Convention Chair and Hotel Liaison

It starts at the top. Your Con Chair will set the tone for your staff and your bid. Ideally speaking, your Chair should be a dynamic, charismatic, take-charge individual, well known in the fandom (in a good way) and with the ability to make good, quick decisions, and stick by them. Previous con staff experience a plus, as is the ability to think on your feet, and at least pose as a responsible adult. Ideally speaking, your Con Chair should also be independently wealthy, and already own a hotel where the con can take place, but life is often imperfect.

Con Chair duties:

First off- Don't panic. It never helps.

The Con Chair is responsible for deciding who should be on staff, and where the con should be held- not just the city, but the actual hotel. The Con Chair should probably not make the decision about the hotel without the input of his fellow staffers, a great deal of research, or both.

You are then responsible for writing up your convention bid. Different conventions may have different bid requirements- check to see what exactly the current con is asking for and tailor your final bid to fit its standards- but they usually include at least four main staff members, your city, the hotels you are looking at if you haven't already chosen a single one, what there is to do around the location in the way of attractions and sites of interest- and local places to eat is a bonus- and what time your con is aiming to take place. A weekend, if you have one specifically in mind that you've already cleared with your chosen hotel, or simple "the end of June" or "the middle of July" will do. Your bid viewers ought to understand that nothing can be finalized until you've won the bid and then have the freedom to sign contracts with the hotel. Other bonuses in a bid include a rough budget and intended special guests, both of which you should keep realistic. For one thing, NO professional guest except Greg Weisman will be willing to commit to a convention over a year in advance- a fact which Greg himself has pointed out.

Once you've won the bid, you then have to start organizing your staff- does everyone know what they need to do, and by what time? Prior to the current year's convention weekend, there may not be much to do, but it is never too early to start persuing dealers or looking into advertising options. See if the current year's convention is willing to include your year's location and date as an aside in their own advertising, and if you can have a single page linked off their site that likewise mentions the basics of your convention. (Staff, Place, and Date.)

You want your full website, online registration, forum, and staff email system ready to go by the time the current year's con weekend rolls around; after it is over you should be able to unveil it immediately. You also wanto to set up a separate email account that all convention questions go to- the online registration system should automatically forward registration emails to this same account. This is a LOT easier than having all con-related emails auto-forwarded to each staff member's personal email address, since that often makes it difficult to tell what has been handled, as well as the fact that it avoids spamming emails with info that other members of your staff aren't at all involved with. Have several people- Reg Coord, Art Head, and Yourself- in charge of the account. Any time an email comes in that one of those three can't anwser, they should just forward it to whomever can answer it.

Be ready to sell pre-registrations to your year's convention during the current convention's weekend. Ask to have a couple minutes to pitch your convention to the crowd during Opening Ceremonies, and have what you want to say ready, including a time and a place ("All day tomorrow in the Dealer's Room!" "Tonight in the Consuite!") that you will be selling registrations- and that when-and-where-ever you do it, clear it with the current year's staff first to make sure you aren't interfering with some plan of theirs. (Like, don't say you're selling pre-reg in the consuite during what looks like an empty time block without first making sure there isn't a staff meeting planned there.)

Have paper registration forms ready for people to fill out for pre-reg; samples can be found here, here, and here. And while it is useful to have a paypal set-up ready to go for people who want to pay by credit or debit, DO NOT only have computer registration available that weekend. It's far easier to hand out forms to 50 people and have them all filling them out at the same time than it is to put those 50 people into a line and make them wait to fill out a computer screen one by one. Some will get restless, and leave. Plus, its ALWAYS good to have hard copies of your attendee's registration. What if you had it solely on your laptop, and the laptop died? Ick. Typing up the information from paper into the database isn't *that* time consuming, plus, it'll better acquaint your Registration Coordinator with what the numbers look like if they handle that part themselves, page by page.

You also want to make sure that you have a bank account open for your convention by this point to deposit all of your funds into. Talk to your Treasurer about this, and make sure that only *one* of you opens an account, and that you *both* have the pertinent info for it.

