[Sca-cooks] Cook's Symposium 2004 - Ideas to Comment On

[Gaylin Walli]

Kiri wrote:

> Firstly, let me congratulate you on having the energy,
> patience and courage to autocrat such an event. You
> have my deep admiration.  I know how daunting something
> like this can be...having autocrated a Known World
> Herald's Symposium some years back!

Well actually I have plenty of help from Dame Hauviette and Mistress 
Siobhan
in the kingdom, so in all honesty, it isn't that I am autocratting this
event so much as serving as the public face to the event with them 
doing a
great deal of work behind the scenes. Any event can be daunting, even 
the
smallest, because each one presents unique challenges. The Cook's 
Symposium
however is one of those "true loves" for the event organizers and in a 
way
quite selfish for us. We want to surround ourselves with people 
interested
in cooking and what better way to do so than to host an event where we 
can
invite people from many many locations to make that possible? :)

> We have had the lending library concept at our Kingdom
> universities for several years, and it has been a great success.

If you have the time, could you take a moment to describe what works and
what has improved over time with your libraries? Stefan made some good
points in a later email about the use of a lending library and I'm
interested in getting perspectives on how they operate as well as how 
people
actually make use of them.

> I am planning, at this point, to come to the Symposium and
> will bring whatever books I can to contribute.  So that I
> don't try to bring books that others might  already be
> bringing, I will try to provide you with a list of what I
> have and you can, if you will, let me know which I should
> bring.  I'll try to get the list off to you as soon as I can.

I'm overjoyed to know that you plan to attend but before you start 
making
the airports nervous with your library travelling with you, we still 
haven't
gotten the final word from the site on whether or not we can use their
photocopier. They have one, a nice one I'm told. And we've offered to 
supply
the toner and paper for a day's use of the copier so that their supplies
won't be cut into. But we've not yet received word back on whether or 
not
that proposal has been approved. Once we get the approval, and assuming 
we
work out the logistics, what I was thinking of doing was making a master
list of the books and papers that would be known to be available at the
lending library and post it here, on the event website, and any other 
place
I can litter it without really annoying too many people. (And as luck 
would
have it, Christianna pointed out this very same idea in her email as a 
way
of working it so I feel good that at least this portion doesn't sound 
like
a crazy idea. Or if it is crazy, at least one other person thought the
same thing.) :)

> Purchasing the spices is also a good idea.  Have you
> considered contacting the Pepperer's Guild to find out
> if some of them, possibly located in the western
> areas of the EK might not consider coming and bringing their
> wares?

We have considered it and we're waiting on their response. But we're
exploring our options right now to see what we could do if the 
Pepperer's
Guild couldn't make it.

> You know...if this thing keeps growing, you might have
> to expand over into a second day!

Bite your tongue, woman! :) LOL.

Stefan also wrote thusly:

> I've seen these pop up at more and more events lately [....]
> However, personally, I've never found these libaries to be
> that useful as there are usually so many other things to do

That's a frequent comment at events with tracks of classes. However...

> finding time to do something at an event which I can also
> do at home keeps me from doing the other things. For a
> specialized topic such as this though, I might rummage
> through looking for interesting books or papers to get copies
> of in the future.

Which is probably more what I would do as well but I've found that 
people
use these kinds of lending libraries for a variety of uses. One woman 
wrote
me privately and said that she was hoping to use the library to get 
copies
of a single particularly recipe from the Vehling, Edwards, and Flower &
Rosenbaum translations of Apicius's work.  The Vehling is pitifully 
easy to
get but the Edwards and F&R editions aren't always that easy to find 
even
with access to a good interlibrary loan source.

> Along this line, perhaps some good bibliographies or some listings of
> available resources might be good things to have available, especially
> for the beginning cooks.

Now that is an excellent idea and one I will report back to the other 
event
staff as a possibility. Thankyou.

> If you do come up with some interesting papers or feast
> write-ups that folks  find useful, I would love to consider
> them for the Florilegium provided I can get permission from
> the authors. This might make them  available to those who
> don't have the time to look through them at the event or who
> live a long distance away and cannot attend.

What if I were to see to it that your request for articles (or a formal
request) made it into the event packet of information that we gave to 
each
attendee? We did something similar last year when we hosted the event by
putting a flyer in that served as a call for articles from the Editor 
of the
Midrealm's "Artes Draconis" A&S publication. Would that serve the same
purpose as what you were looking for?

> Also, I would try to make sure all these books and items are
> marked with the owners names before they are set out.
> Perhaps providing some stick-on labels for those that might
> not want to write directly on their items.

Well I'm not so sure about "stick on" items being a good idea for 
books, but
there are certainly some good options for this that are used by many a
library that include slip on thing sleeves and such. I'm genuinely 
curious
to know how other lending libraries have handled this kind of an 
adventure.
How do you tag books for ownership, friends? Do you? Or do you just 
keep a
master list? How do you arrange for drop off and pick up of loaned 
books? Do
you solicit ahead of time or just rely on volunteers the day of?

> I'm not sure what the advantage of this is over doing a
> direct mail order from the Pepperer's Guild.

Response time would be the biggest advantage. Admitted on the Guild's
webpage is that they are cheap but not fast. They fill orders as they 
get
them until they reach a certain mass or date and then ship them out. 
We'd be
ensureing a specified delivery time.

> It is perhaps riskier, but having some of the more unusual
> spices on hand for folks to buy might be a good way to
> introduce folks to these  spices. You might have some of
> the beginning cooks make impulse buys after finding out
> what they can do with these in the classes as the
> Symposium.

True enough and certainly valid. I don't know that this year we can 
afford
that risk. Perhaps in a future year as the annual symposium gets more
popular? I'm not certain.

> Again, some risk here, although pre-orders and using the
> pre-orders to judge the popularity of additional stock would
> help.

Very true. Thankyou for pointing this out. I hadn't though of it in this
light.

Thankyou all so far for your responses as they have been more than 
helpful.
I look forward to any further comments people have.

Iasmin

Iasmin de Cordoba, Baroness Roaring Wastes, Middle Kingdom
Class Coordinator, Cook's Symposium 2004
http://home.comcast.net/~iasmin/2004cooks/