Let's start again #2

[lovingboth]

Hello lovely people. Here are some questions which I think are reasonable regarding BiCon 2001. I'd like to hear people's answers to them.

#1 Do you think that paying £2,200 to rent the accommodation for Monday night was the correct decision?

#2 (If you are a 2001 team member...) What alternatives were considered?

#3 Do you think that concealing this from everyone at the time was the correct decision?

#4 I have suggested that those of us - I'm one of them - who paid to stay elsewhere on the Monday night deserve at least an apology. Do you agree?

#5 Do you think that paying the full cost of the flight and other expenses for someone from Australia was a reasonable decision?

#6 (If you are a 2001 team member...) What financial planning was done that persuaded the team that it was affordable?

#7 What should 2002 and subsequent years do to avoid a similar situation in future?

Comments

some answers, more questions ...

[nitoda]

#1 Do you think that paying £2,200 to rent the accommodation for Monday night was the correct decision?

No, but that is not to say that I would not have sanctioned it at the time ... depending on options and time available to research them, stresses operating etc. etc. etc.

#2 (If you are a 2001 team member...) What alternatives were considered?

Not relevant to me.

#3 Do you think that concealing this from everyone at the time was the correct decision?

Definitely not. Information about the rooms being available for the extra night should have been given at one (or ALL!) of the plenary sessions if not in advance of the conference.

#4 I have suggested that those of us - I'm one of them - who paid to stay elsewhere on the Monday night deserve at least an apology. Do you agree?

Yes. I was not personally affected as we opted to stay in a hotel room on grounds of cost - it is always cheaper for three of us to do so instead of living in onsite accommodation. In a town with a Formule 1 hotel it is ridiculously so. Accommodation for *all three of us* cost less than £30 per night IIRC ...

#5 Do you think that paying the full cost of the flight and other expenses for someone from Australia was a reasonable decision?

It could have been made to seem so if the reasoning had been good and the budgeting sound IMO. It does not seem so in the absence of transparency.

#6 (If you are a 2001 team member...) What financial planning was done that persuaded the team that it was affordable?

Not relevant to me, again.

#7 What should 2002 and subsequent years do to avoid a similar situation in future?

As "the community" is not clearly defined and there is no constitutional body as such it is difficult if not impossible to suggest organised ways of avoiding such things. When I discovered at my first BiCon how these things were organised and how they are run by volunteers I was absolutely gobsmacked. That anyone is willing to take on the task and responsibility of organising a BiCon is still amazing to me ... It seemed to me then that some kind of structure was needed ... but I've been associating with Bi folks for longer now and am less convinced that structures or organisations actually work in our illdefined community. BiCon is just a small tip of the iceberg in terms of the "community" in any case ... What seems to be needed is some guidelines, some limits and boundaries, shall we say ... but WHO for goodness' sake is qualified or mandated to set these limits or boundaries for us all? Who even COULD be? BiCon *does not equal* the bi community ... yet it was my first exposure to such a community and my first reassurance that such a community might even exist. Setting up a limited company seems a complicated route ... and doesn't seem to be the answer - I wonder if a charitable trust of some sort might be better? If anyone out there reading this knows the history of the gay pride movements and festivals surely that would be instructive?

Gonna stop rambling now - feet hurt.;-(

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[lovingboth]

One of the advantages of doing it via a company is that there is a very large pile of law which sets out the rights and responsibilities of the people involved.

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Too large a body of law for anyone to use effectively as the basis for running something like Bicon, I suspect. The red tape would be suffocating.

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[lovingboth]

I don't think so, particularly given the amount of money we're talking about - well below the limit to allow for unaudited three line accounts (income, expenditure and the difference between the two) to be submitted to Companies House, for example.

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm done here. If BiCon collectively wants to go down this route, I strongly recommend that it gets advice from a lawyer who knows more about this field than I do, because I really don't think it's a job for barrack-room lawyering (one of the firms that advertise in the Pink might even do it pro bono, if you're really lucky).

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I've tried to set up a bisexual charity before, and it was a complete pain in the ass. I really don't recommend it - you lay yourself open to too much constitutional interference from the Charity Commissioners. For instance, they will only accept trustees who are not amongst the intended beneficiaries of the charity, which in the case of Bicon probably means people who aren't going to attend - this was the sort of headache that finally led me to give up when I tried it. The accounting requirements have been tightened up since then, too, and I have known them to leave really quite experienced treasurers tearing their hair out; one of my friends ended up paying a donation to her friendly local accountant's favourite charity to get him to do it for her.

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I agree; I would be opposed to BiCon becoming a registered charity.

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[lovingboth]

Yeah, but I think that there should be one somewhere if only to suck up some of the grant money that's only available to charities.

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

Totally agree on that one.

Something that most of the community, what's left of it, doesn't seem to do anything like as much of as I'd like to see. But then I'm busy being smug about my successes under the guise of Manchester group on such things!

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[lovingboth]

which in the case of Bicon probably means people who aren't going to attend

I'd be surprised if that were the case, but experience tells me the Charity Commissioners have an infinite capacity to surprise.

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[lizw.livejournal.com]

They didn't want any of the trustees of the putative Bisexual Centre to use the facilities available there.

Re: some answers, more questions ...

[lovingboth]

!!! That's impressive, even for them.

Is Kevin Spacey forbidden from going to see something at the Old Vic, or even using the toilets, never mind acting there?

[aegidian]

These were their decisions to make. And they are not accountable to you. And there is very little good to be had from grinding this axe any further.

