So, now I’m thinking about event planning. Putting together a party of any significant size is not a picnic. There’s a reason weddings make the people holding them fractious, and quite often put stress on already delicate bits of folks’ ability to hold things together.

It seems easy from the outside—hire a caterer, hire some music, find a venue, go! Why make things complicated? But in fact, that’s just the easy part, for a large party. If you’re lucky, things will go well.

More likely, things will go well as far as you can see, because you never learn about the folks who it *didn’t* go well for, or just write that off as “things happen.” But things don’t just happen.

My first experience with one of GRRM’s Hugo Losers Parties showed me right away that there was a lack of attention to organization beyond that food/music/venue angle.

It was in Spokane. I knew nothing of the party, but a friend of mine who had also “lost” that night (NOTE nobody on the finalist list is any sort of loser) wanted to know was I going? It was in a location that needed transportation to get to—transportation that I did not have.

Note, this conversation is AS WE’RE WALKING OUT OF THE CEREMONY. Apparently GRRM had been handing out invites during the reception.

What makes me think of this now is his assertion that, had the Hugos been held in -person he’d planned to walk around the reception with a notepad to get pronunciations of people’s names.

The thing is, I’d been introduced to GRRM at the reception—I’d made sure to try to meet him since I had my 15yr old son with me and I knew the kid would be pleased.

Anyway, I dropped kiddo off in the hotel room, changed my clothes, and we hopped in the car and drove to the party. Which was in full swing. And we were met by a person who asked if we had an invitation, implying there was no admittance without one.

We had no invites! We only had third or fourth-hand information about the party. We insisted that we had indeed lost Hugos, and the guy let us in, and we had a good time.

But the next year? The very first thing I did when I got into the reception was try to find someone who had an invitation to the party. At least this time it was walking distance—but how is a newbie going to know to ask?

One year I wasn’t going, but knew someone who was, and I told them to be sure to ask for the info on the Losers Party, because they would miss it otherwise, since they weren’t one of the usual suspects.

When the stuff in Dublin happened, I was so entirely unsurprised that I could have been an illustration for “the opposite of shocked” in a thesaurus.

There was surely no malice in any of this. But there was definitely a kind of over-confident assumption that hard work didn’t have to be done to make things happen

That hard work would be too much, that food and venue and music, and walking around telling some friends, would be enough organizational work.

And he hasn’t learned from it. Which is saddening.

Those parties are, by his own efforts, a big responsibility. Toastmastering the Hugos, a big responsibility. and both require digging into the guest list, learning who the people are who need to be there and how to make sure they get there and have a good time.

Anyway, party planning is a a serious skill, with lots of overlap in lots of areas of life, and one would do well to cultivate those skills instead of shrugging and saying it’s too much work. Thanks for listening.

(Oh, I meant to mention in the Spokane story, that my friend had access to a car, so we were able to get there. If they hadn’t, we’d have been out of luck, Hugo Losers unable to get to the party at all. Seriously, the whole thing hadn’t been thought through very carefully.)

OH WAIT I guess I’m not done. The objection that 100+ emails was too much work but walking around the reception with a notepad would have been just fine? No way. That’s 100+ people to buttonhole.

All while they’re being greeted and congratulated and introduced to folks and herded this way and that for pictures and trying to eat a bite or two and have a drink before the ceremony.

I myself have intended to talk to people at the reception who I never saw the whole two hours, but who were certainly there.

Once again, “I’ll just walk around and talk to my friends” is the supposed solution to something that is, in fact, a significant organizational job.

And ConZealand is not off the hook. Apparently GRRM never got the data they had-they should have had someone compiling the data that came in from finalist responses and had a nice spreadsheet of finalist names spellings and pronunciations ready to go for all the presenters.

Again, lack of organizational foresight and skill. One that’s going to hurt the folks who aren’t already well-known to the organizers the most. Seriously. Think about that.