Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 22:22:32 -0500 (EST) From: "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl at KeithLynch.net> To: "WSFA members" <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net> Subject: [WSFA] Re: The End of Austerity? Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net> > "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu> wrote: >> Some things we could have, but don't: >> * A WSFA.ORG email address. Or better yet, a WSFA.ORG email >> address for each WSFA member, plus one for contacting us, >> and one more for this list. >> * The ability to sell things online, e.g. convention memberships, >> and the remaining WSFA Press books. > Let me suggest this re the WSFA Press books: this is a good idea IF > there is a mechanism set up to deal with the shipping. i.e. some > willing person to do all of that work. My understanding is there were four WSFA Press titles, of which two are sold out. How many unsold books do we still have, of each title? Where are they? > Another option would be to run the operation through my website and > my fullfilment company in NH. They take a flat 10% of net billing, > they have a toll free number, secure shopping cart, essentially the > usual bell & whistles you'd expect. No reason why we should throw away 10% if we can do it ourselves. >> * More disk space. Our present hosting company doesn't seem to keep >> track, and there's no easy way for us to measure it, but I'm pretty >> sure we're way over what we're supposedly paying for. (On the other >> hand, we're paying for Unix hosting, but just getting NT.) >> * Unix hosting, with a shell account. This allows greater power >> and flexibility, as well as greater security against break-ins >> and viruses. >> These would all be nice, but I am not pushing for them. > The ideas presented above sound quite interesting. What sort of > money are we talking about? There are lots of companies with lots of web hosting plans. If we don't stay where we are, I would recommend going with Panix, as they have an excellent reputation, and have been around since the 80s. The cost is $350 per year. That's $29.17 per month, compared to the $25 a month we're paying now. It would get us everything I described above. Every WSFA member could have their own email address, e.g. MichaelWalsh at wsfa.org. (This is only a forwarder - they'd have to have an address elsewhere for it to forward to.) Plus role addressses (e.g. Treasurer at wsfa.org). We could have a "secure shopping cart" to sell convention memberships, books, etc. online to anyone with a credit card or a paypal account. (I would need some help setting it up. Anyone here have any experience with CGI scripts? With billing credit cards?) It would make life easier on me. For instance it just took me two hours to figure how many gigabytes of web views we typically get each month. (Over 5 costs extra at Panix. We're averaging just under 2.) And I can't place a file on our current web site without making it visible to the world. (There are often good reasons not to.) The only downside, other than the extra $4.17 per month, is that there's no way to make certain our current site stays in sync with the mirror site. (I've been doing my best, but have probably made a few mistakes over the years.) Nor is there any way to send everything *from* our current site. So if and when the new site is set up, I'll be filling it from the mirror site. Anything which in on our current site and *not* on the mirror site would be lost. Once we move, keeping in sync would be much easier. Anyone who looks at any page our site, if you have the time please take a moment to also look at the corresponding page on our mirror site, and confirm that it's the same. This isn't as hard as it sounds, since every page should say at the bottom when it was last updated, and if the two dates are the same, the contents are almost certainly the same. Embedded graphics could conceivably differ, however. Our main site: Pages all begin with: http://www.wsfa.org/ Our mirror site: Pages all begin with: http://keithlynch.net/wsfa/ This is a good thing to check whether or not we plan to move to a new host. The whole point in a mirror site is to be the same as the main site, after all. >> I'm not sure that what we're doing now is working, since we've had >> fewer people every year. Maybe this decline will stop if we can >> keep the same hotel and same weekend for a few years, I don't know. > Fans aren't slans. You'd sorta think that SF fans, believers in the > future, in change, folks who can deal with "future shock" could deal > with a different hotel and/or date. Apparently not. What makes you think it's the change of hotel and/or date that's responsible for the low and decreasing Capclave turnout? > Ideally if we get enough room nights we get free function space. > In theory; of course it depends upon the hotel contract. Yes. I'm just not sure we should keep counting on them. People are traveling less. Perhaps we should expect to mainly get locals. At least until the economy improves and the TSA is abolished. > As for locals . . . we just need to find them. Last time I checked > most bookstores sold SF - think there could be potential Capclave > attendees there? Are bookstores likely to be receptive to putting fliers near their SF racks? (Fliers placed near the door are likely to go unseen, if only because people who stand in the doorway to read them would be impeding traffic.) There's a large new Borders Books right across the street from our new hotel. They have a large SF section. It has a fair number of OEB books. Unfortunately they don't seem to have *any* books by this year's or next year's guest of honor. (Or last year's either, not that that would do much good.) > I'd like to see some, I said some, of the money spent for some > fannish good. Two words: WSFA Clubhouse! > Now what that is, I don't know. I don't think it's a student > writing contest that has spent an average of $10,000 a year. I'd like to know how a student writing contest costs that much money. Are state-of-the-art PCs with expensive word processing programs and printers being bought for each participating student? Is the winner's trophy made of gold and platinum? >> I don't know why Judy and Bob aren't subscribers. I think every >> WSFA officer should be. Better yet, every WSFA member. > Officers yes (unless there is some problem that can't be reseolved). > For club members, it should remain optional. It should remain optional for everyone, in the sense that I'm not suggesting that anyone should be kicked out of office for refusing to subscribe. But I think it should be strongly encouraged. And that sending an email to WSFAns who are *not* on the list should be discouraged (unless the email is meant specifically for them, of course) since people who choose not to subscribe presumably don't want to receive WSFA-related email. Also, I don't think we need to set up a separate email list just for Capclave. The volume of this list is not so high that it needs to be split into subject categories. -- Keith F. Lynch - kfl at keithlynch.net - http://keithlynch.net/ I always welcome replies to my e-mail, postings, and web pages, but unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) is not acceptable. Please do not send me HTML, "rich text," or attachments, as all such email is discarded unread.