
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[... Continued...]

And now... two years later... my account of that weekend

The road to Victoria airport is never crowded by any standards except the locals', but when I left home at 4am on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 it was a vehicular wasteland. The 6am flight to Seattle was the only option for getting me to Kansas City the same day, which, after a stop at the mammoth Dallas-Fort Worth airport, I arrived at that evening. Outside the gate an unfamiliar figure held a sign with my name on it, and that was the first time I met our esteemed chairman, Tim Kyger, who was standing watch for Tina Black, ensconced in a nearby bar.

Tim had been until now a voice on the phone, our man in the Pentagon. Tina was our woman in KC, the head of all things local and our liaison to the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society (KaCSFFS). We'd met once before, at LACon IV, in the Centennial's hospitality suite. That was our only previous collective experience at hosting an event. Now we were about to go considerably further than a few videos and hors d'oeuvres. After a few prayers to the automotive gods, the TinaMobile, stuffed with convention supplies and ourselves, was off to downtown, where I became profoundly glad that I had a guide and didn't have to try navigating by myself.

The Hyatt Crown Center boasts an elegant interior design with massive dendritic chandeliers. After checking in, I asked the quickest way to our sister hotel, the Westin, where our operations center was being set up. Well, it turns out that if you ask that question in the Hyatt lobby, as I did, it is a hair shorter to go outside along the street than the alternative, if they assume that you're going to the Westin lobby, which I wasn't. One fifteen-minute walk along the streets convinced me of three things: (1) I wasn't going to do that again; (2) I didn't want our out-of-town guests navigating the pedestrian crossings at night; (3) Our hotels were further apart than I thought! Fortunately there was a quicker and cooler route for getting between the ballroom levels of both hotels which our events were taking place on: "The Link", a glass pedestrian tube the locals call The Habitrail for obvious reasons, which visits the Crown Center mall on the way. Even with air conditioning, however, it was... toasty. I was destined to lose a few pounds crossing it many times each day at full tilt.

In the Westin's Board Room I found our nascent operations center, and Jim Gifford deploying an array of publishing technology. Later we went up to our VIP hospitality suite in the Hyatt to enjoy the fireworks around the city from a crows nest view. Robert James ("that's DOCTOR James to you") and Bill Patterson were there, and Robert slid a glossy booklet across the table to me. It was the souvenir book created by Jim, and it exceeded my wildest dreams: never-before-published Heinlein writings, photographs I'd never seen, a sumptuous layout, in its own plastic cover. It had Collector's Item written all over it.

Thursday morning I hightailed it over to the Board Room ready for action. A KaCSSFS team was preparing badges and clucking over the important names as they came across them. The schedule books arrived, but we discovered that they were mispaginated and the whole run had to be redone. Could they get them to us before the next morning? The Science Fiction Research Association's conference-within-our-conference started shortly and was so smoothly run that I never had to pay any attention to it. Joyce Downing (Registration Queen) drove me over to John Taylor's where I helped load materials that had been shipped to John's in advance of our arrival. (John's wife died during the convention and while that had been expected for some time, John continued working for us throughout the event and remained in good spirits.)

Back at the Westin, our vinyl banners arrived (these were so gorgeous that they were carefully bequeathed at the end to a few of the people clamoring for them - I have one, nyah, nyah) and there was some debate with the hotel management over where they could be hung. The very professional Westin banqueting staff had provided Jim and me with radios so that we could reach them around the clock - and we did.

Joyce got Registration open on time and our public started to sign up. There were serendipitous tales abounding - somehow, we got a mention on the giant LED sign at the exit of the Kansas City airport, and a Heinlein fan and pilot arriving on layover saw it. His layover hotel happened to be the Westin. When he discovered our event he signed up and spent the rest of his layover in bliss.

The only official Centennial event of the evening was the Early Arrivals Reception, at which Bill Patterson held forth on his Heinlein biography (honest... it was the only time we could fit it in. Ask Bill.)

