summer meetup in New York State?

I would love this!

~Lyn

It's a possibility. Kinda depends on who all else is coming.

I was thinking about this again yesterday morning. If we didn't have the meet-up at the RenFest, where else in NYS would weblit people like to gather?

Syracuse or Ithaca would be convenient for me & Lyn.

Syracuse or Albany would probably be convenient for anyone coming from New England or the NYC-D.C. corridor.

Buffalo or Niagara Falls would be convenient for me, Karen, Shirley, and anyone coming from the Midwest.

So what do you think, folks? Where and when is best for getting y'all to come to NYS? I've got animals that get pissed off if I try to leave the farm for more than a day trip

The best way to get me to NYS is to have someone else drive

LOL. What state are you in? Is there any other weblit authors or fans nearby you could carpool with?

I live in Philadelphia (just giving the state isn't very helpful!). As far as I know there's no one else in my area.

Clare, If you bussed up halfway I could pick you up in Ithaca or Binghamton.

Upstate NY meet-up date:

Please let it not be the weekend of July 16-18. That's the Muskoka Novel Marathon, so, no way Shirley or I could make it.

I've never been to a Renfest... can you camp? Trying to avoid accommodation expenses.

The Sterling Ren Festival has a campsite very near it - http://nysparks.state.ny.us/parks/12/details.aspx - from my childhood experience, NYS campgrounds are generally clean, well-tended, and lovely - similar to the couple campgrounds of a similar caliber (government park land?) we stayed at on the Canadian side of the lake.

July 16-18 is the one weekend I absolutely can NOT do it either, so I'm okay with that, Karen!

How does something like the first or second weekend in August look for all you interested parties?

Assuming that it'll probably be at the Sterling Ren Festival, with a site somewhere near Rochester as back-up.

http://www.sterlingfestival.com/
July 3rd - August 15th, 2010

At the moment, I have nothing planned for those weekends. Um, Park Ave. Fest is August 7th & 8th, and T. was thinking of going to that, so the 14th-15th would work better for me (unless we wanted to meet at the Park Ave Fest instead!

~Lyn

For those of you who have no idea what Park Ave Fest is, it's a big festival in Rochester: http://www.park-avenue.org/events.html. I'm up for either!

There are campgrounds & state parks around the Rochester area, which I could look into for anyone who's interested. The city isn't far from me, but I literally have no space to offer guests right now =(

Not even the goat pens?

I don't recommend it. Everything you own will get carried off by nosy does, and you will get trompled in your sleep by the kids. ;-D

Aug 7 & 8 weekend is no good for me as I have to pick up my son from camp on the Saturday. Weekend after that would work.

Okay, so it's looking like Aug. 14 & 15th, at the Sterling RenFest is the preferred choice...?

Who else would join us if we went with that plan? Me, Lyn, Karen...?

Karen, do you know if Shirley would be able to join us?

Clare, would you be able to make it - or at least make it far enough to take up Lyn's offer?

Shirley certainly wants to come. The trick is she needs to get a passport or enhanced driver's license, and I need to renew mine and if we're bringing our two sons, we need to get them passports, too. (That nice, friendly, open border... no more.) That is, if it's going to be a kid-friendly event... thoughts? We might also cast about for weekend child-care; that'd make it easier on us, for sure. (Both the boys have autism spectrum disorders which makes them less independent than they would otherwise be at 15 & 12.)

Cap, how long a drive is it from Niagara Falls to Sterling?

I hear your pain. I need to get an enhanced or a passport, too, just for that reason *sighs*

Google maps says 3 hours if you go CA rt 405 - US 190 - US 90 - various side roads to the Ren Fest. I'm not so sure I believe this, because it takes about 2 hours for me to get to the Ren Fest, and 1.5 hours to get the Falls. So say somewhere between 3 - 3.5 hours. You could go CA rt 405 - NYS rt 104, which is more direct, but stops through towns & Rochester, so it'd put you closer to 4 hours.

The Ren Fest is pretty kid friendly, with humor for multiple ages levels (and the adult stuff is raunchy rather than obscene). Anything you have to pay for isn't cheap (smuggle in your own water or gatorade!), but the shows are all free, even if the games & couple rides aren't. Depends on how much standing & walking around outside in a crowd you think your boys are up too, I guess.

As for the weblit part of things - for the Intimate History meet-up there was just a gaggle of 5 of us, so we just hung out and wandered around together for a day. I hadn't any formal programming in mind, although I certainly wouldn't be adverse to doing/discussing something specific.

Speaking of which, do y'all want to keep this mostly authors, or put the word out to any of our readers in the area, too? I know of at least one Intimate History reader who's planning on attending because she couldn't go last year and we had talked about her going up this summer instead.

Dang - I'm just torn about that last question. I like the idea of an author's only thing so we can do what authors do (drunkenly whine to each other about how hard writing is and brag about our own work/////////////// mutual support and exchange of ideas with refreshments, etc.) But I also like the idea of getting readers there so it's almost like a mini-con. We could do readings and stuff...

How about this: we do both? Invite the readers just for the Saturday, hang out among ourselves on the Sunday.

