mo@seismo.UUCP (Mike O'Dell) (12/03/83)
The reason you are required to make a preference is because the rooms reserved are "smaller than one would like," to be diplomatic, and they want to put the largest meetings in the larger rooms. As for the entire fiasco, ALL the arrangements, including contracting with the 1938 German National Conference Corporation, are the doing of /vendor/group, er, /usr/group. Moreover, there are only 800 hotel rooms reserved for the meeting. It wasn't like they weren't told that Toronto, "the meeting noone would attend", drew almost 2000 people. The president of /vendor/group is one Michael Florio. I am sure he will appear at the opening session, so get a good look at his face, and then strong-arm him and tell him, to his face, what you think of his organization and its ability to organize conferences. There will be other people wearing /usr/group BOARD MEMBER badges, so you should puth the strong-arm on them, too. But be careful, one other board member is the famous "Jean Yates, internationally-known Unix expert." Incidently, the supposed ineptitude of Usenix for organizing meetings was claimed to be one of the factors which prompted organizing /usr/group. Unix was once the counter-culture operating system. Maybe this meeting will tap some of that spirit again. While we probably cannot change the leopard's spots, we can sure as hell complain about it sharpening its claws on the furniture. Wondering where it all went awry, -Flamin' Mike O'Dell