[... to be continued...]


Mon Jul 06, 2009 3:23 am
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[... Continued...]

On Friday the game started in earnest. We had so much programming we wanted to do that I had to schedule some to take place first thing in the morning before even the opening ceremonies - it was the only way Bill Patterson and Robert James would get any breaks during the weekend. The very professional video crew started setting up in the main ballroom, and a sweet woman by the name of Leandrea Jones found me and made herself tirelessly available for many hours of Programming assistance throughout the convention. At our opening ceremonies Tim and Jim and I nervously introduced ourselves and I arrogantly predicted that people would remember the event for the rest of their lives. I thanked our many honored guests in advance for setting aside their usual stellar status to be part of a large ensemble cast celebrating Robert and Ginny, our only true Guests of Honor.

Our first keynoter was an hour away, and knowing that he had to be somewhere around, I roamed the hotels looking for Mike Griffin, the administrator of NASA. I found him walking around by himself looking at our displays. When he gave his speech, I realized that we had an issue with geography: even though I had scheduled nothing against the keynoters, because they were speaking in the Westin ballroom and the main programming was in the Hyatt, some people were not making the ten minute trek along the Habittrail but going to eat instead. I hadn't scheduled in food breaks - there wasn't time! For the rest of the weekend we made announcements in program rooms reminding people of the keynote talks.

I wanted to make sure that our sessions which had requested projectors got them, so I showed up to one ten minutes early to look at the equipment: Video cart, check; video cables, check; screen, check; projector... uh-oh. After a quick conversation with the Hyatt management I discovered that the "projection packages" we had ordered did not, in fact, include projectors; they cost extra. Go figure. So we bit the bullet and ordered them delivered immediately.

I was glad that I had scheduled myself as a panelist for "The Crazy Years", because it meant I finally got to sit down! But as soon as it was over I hared off in search of our next keynoter, Brian Binnie, and found him checking his audio in the ballroom. Brian, the astronaut who won the X Prize, was our first keynoter to agree, almost two years earlier. His presentation was jaw-droppingly professional, enthralling, educational, and humorous. I never knew before how his mother-in-law's coffee nearly cost him the X Prize. (You had to be there.)

Saturday. 7/7/7. Robert Heinlein's birthday, and - coincidentally I'm sure - mine also. My only regret was that my wife wasn't with me (we couldn't afford it), but she surprised me anyway by asking my hotel to send chocolate cake to my room.
Yesterday's Space track had focused on government-led activities; today was concerned with current private enterprise efforts. One of the changes to the publshed schedule (covered in our twice-daily newsletter, "The Daily Lunatic") was Peter Diamandis' talk moving to the keynote slot. And what an electrifying presentation it was. To describe Peter as being passionate about making space accessible to the common man in our lifetimes is like calling the Cretaceous asteroid impact a fender bender. I could see why Tim had suggested we compare him to D.D. Harriman, even though Peter himself eschews the comparison - he's not as ruthless as Harriman, but he certainly is as creative. His story of how he financed the X Prize was right out of Heinlein: Instead of fronting the whole $10 million, he took out an insurance policy for a lesser premium, and convinced the Ansaris to fund the premium. The man is a serial enterpreneur - he's running Zero G Corporation, the company that flew Stephen Hawking in free-fall.

The banquet was superb - I can attest to that, since I made sure to grab a few bites between gala preparations. Definitely a cut above my usual experience of hotel buffets for large functions. We had been overwhelmed with last-minute sign-ups for the dinner, and the Westin graciously accommodated us beyond our agreement by opening up an air wall and putting some extra tables in. Somehow, we didn't run out of food. Throughout dinner we were elegantly serenaded by the Atlanta Radio Theater Company's keyboardist playing science fiction themes. Around 6:15, I announced that people might want to grab a space in the general seating for the gala to follow; and they must have had a sense of what was to follow, because there was quite a dash for choice seats.

