Last year, the annual Mysterium convention held in North America (particularly its planning committee) seemed in a bit of a crisis, with attendees and organizers similarly disillusioned by the process and results. Most of the committee stepped down, accusations were made, and… some stuff was written. Over the months following that, several enthusiasts surfaced as wanting to organize themselves to build an exploratory committee, settled on what they deemed right and wrong, good and bad about previous management, and then joined together with the remainder to form a new, larger committee.

(I’ve done better summaries. Honest.)

Overall, the result is a tremendous improvement. I’m stressing this because, towards the end of this post, I’ll talk about something not-so-positive, so let me say it again: I think the new committee is very much steering in the right direction.

But how is that, and how is it not?

The Pleasant

• The committee has been oh-so-much-more transparent this time. There is, oh my, an actual about page! With names, functional descriptions and even photos! There are meeting protocols, like this one. Long overdue, but better late than never. A big win.
• There is a clear, streamlined process for donations, instead of leaving potential donors in agony over wanting to help.
• There’s a news page that you can also subscribe to as a feed if you so desire.
• There’s no confusion left as to what is the official, real, current, proper Mysterium website. mysterium.net it is. Puzzling that this was so hard in the past, but here we are now.

The So-so

Finishing the “Location Survey” while not having finished the “Date and Attendance Survey” redirects me to the main page when going to “Polls”, which makes it unnecessarily hard to even try to finish the latter survey. There’s also no clear explanation on why I am being redirected; while it is clear to me that I’m not supposed to be going to the survey twice, I would imagine it quite confusing to most people that they’re not even being shown a piece of information. (Why not redirect to a “you have already taken this survey” page?) Update: According to The World, “[The redirect] should now tell you that you’ve taken it ”. You can, however, manually go directly to the latter survey, a link to which can be found in a recent post, so you’re not prevented entirely from participating.

The Aggravating

The above would be relatively minor, tolerable issues. I don’t think they alone make for fair arguments for not attending. Sure, they give the impression of an amateur-ish, perhaps sloppy approach, but the former is what it is (the committee don’t get paid full-time for the organizing, or at all), and the latter is part of being human. It can’t all be smooth; it never will be. But there is one kicker left.

Not all of us have relatively short trips to Mysterium. Some travel a few thousand miles, perhaps from one North American coast to the other. Others travel even more, perhaps across the Atlantic Ocean, or perhaps even all the way from the Southern Hemisphere, like that weirdo I met (hi!). It doesn’t take rocket science to understand that, the further your travel, the more complex and expensive it will become. But in addition, as everyone who has travelled relatively long distance before knows, you better book your flight a long time in advance. Months. Perhaps a year. And if there is one thing that has remained constant with this reformed committee, it is that, whatever the reason, they seem unable to commit to a location and set of dates early on.

What does that mean? It means that, when in early March there’s surveys for location and dates for a convention that will take place in late July or some time in August, something is screwy. Assuming there won’t be an extension, the polls will close on the 15th, only to be evaluated then. For anyone keeping track, that gives people roughly four months to book the airfare, and that’s assuming they even can do so at that point, i.e. have enough in savings, have time to figure out the airline, and so on. That’s ignoring hotels and other kinds of accommodation, getting crucial info from the embassy, etc.

That’s not enough time to prepare. And yet, it has happened this way every passing year. It is something that could be easily prevented by, gee, planning a liiiiittle bit further ahead. If, by the beginning of the year, you still don’t know the location, it feels like a slap in the face. And if, more than two months in the year, you still don’t know it, you screwed up even more. What do you think I’m going to tell my boss? “Oh, I don’t know when to take my holidays yet, I need to wait on the Mysterium Committee to pick the date first! But I guess I do have a bit of a say on that through a survey… sorta…”

I really don’t understand how this has gone on for so long, and continues to. Are you trying not to have international people come and join in the fun?

Again, I think things have gotten considerably better. But, the above has to change. Or, in the words of Fry, FIXITFIXITFIXIT.