Inevitably you have to put your trust in whether your registration money will pay for a good BiCon in the team that are organising it. You've said before you had a good BiCon in Coventry, knowing how they spent their money seems to be the only thing invalidating this for you.

I've paid for 2002, I don't care how *you* use my money as long as I get a good enough BiCon. If that leaves *no* money for BiCon 2003, then it'll be my job as part of 2003's team to do as best I can in that situation, not to waste my time berating 2002's organisers.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

That's certainly an interesting and striking position. I encourage you to express it in uk-bi as well, since like giolla I think of that as the "real" debate.

[aegidian]

Sorry, not a mailing list I'm subscribed to, but feel free to post the URL for here.

[lovingboth]

Who are they accountable to? Just the bank?

Once we start talking, the 2001 team and I are much more polite in private email than we are to each other in public.

It's a mix of things. Part of it's going 'argh' at the various better ways the money could have been spent, for example, rather than giving it to a venue that messed them around in various ways or to some airline.

Part of it's that I would have been so much happier if the loss had been announced as soon as it was known. What was one of the lessons of IBC2? - oh yes, if you screw up, tell people as soon as possible. (I'm still amused by the graphic you or Alison did for my report in Bifrost by the way.)

The idea of spending all or even half of the remaining money is tempting. You could go wild on the entertainments, for example, or you could book an expensive London venue and subsidize the cost... Bit tough for next year though, unless you end up making a profit too.

[aegidian]

Who are they accountable to? In the end, in real life, no-one. They supplied the service requested of them by the attenders and could have walked away with any money at the end of it. Unless the money passed to them was a loan with someone to be repaid at the end of the con, they had no other obligations.

Everyone is working on trust these days. You trusted 2001 to make the right decisions to make a good BiCon. They did what they thought was best at the time. You've no time machine to correct the decisions you think they could have made better. And I've no pillory we want to stick them in, even though you seem intent on constructing one.

And of course you're free to be as obnoxious as you like about decisions made by other people (and if I haven't made clear how obnoxious I'm finding your continual public carping on this, let me tell you, you've lost a great deal of respect I previously had for you).

I'm convinced of only one point you labour, I'd much rather have heard the 2001 team talk about their experience of running BiCon, warts and all, than to hear it from you.

[lovingboth]

You and me both Giles.

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

#1 Do you think that paying £2,200 to rent the accommodation for Monday night was the correct decision?
Not given the way it was then handled. In principle, as a "BiCon is over but you may choose to stick around" arrangement, it's a fair idea. One year BiCon might like to have some flats which are "extra time" flats that people may choose to stay in. It seems remarkable that the whole accomodation block had to be taken for the extra day rather than just one or two flats though...

#2 (If you are a 2001 team member...) What alternatives were considered?
n/a

#3 Do you think that concealing this from everyone at the time was the correct decision?
No - I think we made the serious money decisions with Manchester pretty plain (which were going International, and paying for ents and the odd profile speaker, from memory.)

#4 I have suggested that those of us - I'm one of them - who paid to stay elsewhere on the Monday night deserve at least an apology. Do you agree?
Yep, and it may have happened somewhere in the melee on uk-bi lately! We had Manchester rooms available for longer than advertised and anyone who asked about extended stays or suchlike was informed that they ould stay, while as people were already onsite for five days we really didn't want everyone to still be around while the clearup operation began!

#5 Do you think that paying the full cost of the flight and other expenses for someone from Australia was a reasonable decision?
Not by a long chalk. It could have been justified for an international bicon; as it is, the money was UK bicon money for UK bicon startup funding. I can imagine a logic that ran "this is surplus from IBC6, therefore some of it should go to international work" - however that breaks completely with the IBC model which involves no passing forward of funds.

#6 (If you are a 2001 team member...) What financial planning was done that persuaded the team that it was affordable?
n/a

#7 What should 2002 and subsequent years do to avoid a similar situation in future?
Someday we may have a BBF type body which can hold the start-up funds. Myself I think we missed a great opportunity with the BBF when it could have worked, and the UK community is now too weak to support suchj a body. But that's a whole other thread!

Otherwise, as I have said in other places, a permanent BiCon treasurer or something like that is all I can imagine. Which would also be good for publishing of accounts etc, as someone whose entire role took place outside of conference time may be slightly less exhausted than I was after Manchester and feel slightly less loathing for the community than I felt!

Perhaps we should split the surplus between two teams, 200n & 200n+1, and so only half of the community's kitty could be blown by any one team. When the surplus was 10K it would have done that job pretty well. sigh

Rooms

[werenerd.livejournal.com]

About the rooms:

#1 Do you think that paying £2,200 to rent the accommodation for Monday night was the correct decision?

Hindsight is 20/20.

#2 (If you are a 2001 team member...) What alternatives were considered?

As the community did decide to place its trust in the 2001 team, we have to believe that they made the best decision they were capable of, given the situation they were faced with. Yes, it's possible someone else could have made a better deal, but that could be said of every deal ever made in the history of Bicon.

I do not understand what can be gained by publicly humiliating the 2001 team over their having made a bad deal on the rooms.

#3 Do you think that concealing this from everyone at the time was the correct decision?

This was unfortunate for the people who stayed an extra night in Coventry, but the 2001 team probably just wanted Bicon to end so that they could stop worrying about everybody and go home and chill.

#4 I have suggested that those of us - I'm one of them - who paid to stay elsewhere on the Monday night deserve at least an apology. Do you agree?

Well then, please accept one from me: I'm truly sorry that you had to pay to spend an extra night in Coventry.