Feb
28th
2013
Las Pegasus Relief League auction: A win-win charity · 3:35am Feb 28th, 2013
There was some big snafu at the Las Pegasus convention. Don't ask me what happened; I don't know. There's an auction to raise money to pay hotel and travel fees and other expenses to bronies who were supposed to be comped by the convention but weren't.
I can't guarantee this is a noble cause; the reportage is too extensive for me to read. BUT, I just bid $20 for a 5000-word story and 6 months of critiques from pjabrony, because I'd pay $20 for that even if the money were being used to pay off Charlie Sheen's coke dealer. And I offered to critique up to 10,000 words of story, starting bid $10, since I've already been writing smaller critiques for free.
pjabrony's offer is a much better deal. But if it gets bid too high, bid on me.
This whole Unicon nonsense is billowing so quickly I don't even know what to make of it. Do we even have a straight, comprehensive, relatively-unbiased take on what the hell even happened at this point? I'm a little leery to step into the charity whirlwind without knowing exactly what went on, what is going on, how further funds are being distributed, and what controls are in place to prevent this from becoming the world's largest good-money-after-bad scenario.
That having been said, your point about Charlie Sheen's coke dealer is a salient one, so I guess I can see why you're bidding, but I get a really weird feeling about actually throwing services into the conflagration. There's a definite sense of maniacal panic in the air, and I'm not sure I like it.
But, as you probably know from all our previous exchanges, I am a nervous type. So there might not be anything wrong at all. Other than the foundation event, which was pretty unquestionably wrong in some sense. We're just not sure what sense that is.
872754 My motivation is partly to find out how much my critiques are worth to people. If nobody's willing to pay $10 for an extensive critique, then I'm going to stop doing the small ones for free, because it costs me a lot more than $10 to do one.
872754
I'm diong my best to keep up on at least the broad outlines of the mess, because I've got SMOF links to three fandoms through two decades and this is the largest implosion I've ever seen.
What's happening with all the charity stuff, as near I can tell, is trying to triage the unexpected expenses of convention attendees (in the current case) and VAs (the early emergency fundraising stuff) who went to the con based on promises of comped room/flight/whatever and ended up having to pay their own way for hotel rooms, flights home, etc. This includes a lot of dealers, who were told by the con to accept worthless scrip that they could cash in for money at the end of the weekend; and brony musicians/media/celebrities, who were comped for attendance etc. for all the advertising work they did for the con.
I'm still a little gunshy on the charity stuff myself, because it's being done so hurriedly that the transparency on the charity spending is lacking/lagging (how much is being raised, who does it go to, and where does the money go if more is collected than is necessary to reimburse those screwed by the con?), but what is clear is that the people putting the charity work together had nothing to do with the con itself, and it's the con itself which is responsible for all the hardship. I would stake my own money on the charity not being a scam, but I'd want to read more before feeling personally confident it was going to be spent in the best way possible to reimburse those affected. Intentions are definitely good. There's a little too much chaos in the air, is all.
Edit: Mostly my concerns are, I don't have the sort of money that I can throw it at a hypothetical need only to discover a month or two later that they raised $20k to cover $5k of shortage, or some such. I just want to see the little goal thermometer up front and know that it corresponds to actually reducing hurt among people who need it.
(Edit2 to later readers: See below.)
872754
I'd say if you're looking for a tl;dr summary, http://bronydramarecorded.tumblr.com/ is actually being remarkably objective about it (and wrote a whole post knocking down a lot of the uglier rumors I've heard).
873280
Exactly. There's the con guests who were promised a compensation package which was not met, and this much is concretely trackable via their agents. There's the folks who pre-reg'd for a hotel package, paid for it, and were denied, and this is basically trackable with the caveat that you need the con books to be in existence and not spurious, which does not seem like a sure thing. And then there's the vendors, which is a whole different kettle o' fish. I've gone to cons and had relatively good sales, and I've gone to cons and had less relatively good sales, with absolutely no malfeasance anywhere. How do you quantify what portion of your sales loss is due to the nebulous factors of "less attendance than promised" and "early close of dealer's room"? The answer would seem to be that you can't. A lot of the need expressed is word-of-mouth on the part of the affected. This makes me uneasy, although I admit that if you're going to be compensating vendors in the first place I have no idea how else the hell you'd go about it.
...aaand, that having been said, steering back to our poor neglected OP, I guess the point I'd like to make here, Bad Horse, is that I wouldn't take any results of this auction as an actual referendum on the value of your critiques. There are other reasons in play that will inhibit people from giving when they otherwise might.
In the words of the departed Heath Ledger, "If you're good at something never do it for free."
873280>>873553 Fear that the money might not go to charity shouldn't cause people to pay less than they would if it definitely weren't going to charity. I agree, there's no transparency about who is collecting the money, or how much they need.
873914
Fear that the money is going to fund people that have already taken advantage of the community once might prevent them even if they would've paid you charity or no. If I thought it was a scam, I'd probably avoid contributing so I wouldn't be supporting criminals.
That said, I'm pretty sure the auctions are legit, if you don't get takers I'll chip in 10 bucks just because I want you to keep going. I haven't written anything that I don't immediately hate when I read it over yet, but I enjoy your stories and those you've influenced. Your efforts are valuable to me as a reader.
I know a couple of people who helped with the mess IRL, I'm confident that intentions are good on the charity auction. None of that is being handled by the original LPU staff. Sandi (person in charge of the whole thing) had a meltdown and vanished, along with several other top organizers. It was staff from EFN and Equestria Daily, along several of the high profile guests, who stepped up to try to salvage things. Organization for the whole thing seems pretty haphazard, so there's probably still some risk of donations not making it to the right people just because of that.
I was at Unicon and saw a lot of the drama firsthand, which is how I know the LPU people (idiots who "lost" the funds) aren't running any of the charity stuff. Did my best to help out, though it didn't amount to much more than carrying boxes since I was a regular attendee. I felt bad because I had a blast until that last day, and the many of people who made it happen got screwed. Fortunately my room wasn't booked through the con. My friend and I ended up sharing with one of the people who got booted from a comped room on the last day, and we heard other attendees complaining about being charged twice.
Still, I'm some lurker, on a fiction site no less, so I could be making things up. Take a look at this, if you want to hear about it from those who were eyeball deep in the mess: http://events.everfree.net/las-vegas-convention-aftermath-qa/
If I had written anything I'd be all over this offer.
Sadly, I can't afford the eyebleach you'd need after reading anything I'd write.
873914
All concerns about the charity aside, you're absolutely right. The "Charlie Sheen's coke dealer" argument is the applicable one here.
873914 873535
Since the last time I checked it, LasPegAssist.com added this to the front page of their website:
There's also talk there of reimbursing dealers who took con scrip; that I can support without hesitation, because that represents actual sales they made without earning anything.
874033
At this point, I'd say you ought to go place a $10 bid for Bad Horse on the auction site then. A serious "I'll pay $10 if nobody else does" is already essentially a $10 bid, and that'll formalize it (and force other interested folks to ante up and give BH a better idea of what it's actually worth).
874327
I was worried about jacking up the price for someone who actually needs a review. I checked and he got a $20 bid, so all looks good.