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convergence tues(wednes)day: size matters, things we missed
I started putting thoughts like these in public two weeks ago and promised more troublemaking. Failed to deliver the next week cuz I was traveling for work. So
this week... Big enough? How big is too big?
I don't care! I saw recently that AnimeDetour caps their attendance at 3000. That's interesting--it's also notable because that makes them the biggest con in the area by attendance. Good job guys! Someone asked about that in another setting, and my opinion is genuinely "more power to them."
I really think CONvergence has no need to become the biggest anything. Someone said the convention center at the Sheraton hotel is capable of actually handling somewhere north of six thousand? eight thousand? While that would be a sight to Behold, I would resist going to a six thousand person Convergence.
OMG, can you imagine? 25 hour days, burnout, blood eyed madness, night of long knives! To get to that size, we'd probably need a concom that's like twice its current size, or accept some other eldritch horrors I dare not confront. It's hard to have a meeting of two hundred people! On the other hand, the convention's almost doubled in size over the course of ten years. We've grown the concom somewhat and accommodated. We need to think about growth and sustainability anyways.
Think about this: in ten years, my daughter will be more than old enough to volunteer shifts at Con. Shit, in ten years she better have been volunteering for five years or so, and my son better be volunteering too! She should be ready to sub head something in ten to fifteen years, man. I'll be fifty in fifteen years, by the way. FIF. TY. 5. 0.
But back to growth. Mostly it'd be less fun and more work for a volunteer organization. We need to find ways to make the volunteers last longer and feel like they're part of it, like they are valued contributors all the way and will want to continue to contribute. Throwing them to the mercies of an ever-growing con is not my immediate best thought for retention.
But we don't want to cap attendance, do we? So how do we promote sustainable con, or "organic capping" without some kind of high resolution (yes. that. shudder.) insurgency? A certain amount of natural goodness has already been installed with the absence of free beer. That's going to keep a segment of the population away. I think not having an overflow hotel is a very logical next bastion in the defense of it.
I hope I speak for more people than myself when I say "I don't want another hotel involved!!" I think multiple hotels are stupid, here's why: 1) they make it feel unfriendly, 2) they create a (not-entirely-false) sense of second class citizenry "oh you're in the sofitel? yeah we got in the south tower, losers!" 3) they are almost never cost effective for attendees and 4) they encourage sleepers in non-sleeping areas. Back when Minicon was about 87,549 attendees, I stayed with my group at the Wyndham. The Wyndham suuucks and a couple of us did naughties by falling asleep in the kosher food room of the Consuite. (Obviously this was more than 15 years ago and I was a lot less mature.) But honestly? That's some seriously stupid behavior+money wasting right there. We were still on the hook for our room at the Wyndham and we were bandit-sleeping over at the damn Radisson! The only person who wins that scenario are the mustache twiddling hotel operators.
I feel like CONvergence would lose some of its muscle in negotiations, too. "Well, we have overflow at our hotel and we need to use yours. Can we get a convention rate?" "How many rooms shall we bloc off for you?" "Uh, well, we're just overflowing now so...we estimate that--" "Oh! Estimate. Well, we can only discount so much for your estimates." &c. &c. This is not a doubting of Ishmael and his team's inestimable skills, it is simply a reflection on the prevailing realities of our times, what with the recession and all.
So that's one thing I definitely stand for: no more hotel(s) for this con! If YOU want to stay at the Sofitel, go ahead, but at this time I don't want us expending Concom resources negotiating convention rates there, and then thinking about ways to be more inclusive of people staying out there. That's a naturally high bar of entry that will stem some of the growth rate.
So my question is, we just made another list or two of good/clever ideas. How many of those ideas are not going to be executed because we run out of time or human resources? Things we missed last year? I volunteeer!
Rather than standing on a soapbox bitching about it, I'm volunteering to lead execution of at least three of the crazy ideas on the brainstorming list. Windy? You have a copy of that list (I can't find my folder right now)? Can you email it or post it? Let's do this thing. Let's fuckin' do this. All those things like crazy posters or crazy displays or a crazy zen garden of wax statues of past Connie incarnations and whatnot.
this week... Big enough? How big is too big?
How big should CONvergence get, in terms of attendance?