The gala was so well run that I spent most of the time enjoying it as a spectator. I say "well run" knowing full well that the actual program for that night was finalized on a napkin during dinner. But it came together perfectly. By now everyone knows that we had a video speech Arthur C. Clarke made especially for us - despite visible poor health he was as lucid and interesting as ever. There was another video I had never seen before - Ginny Heinlein reading Robert's "This I Believe" at his memorial service in Washington; but Jim had added a twist by adding a much older audio recording of Robert reading it himself, and a little way in, he faded that up. At the end, when Robert concluded with, "This I believe, with all my heart," followed by Ginny repeating the words, there couldn't have been a dry eye in the house.

A tough act to follow, and not for the first time did I not envy our emcee, the suave Robin Wayne Bailey, who rose to the occasion splendidly, and kept everyone amused and informed while moving things along rapidly. Peter Diamandis gave a riveting presentation on his plans for "X Racing" - like pod racing from Star Wars Episode I - personal rocket-powered airplanes racing through aerial courses with each other and remote participants. The video was one of those hold-onto-your-seat times.

So many things happened at the Gala, I don't remember them all - Susan Satterfield presented the short story awards, Yoji Kondo presented the Heinlein Award, and Spider and Jeanne Robinson did a musical number. Jeanne gave a slide show on her Stardance zero-gravity dance film project, and in the most dramatic unscripted moment of the gala, when someone in the audience asked whether she had considered going into free-fall for inspiration herself, and she admitted that much as she'd like to, the budget had to go to production, Peter Diamandis called out from the back of the room, "I'll fly you, Jeanne." Cue thunderous applause.

Jordin Kare gave a rendition of "The Green Hills of Earth" and Chuck Coffin, resplendent in dress uniform, closed us out with a final toast.

[...To be continued...]


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Tue Jul 07, 2009 9:19 pm
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Satchel Paige?


Wed Jul 08, 2009 11:28 am
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[...Continued...]

I pitied the speakers who had to start Sunday morning at 9:00, but again, the schedule demanded it. The day's Space track focused on more exotic and longer term projects like laser-launched spacecraft. I scheduled myself for another panel that I was actually able to make, talking with David Gerrold about intelligent computers, and out of sentiment, also put myself on the "Heinlein's Children" panel, which unfortunately meant I missed ARTC's second production, "The Menace From Earth" - at least I'd seen most of their "All You Zombies" on Saturday, and promptly bought their CD - those people were GOOD. Our final keynote speaker, Jeff Greason (president of XCOR) gave an emotional speech about how Heinlein had affected him.

In my experience, the only people left at weekend conventions at 4 pm on Sunday are the breakdown crew, yet we had a full house for closing ceremonies, which ended right on schedule precisely at 5 pm. By then, we knew we had pulled it off - numerous people had told us how good a time they had had, some calling it better than any Worldcon and the best convention they'd ever been to. I predicted to the crowd that one day, when people were talking about the weekend, some gnashing their teeth over not having gone, others would smile smugly and say that they were there - and some of them - those present - would be telling the truth. (Considering how credit for the event was later ascribed in some quarters to people who weren't involved, I would call that evidence that we done good.) The last word went to Ginny, with her "This I Believe" speech, this time in her own words. The KaCSFFS volunteers pulled together so well that we were completely packed up by 7 pm and headed off for a celebration dinner.I paired up a Spider Robinson needing a ride to the airport with a goggle-eyed fan with car and made both their days.

So much more than that that I haven't touched on - the many vendors who formed our Marketplace, which I got to see, along with the displays and exhibits of Heinlein's life; and the Heinlein video theater, which unfortunately I didn't have time to get to. The continuous autographing sessions, the late night movies - somehow we pulled off a complete, well-rounded convention.

To be continued...? Where, when, who...? It's up to us, and you.


