SELEM 10 - August 9th through the 14th, 2016 - Sign up now!

[rodman1369]

Arriving Charlotte Douglas Airport Tuesday August 9th at 5:50pm...Unfortunately, Departing Saturday August 13th at 12 noon.
Looking for ride sharers and/or a room sharer at the Holiday Inn before I lock in a room and rental?
I use CPAP so don't snore.
rodman1369

[Bradfo69]

In an effort to generate some chatter in the SELEM thread, I re-read the original post, as I was thinking about the cafeteria space for home builds/showoffs and what to use it for. There was a comment made about moving the buy/sell area to the cafeteria as well.
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I have a concern with that. While quite frankly, laser people seem to be some of the most trustworthy people on the planet, SELEM is a bit "public", There have been long periods of time where the cafeteria sits empty - and that's even when we have a ton of lasers in it for people to mess with. Is it such a good idea to leave that stuff unattended out there? Yes the argument can be made we're already leaving thousands of dollars of easily grabbed laptops and other stuff, versus tables of odds and ends. I have never sold anything so I don't know if others have that concern about it being in a less populated area. It's also not well lit it really inspect anything.
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I agree more room to spread things out would be nice, compared to the dressing room and thought maybe the gallery wall under the windows. Although.... if those that regularly sell stuff are fine with the cafeteria, then.... the cafeteria it shall be. I just was thinking about its lesser degree of supervision.

[Lazerjock]

In an effort to generate some chatter in the SELEM thread, I re-read the original post, as I was thinking about the cafeteria space for home builds/showoffs and what to use it for. There was a comment made about moving the buy/sell area to the cafeteria as well.
.
I have a concern with that. While quite frankly, laser people seem to be some of the most trustworthy people on the planet, SELEM is a bit "public", There have been long periods of time where the cafeteria sits empty - and that's even when we have a ton of lasers in it for people to mess with. Is it such a good idea to leave that stuff unattended out there? Yes the argument can be made we're already leaving thousands of dollars of easily grabbed laptops and other stuff, versus tables of odds and ends. I have never sold anything so I don't know if others have that concern about it being in a less populated area. It's also not well lit it really inspect anything.
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I agree more room to spread things out would be nice, compared to the dressing room and thought maybe the gallery wall under the windows. Although.... if those that regularly sell stuff are fine with the cafeteria, then.... the cafeteria it shall be. I just was thinking about its lesser degree of supervision.

Good point.
I like the lobby area just for the better lighting.

[buffo]

The lobby area has traditionally been for food and special presentations. Do we want to move those activities to the cafeteria space and make the lobby the buy/sell/trade area? Bear in mind that tables are limited in the lobby, but are plentiful in the cafeteria...

Adam

[Bradfo69]

Tables in general may be at a premium this year since we're adding the gymnasium. Maybe we should explore the cost of renting a few. I know here, in my area, renting a 6' table is about $6.50. (Plus delivery which we could likely avoid if we can pick them up somewhere close to Newton.)
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The food tends to be more concentrated closer to the office and kitchen and, the special demos tend to be more on the wall where the piano is which is why I thought maybe a few under the windows between the table storage closet and ramp. There isn't "that" much buy sell stuff and, we set up tables in there anyway so, it's more a case of where those tables are allocated. What we're loosing is the makeup counter so, you probably only need 1 or 2 more 6 or 8 foot tables. **Unless I get smart and bring a bunch of stuff to sell, in which case I'll just have a tractor trailer out in the parking lot people can walk in and around like a safety shoe or Snap On tool truck that rolls from job site to job site!
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I don't really care one way or another but, as I thought about it, I realized there have been an awful lot of times where I've walked into the cafeteria and there has been no one there. But there is almost always "a presence" in the theater/gallery.

[buffo]

I realized there have been an awful lot of times where I've walked into the cafeteria and there has been no one there. But there is almost always "a presence" in the theater/gallery.

My thinking was that if we moved the buy-sell-trade area to the cafeteria, there would be more people in there, since people always tended to congregate in the dressing room where all the stuff was set up. So if we moved it to the cafeteria, hopefully the crowd that usually hangs out in there would move as well. But maybe I'm being optimistic.

Another alternative would be to move it to the hallway in front of the auditorium. But if we do that it still seems like it's being relegated to "red-headed step-child" status, which is what I wanted to avoid.

I had hoped by moving it to the cafeteria it would give the area a lot more freedom. But I don't want to introduce problems.

What do other people think? Is the cafeteria too remote for the buy-sell-trade area?

Adam

[HankLloydRight]

Just throwing out ideas here -- why not combine the back-stage area (general maintenance, etc) with what's going on in the cafeteria ("enthusiast display space")?

The back-stage area (in my scant two years SELEM experience) has been maintenance and "enthusiast display space" for people to set up their gear (I'm thinking like Polishedball and others did last year), as well as the displays for flight-sim and quadcopter demoe.

That would free up the back-stage to be for the for-sale section or the food area, making available the dressing room for something else (maybe "the lumia room") .

[Bradfo69]

Good point on using it as a method to get more traffic to the cafeteria. I hadn't viewed it that way. If there are more people in the cafeteria during the day, then that lessens the concern of things being unattended.

[SaltyRobot]

I am thinking that everything that used to happen back stage should now happen in the cafeteria and back stage should be turned into the buy sell trade area. What kept rolling around in my mind was how will buy sell and trade happen when the lights are off while people are messing with home brew stuff. That is just my opinion though. The down side to doing this though is the cafe does not have a screen for graphics like the back stage does but maybe we can remedy that by hanging a large sheet or something from one of the cross beams.

[Bradfo69]

A screen/sheet should be easy because that's really all there is back stage and we've bastardized some things in the past like we did for buffo electroshock therapy... err... "scanner tuning" last year.
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There are plusses with that too Jason except, think about what you just said... how will people see the buy sell stuff with the lights off. Much of what goes on back stage is tinkering and repair which is also kind of difficult to do in the dark. Although, to be fair, most of the time the lights in the cafeteria were on during the day anyway. I've never cared for the backstage for the tinkering only because these old eyes are finding it more and more difficult to see up close in dim light. I mentioned something last year about bringing on of those tripod work lights but never followed through.