I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday along with a few other key RollerCon planners: benevolent dictator Ivanna S. Pankin and Trish the Dish from Sin City Skates, Nottie A. Saiwant from the Bellingham Roller Betties, and Betty Bamalam all the way from Victorian Roller Derby League in Melbourne, Australia. We've checked in at the Imperial Palace, where we were met by a very eager to help Goodie Two Skates from Rose City Rollers, and we expect to be joined later today by Cupples Sk8, also from Rose City.
This is my third RollerCon. I missed the first one, but I've been involved ever since, first with workshop scheduling, then ref coordination, running a handful of the off-skates workshops, webmastering, track layout and skater wrangling for Fremont Street scrimmages, IT nerdery, whatever comes up. Nottie's become an even bigger part of the team, and seems to have a handle on everything. Ivanna refers to Nottie as her "third lobe" because she's like the extra hunk of brain needed to keep track of everything.
Every year, RollerCon has grown, and this year is no exception. Save for the legendary High Noon Scrimmage (where the temperature according to various reports was either 108, 110, or 118 degrees), RollerCon 05 was largely a social gathering allowing rollergirls from all over to actually meet each other and discover, "hey, we're really not alone." In 2006, we added off-skates workshops, scrimmages on Fremont Street, and way, way too many days -- a weekend wasn't enough, but 9 days was clearly insanity. 2007 brough on-skates workshops and shuttles for transportation, and this year we've quadrupled the on-skates opportunities.
Despite the growth, the mood around this year's on-site prep work seems strikingly non-frantic. There's the usual shopping for white boards and painters' tape, the site checks for the banquet and ball, the figuring out where the internet's gonna come from, and of course re-learning to navigate the Imperial Palace (architected, I believe, by M.C. Escher). On the whole, though, we pretty much seem to know what we're doing. There's a lot to be said for practice.
Best Raffle Ever
The element we're probably most excited about, though, is the Tequila Mockingbird Benefit Raffle. Since we announced this raffle, prize contributions have been POURING in from derby vendors, leagues, derby owned businesses, and just generally awesome people. Raffle items already total over $10,000 in value, and they just keep coming!
Due to the immense value of prizes, and the beneficiary's great needs, RollerCon has abandoned the initial "must be present to win" plan and has set up online raffle ticket sales.
DNN has generally steered away from promoting injured-skater donation drives, since, frankly, there tend to be a lot of them, and we prefer not to be accused of playing favorites. Due to the nature and extent of Tequila's injuries, and her badass upbeat attitude, we are happy to make an exception for her. Go buy some raffle tickets!
If you're not familiar with Tequila's story and situation, please visit her site at helptequila.com for more information.
yep.
"re-learning to navigate the Imperial Palace (architected, I believe, by M.C. Escher)"
YES!
couldn't have said it better. It's a really, really confusing hotel.
Claudia Van Damage
[btw- for some reason I never get a response when I try to request a password for "claudia van damage"- even though it is registered, who do I contact about this?]
possibly set to an old email address
I'm on it ... I know how much derby people like using their names :)
JFM
so it was M.C. Escher eh?
I hear ya Hurty, at the end of the last year's Rollercon I wrote a letter to the building itself:
Dear Imperial Palace,
The rumor of you being in the shape of a swastika when viewed from a satellite is a bit of a stretch, but you're evil all the same. I'll take responsibility for my own drunken stupidity all in good time but fuck-me-in-the-tooth; who on this planet designed you? You're a shape-shifter and you know it! Never in my life have I walked down a hallway until it dead ended only to about face into another one. Do your elevators just giggle when called? Do the EXIT signs in your parking structure rotate once passed? How many 4th floors do you have anyway? Don't get me started about "Barf Hallway", which fittingly was adjacent to "Hot Garbage Corners". I've never said "fuck" so many times in one sentence until I met you.
On the other hand, I had one hell of a time.
I met about 150 people but managed to remember only 3 names. My forgetfulness has to be tied to the vast rivers of Heineken and Makers Mark I pulled down coupled with the nervous breakdown I suffered riding elevators.
Having said that, I'll see you at Rollercon '08!
_+_+_+_+_
Update: see ya in a couple days. :)