I think our boys might well enjoy the fest. They liked Medieval Times, and this is more active.

I don't think I'll be able to go, much as I'd love to meet you guys--five hours driving and probably more than that if I tried to take a bus makes the prospect a little too daunting.

Also: this Faire has rides?!

The Faire has rides. When I was young and single, I liked them a lot, as they're powered by handsome young men. Handsome, muscular young men.

It's possible some of my friends/readers will be there by virtue of it being the last weekend of Faire. Meeting readers in general, i.e. mini-con, sounds fun, as does the other half, just hanging out being writers together.

~Lyn

I'm just having a hard time picturing Renaissance-y rides. The PA Faire has elephant rides, but that's it, and the MD RennFest doesn't have any. Just Dunk-A-Wench booths.

Elephant rides, merry-go-round, there's a long twisty slide (whee!), and I think there was something else, too. The merry-go-round-sort-of thing is the most fun, it's hanging swings.

There is a sort of "teacup" type of ride, with a large wooden box thingy that sits like 10 people, built around a huge pole and hung by ropes. Some of those muscular young men twist the box round 'n round to wind the ropes up, and then they let go and you spin back down.

I sorta agree with you, but right now there's only two readers that I know of that are planning on attending. I'd feel kinda rude saying to just the two of them "don't hang out with us on Saturday". Perhaps for this year we could plan on doing
a) just a writer's dinner Saturday night
and/or
b) from here on out, advertise just the Sunday date to our readers with the understanding that if they show up on Saturday, too, they're welcome?

Of course, next year when this becomes a huge weblit convention in either Syracuse or Buffalo, we'll have to do something more formal about the writers-only parts vs. the writers-and-readers sessions

(hey, a girl can dream)

I might make it whenever, as I'm in the area - it would depend on A) getting my license and B) getting good enough with a car that I could drive the four hours to get there without crashing into something and dying horribly. Still, possibly. It would be cool.

Get your license! Join us! eeee! It would be much fun to have you there, too, wystie!!

One reader who goes by V suggested another camping site, a RV and cabin place in Oswego. Quote: "Rates are $50-70 for "Wow that's a rustic cabin but I have a roof and a bed" to $180 which is 4 double beds and somewhat nicer. But most of them have a fire ring out back."

If anyone's interested in splitting a cabin and/or making a group reservation, leave a note for V here: http://www.meilinmiranda.com/node/2184#comment-38526

Karen and I were talking about the readers/writers thing some more, and at this point it just doesn't make sense to me to try to separate the two groups for any part of such an informal, relatively small gathering. Karen seems to be of the same mind. So that's that, I guess.

The guest list (that I know of) so far: me, Lyn, Karen, Shirley, their 2 boys, 4 (possibly more) MeiLin/DN readers, possibly the DN authors Blue Coyote & RavenRux with their third, and possibly Wysteria (please!).

Feel free to promote the event on your sites and around the weblit neighborhood, guys. I'd love to have "more people than expected" problems!

Wow, it's a mini Webcomics Weekend!

I've promoted it on the Addergoole forums. My Alpha beta reader may come from Maine; my co-writer & his fiance may come from Rochester and we may rearrange our gaming schedule to coordinate.

Other than that - I don't even know where most of my readers live. O_o

~Lyn

Bumping this for two reasons. One, it's coming up very soon - August 14/15 is only two weeks away, yikes! There's been some change of plans among attendees, but people I know for sure that are still going are me & probably my plus one (at least Sat afternoon, not sure on Sun yet), Karen, Lyn, Lyn's co-writer & plus one, and five of MeiLin's readers (of which three will be there Sun-only). Anyone else planning on joining us? Wystie??

Also, I'm trying to figure out if we can get some sort of video conference going online during the weekend. Mostly so we MeiLin readers can go all fangirl/boi at her (sneak peek at the finalized book cover, pretty please?), but if it happens, I don't see why we can't get anyone else who wants to see our computer-glow-tanned faces involved as well. Right now I'm looking at tinychat or tokbox as possible services, if we can get a webcam laptop there. Let me know if you're interested, and I'll make sure you hear about the details (assuming I can make it happen...!)

ETA: a few more attendees I forgot!

I'm planning on posting meetup video conferencing options at MLM and here, and ask you guys to comment. Maybe run a beta. Then we can cross-post everywhere and have a little wingding.

Dimdim seems to be a good solution. I'd like to try it out, but I haven't been able to round up a herd of test subjects...

I finally got someone to cover calf chores for me on Sunday, so now I can officially say I'll be there the whole weekend! YAY! Also, husband type got the weekend off, too, so he's coming with me. Please be gentle with him, he's a complete weblit-newb.

My plan is now to show up Saturday (hopefully not too late to make reservations at that same campground as a couple other attendees), hangout, and then invade the Ren Fest on Sunday. I might want to leave a bit early on Sunday so I can get home to the farm to make sure there's no problems. By early, I mean sometime around 2pm. Not sure yet when I'll arrive Saturday, but it'll be after lunch anyway.

MeiLin, I can try volunteering with the Dimdim test, but I don't have a webcam or mic, so it'd be as an observer only.