ANSTHRLD - Westgate ramblings

[Timothy A. McDaniel]

I just got back from Westgate.  Good food, fine symposium, time for
dancing AND schmoozing afterwards.  3 1/2 stars, 11 on the Vomit
Meter, Dan'l-Bob ... wait, that's someone else's schtick.

Congratulations to the two recipients of Awards of Arms, Lord Fergus
Stout and Lor^H^H^H Lady AElfwyn aet Gyrwum!

I don't think anyone took formal notes of the plenary chapter meeting
of the College of Heralds.  What I remember, in no particular order:

- - There was much discussion of the Board proposal to eliminate
  "herald" as a required office below baronial level.  Points
  that seemed to have general agreement:

  * While each kingdom is free to require it themselves, we owe the
    Board a good-faith chance to follow suit.  (I disagree with this
    notion, but es machts nicht ...)

  * Most of the shire heralds will vanish, immediately or when their
    terms end, and will not be replaced.  It looks like many of the
    shire heralds are "Corpora heralds" anyway, so this should not
    have a lot of practical effect ...

  * ... except that at least a local herald has a chance to point a
    client at someone.  We really ought to be reaching out to
    submitters in under-served areas, and this Board proposal provides
    a swift kick in the butt to remind us.  Ideas discussed:

    o Regionals apparently mostly take local reports each month and
      collate them into quaterly reports.  Give them more duties?

    o Get the involvement of Tressure -- head of the education arm.

    o Roving gangs of consulting heralds: road trips, heraldic
      visitations.  (If we do the latter, I wanna deface arms.)

    o Consultations tables -- Gwenllian is already organizing one for
      Ansteorran 20th Year.  Volunteer, all!  It'll be in the
      *air-conditioned building*.  Gwenllian is currently planning to
      charge $12 for submissions (the standard $1 skim and the extra
      $3 being afundraiser for the College), but the heralds will take
      care of filling in the forms, drawing the armory, copying the
      forms, coloring them, et cetera.  It's the "fire and forget"
      idea again.  There's apparently a LOT of resistance to filling
      out forms: Kathri said that people offered to pay her more if
      the heralds would just take care of it.

      For AXXY, it was also discussed, and I believe agreed, that
      there'd be a special ILoI.  Kathri would get interested
      commenters in advance who'd commit to doing the commentary in
      just one month and without waiting for the standard AG cycle.
      They'd also get a special LoI, much like some kingdoms have
      special Pennsic LoIs.  This would give the submitters an extra
      bonus for their extra $3.

    o Star suggested that Pursuivants Extraordinary might be usable as
      consultants or even accept submissions.  Gasps of shock as
      people realized that Pursuivants Extraordinary might actually
      act as pursuivants extraordinary: that is, as pursuivants not
      "in ordinary" (that is, not holding a titled office), instead of
      a nice pretty cookie that give you nothing.  However, PE titles
      would have a time limit, and you'd have to demonstrate to Star
      at the end that you've done heraldic stuff and thus deserve to
      be renewed.  (My notion: don't remind people that they're going
      to expire: auto-deadwood removal.)

  * Detail to work on: how to accept money.  Asterisk, I think, will
    talk to the new kingdom treasurer about ways and means.

- - Star says that e-mail doesn't count as an official means of
  communication.  It's gotta be paper if it's official.

- - Gwenllian was good enough to administratively return the 2/94 and
  4/94 "lost children", so that long-term pending pile is going.
  However, currently pends are forever.  First idea: when something is
  pended long-term (because the name was returned at kingdom but the
  armory is OK), start the clock for 2-years-3-months.  If that runs
  out before name resub, the armory is dead.  The only difference
  between a long-term return and a pend would be that they don't have
  to do new forms for the pend.  (For the pends before the new forms,
  people are willing to draw up new forms for them.)  Did I mention
  that there's apparently a LOT of resistance from clients for filling
  out heraldic submission forms?

  Da'ud's clever insight: it's hard to track things long term (in this
  volunteer organization especially).  Four months maybe, two years
  never.  Da'ud's cleverer idea: rather than pend the armory, *really*
  return it.  Keep one B&W and one color in the kingdom files and mail
  the rest back to the submitter.  In the return letter, tell them
  that if they want to resubmit the armory, they should just send in
  those forms unchanged and note that it's a resub.  (While that's 2
  less than the usual number, kingdom still has those two copies and
  uses them at need.)  This puts the burden of record-keeping on the
  submitter's head.  If they don't care enough to put them somewhere
  handy, they probably don't care about the submission, or they want a
  new design anyway.  It keeps people from having to fill out new
  forms.

- - I briefly noted that Bordure spends almost $8 (counting copying,
  postage, and Laurel fees) of the $8 received for each new
  submission.  I'm going to dig out the detailed figures again and
  also the costs for various kingdoms.

Daniel de Lincolia
- -- 
Tim McDaniel (home); Reply-To: tmcd at crl.com; 
if that fail, tmcd at austin.ibm.com is my work address.
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