Wed Jul 08, 2009 8:36 pm
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I've just had a chance to finally start to look at this website, and I'm as impressed with it as I was with the Centennial, which was the high point of my con experience, as well as my professional experience outside of the classroom. I was aware of some of that nonsense going on behind the scenes, and early on, committed myself firmly to following wherever Jim, Peter and Bill led, having come to realize they were heading in the right direction. They asked if I wanted to be involved in some leadership role, and given my personal travails at the time (two jobs, and a nasty, never-ending court battle), I didn't want to commit and then let them down -- but I fully committed to being there, and doing whatever programming they wanted me to be on.

I forgot: never volunteer. I ended up being on 20 panels, if I recall correctly. I do recall making a few suggestions right around the time they asked what panels I wanted to be on, and they graciously added almost everything I suggested. Little did I know that they would be putting me on that many panels....

As Peter said at the closing ceremony, he thinks that must have been some kind of record...to which I shouted out "One...more...panel!" To which Bill shouted even louder, "NOOOOOOOO!"

I didn't get much of a chance to see anybody else's panels, and I remember having to leave one academic panel immediately after I presented a paper, because I had to get to the next panel I was on. I spent as much time in that Habitrail between the hotels as I did on the panels, or so it seemed. I remember drinking vast quantities of cold water during panels, so I could keep the voice in shape -- and then having to run to the bathroom between panels....and having more than one fan follow me in as they asked me questions....

I do recall the audiences being wonderful, and laughing in all the right places...

There are highlights I will never forget from that weekend.

I got to introduce Diamandis to James Gunn and Fred Pohl, after noticing "The Man Who Sold the Moon" standing off sheepishly, not knowing how to approach those legends of sf....fortunately, I had had dinner with them both, and served on panels with them both, and I loved being able to bring them together...

Meeting Fred Pohl and James Gunn were moments I will cherish as well.

Getting to interview Dorothy Heinlein, the last person alive who knew Elinor Curry and Leslyn, and helping her along in her memories -- and then having the family thank me afterwards for letting her shine, was magnificent.

Finally getting to set a wrong right by reading Jack Williamson's letter about Heinlein at the Gala was almost as good as finding a copy of "For Us the Living" after everybody thought it was gone....

Watching the relief on Jim and Peter's faces when it was finally all done and accomplished was priceless as well.

Also, meeting with the entire Heinlein family, who showed up in a hotel room I was waiting in, by myself, and managing to put them all at their ease and keep them entertained until Bill and others showed up was fun, if a bit nerve-wracking at first. I'm great in front of an audience, but put me in a room of strangers, and I tend to clam up...

All in all, the Centennial was beyond price. I'd ask to do it again, but having read this whole history, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy....

...or maybe I would, as long as I got to be on more panels...


Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:13 am
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Doc, one of the intentions with re-rolling the concept into the Nexus is that you can organize, moderate, populate and document as many "panels" - be they lectures or interactive sessions - as you like. No time limits of any kind.

For example, we could set up a special forum, with posting access only for selected members, and make it a slow-motion "panel" that goes on until the topic is exhausted - then edit and archive it on the web site as a more polished "article" or report.

I haven't been beating my brains out making this an fully interactive site for nuthin'. A static site, as we started with, would be so much easier... and so boring... and quickly get so outdated... but this is in the hands of the members to work with and fill up.

Get to it.


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Having Dr. James here makes this community feel somehow...complete. Your interaction with Dorothy Heinlein was the highlight of the Centennial to me. It was the one experience that was completely unique and valuable and can never be repeated anywhere.


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Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:41 am
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Post Re: Birth of the Centennial
Oh, my blushes, Jack.

And that's "Robert" to you....


Fri Jul 24, 2009 3:21 pm
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Post Re: Birth of the Centennial
As, unfortunately, a non-attendee, I very much appreciate these retrospectives!

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Fri Jul 24, 2009 4:30 pm
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