Arontius of Bygelswade

.....It's been a while since I posted to Live Journal. It's been that busy of a Tourney Season. Definitely a Lesson Learned in how to pace ones self. Next year TBT are SSSSOOOOO going to schedule our next year a LOT better. No more of this every single weekend with the SCA.

.....Work has been a royal pain in the ass as well. We continue down the road of 'Let's make every single mistake we can possibly make in order to get this job done.' At this rate I'm not sure when we're going to get done.

.....But this weekend is Last Chance, our last outdoor event of the year. After this weekend, we'll still be busy, but the pace will ease up a bit. The current Project is currently scheduled to wrap up the first week of October. So I'm still hopeful that by this time next month I'll be catching my breath, and maybe cleaning the house. Holy Crap! The house hasn't been this bad since I was a bachelor living with four others in the Zombie Zone.

.....Even though I don't post much, I still like reading Live Journal. All of my favorite RSS Feeds are located here. I like the pace of Live Journal much more than Facebook as well. Facebook seems overwhelmingly frenetic to me. If I want frenetic all I have to do is go to an SCA event. And Live Journal is a great way to keep up with TBT. She posts some good stuff there sometimes. Even her day-to-day is good to read. Especially when I need a distraction at work. :-)

.....Just scheduled our Fall Regional Pelican Council Meeting on a telephone bridge line. Don't know if the Region will actually go for it yet, but I at least scheduled it so I had it available. Need to send some e-mails out on it and get some opinions on the idea.

.....We had our Pre-September Crown meeting in an electronic Chat Room. There were things I liked and things I really didn't like about the Chat Room meeting.

.....The Good:
* No traveling to a meeting room or space that had to be arranged. Which also means no public restaurants where your meeting competed with the general noise level of the place. And it also meant no last minute clean up sessions in order to make ones house presentable to a group of people. If I wanted, I could have sat in my underwear on the couch and sipped my favorite alcohol of choice (I know, you didn't need that visual :-)).

* No traveling means a savings on gas as well (and ferry fares, and bridge tolls and...).

* Capturing the notes for the meeting was easy. Since everything was typed into the Chat Room, I was able to capture through a cut-and-paste of the conversation. No taking of notes and interpretation of notes needed.

* Access to databases and the internet for information as needed, such as the OP and candidate Wiki Pages.

.....The Challenging:
* Everyone needs to have their own computer to be part of the conversation. We tried to have people meet at houses where one person would type for three or more people. This proved to not be a good idea. I had Cedric and Brighid at my house and was hard pressed to keep up with what they wanted to say. Not to mention that my interpretations of their longer sentences and thoughts were not always exactly what they wanted to say.

* Not everyone is a computer geek. There were people who had issues accessing the Chat Room. Which meant that some people could not join in on the conversation, and they had no help close by to get them there.

* Typing Speed. Some people are naturally fast typists, and some people not so much. Those who are slower are constantly being overtaken by those who are faster.

* Controlling the conversation. Unless harsh ground rules are set and enforced, people would continuously talk over each other. Sometimes the entire conversation would take meandering courses away from topic and it was difficult to bring it back.

* The anonymity. I've noticed that people will say things in front of a computer screen that they might not say when face-to-face with someone.

.....I'm still on the fence as to whether I would like to use a Chat Room in the future. Some of the Regional players really liked it, so I think we'll end up using it again. But I may not be a real advocate, which is why I'm holding out hope that the bridge line idea might help with some of the challenges above.

.....That's some wayward post. I think I'll quit now while I'm relatively still awake. :-)

.....Aaron / Arontius