I don't care! I saw recently that AnimeDetour caps their attendance at 3000. That's interesting--it's also notable because that makes them the biggest con in the area by attendance. Good job guys! Someone asked about that in another setting, and my opinion is genuinely "more power to them."
I really think CONvergence has no need to become the biggest anything. Someone said the convention center at the Sheraton hotel is capable of actually handling somewhere north of six thousand? eight thousand? While that would be a sight to Behold, I would resist going to a six thousand person Convergence.
OMG, can you imagine? 25 hour days, burnout, blood eyed madness, night of long knives! To get to that size, we'd probably need a concom that's like twice its current size, or accept some other eldritch horrors I dare not confront. It's hard to have a meeting of two hundred people! On the other hand, the convention's almost doubled in size over the course of ten years. We've grown the concom somewhat and accommodated. We need to think about growth and sustainability anyways.
Think about this: in ten years, my daughter will be more than old enough to volunteer shifts at Con. Shit, in ten years she better have been volunteering for five years or so, and my son better be volunteering too! She should be ready to sub head something in ten to fifteen years, man. I'll be fifty in fifteen years, by the way. FIF. TY. 5. 0.
But back to growth. Mostly it'd be less fun and more work for a volunteer organization. We need to find ways to make the volunteers last longer and feel like they're part of it, like they are valued contributors all the way and will want to continue to contribute. Throwing them to the mercies of an ever-growing con is not my immediate best thought for retention.
But we don't want to cap attendance, do we? So how do we promote sustainable con, or "organic capping" without some kind of high resolution (yes. that. shudder.) insurgency? A certain amount of natural goodness has already been installed with the absence of free beer. That's going to keep a segment of the population away. I think not having an overflow hotel is a very logical next bastion in the defense of it.
I hope I speak for more people than myself when I say "I don't want another hotel involved!!" I think multiple hotels are stupid, here's why: 1) they make it feel unfriendly, 2) they create a (not-entirely-false) sense of second class citizenry "oh you're in the sofitel? yeah we got in the south tower, losers!" 3) they are almost never cost effective for attendees and 4) they encourage sleepers in non-sleeping areas. Back when Minicon was about 87,549 attendees, I stayed with my group at the Wyndham. The Wyndham suuucks and a couple of us did naughties by falling asleep in the kosher food room of the Consuite. (Obviously this was more than 15 years ago and I was a lot less mature.) But honestly? That's some seriously stupid behavior+money wasting right there. We were still on the hook for our room at the Wyndham and we were bandit-sleeping over at the damn Radisson! The only person who wins that scenario are the mustache twiddling hotel operators.
I feel like CONvergence would lose some of its muscle in negotiations, too. "Well, we have overflow at our hotel and we need to use yours. Can we get a convention rate?" "How many rooms shall we bloc off for you?" "Uh, well, we're just overflowing now so...we estimate that--" "Oh! Estimate. Well, we can only discount so much for your estimates." &c. &c. This is not a doubting of Ishmael and his team's inestimable skills, it is simply a reflection on the prevailing realities of our times, what with the recession and all.
So that's one thing I definitely stand for: no more hotel(s) for this con! If YOU want to stay at the Sofitel, go ahead, but at this time I don't want us expending Concom resources negotiating convention rates there, and then thinking about ways to be more inclusive of people staying out there. That's a naturally high bar of entry that will stem some of the growth rate.
Whatever happened to..?
There was a list at the concom meeting in January that talked about many of the ideas we brainstormed for special additives and "extra set dressing" in the hotel. I don't remember how many of those things we did last year. I feel like we didn't do enough of them. Is this a problem in our brainstorming process? Is this a problem in our leadership? I say doubtful. More like a shortage of execution, or maybe other people not being willing to step up and do it? Is it... boldness (not the right word) in being willing to try leading it?So my question is, we just made another list or two of good/clever ideas. How many of those ideas are not going to be executed because we run out of time or human resources? Things we missed last year? I volunteeer!
Rather than standing on a soapbox bitching about it, I'm volunteering to lead execution of at least three of the crazy ideas on the brainstorming list. Windy? You have a copy of that list (I can't find my folder right now)? Can you email it or post it? Let's do this thing. Let's fuckin' do this. All those things like crazy posters or crazy displays or a crazy zen garden of wax statues of past Connie incarnations and whatnot.