Also, if you have sudden chest pains and / or a tingling sensation in your arm, go to the hospital. Likewise if you develop any symptoms of having a bleed in your stomach or GI tract, go see a doctor.

During the year, you are responsible for seeing to it that Updates on the convention are written and posted, and that any questions concerning your convention are anwsered. You can either do this yourself, or see if there is someone on your Staff willing to volunteer to handle them. Again, play to your staff's strengths. Do NOT assign (or leave) the task to someone who doesn't think they will do a good job. Chances are, they won't.

Gathering Updates ought to be posted not only to the yahoo list, but to the forums, comment rooms, LJ update sites, etc. You want to try to have an update every two weeks, and you want to try to have something new to announce each time. It will keep the con fresh in people’s brains, and more likely to be spotted by the random newbie who happened to lurk by.

Con Chair is also in charge of coordinating the staff meeting and making sure everyone who is needed can, and does, attend. This does not always mean picking a day or a date and demanding everyone show up; asking at the end of each meeting if xy date works for everyone as opposed to assuming the same day of the week is fine each time is probably the better way to go. These chats can be online or through a phone bridge if you have that capacity, but they need to be in real time, not just email. Talking voice-to-voice really speeds things along. At first, these meetings may only need to be once every three or two weeks; by the time the convention is two months away, you may want to be holding them once a week.

Then, there is the Staff Visit to your con's hotel. You want this well before the con, say, six or seven months, so all can familiarize themselves with the event room set-up, meet the hotel staff, sample the banquet menu, get a feel for the area roads, mark places of interest and cheap eating establishments likely to be patronized by the con attendees.

On site, you are responsible for EVERYTHING. Main points include Organizing both Opening Ceremonies and The Masquerade, both of which usually require a fair amount of public speaking on your part, arranging for staff meetings in the morning before the convention day begans, continuing to see that everything is being handled and stepping in if there is a problem, and taking your own turns manning the Registration Desk and Staff Dealer's Table.

No battle plan ever survived contact with the enemy. Once you’re actually on the ground, not everything will go according to plan. The Gathering tends to be 70% planning and 30% improvisation. If you’re really Xanatos-like, you’ll have contingency plans for things like that. If you’re like the rest of us, you’ll just have to roll with the punches and do your best to keep the attendees from knowing how badly things may be going wrong.

Hotel Liaison duties

Know your convention needs, and arrange to get the space needed for the bargain you can get. Experience in dealing with hotels is a large plus.

They’re going to show you a really nice room as a representative of the rooms you’ll get with the con rate. Ask, if it’s not too much trouble, if you can see some of the other rooms on the floor. Just to get a general idea. Because not all of the con rate rooms may be as nice as the one they show you.

Remember that when you are setting the numbers for the convention room block- which should be negotiated as part of your contract with the hotel to be slightly discounted from the normal cost of said rooms- that no matter how nice the room for the price it costs in the con block, there will always be people who will go for the cheapest thing there is available. And most attendees go two to a room, at least- if you are planning on having 100 attendees, you may only want a room block of 50 or less. This may or may not include your staff and special guest hotel rooms, which need to be accounted for somewhere.

You need to deal with the hotel year round for various things- adjusting the con room block, adjusting what event rooms are needed, making sure they haven't lost your hotel dates, forwarding your Banquet numbers to their kitchen by the appropriate time if your Banquet is going to be in-house catered (assuming your convention is hosting a Banquet), forwarding the convention schedule and room needs (what does the seating/room setup need to be for each room? Will any of them change throughout the course of the convenction?) to the Hotel's Event Coordinator, etc. You also want to make sure no major renovations or changes occur (say, if they replace their attached restaurant) that you are not aware of, and *especially* that if anything happens to be under construction during the con itself that it isn't something that will interfere with your convention.

On site, you need to make sure that the event rooms are all opened up and locked down ON TIME, and that the room set-ups are correct, with the right number of tables and chairs and water where needed, including set-up for Registration. You are the contact between the hotel and the con, and anything that the hotel is directly involved with is likely going to be coming through you for confirmation. Other members of the staff, as well as maybe a special volunteer or two, ought also to be familiar with the Hotel Staff in case something comes up while you are not available.