Difference between revisions of "Consuite"

Revision as of 10:41, 28 February 2006

A Consuite is one or more rooms that are devoted to providing hospitality to the convention's members, usually in the form of food and drink and space for good conversations.

Typically conventions provide both a non-smoking and a Smoking Consuite.

Planning and Executing a Consuite

Food and Drink

A ConSuite is expected to have a certain minimum in food and drink - at the very least, salty crunchy things and something to wet your throat. When you're doing your menu planning you have a lot of factors to consider, including size of the convention, budget, local law, your hotel contract, and your convention's traditions and values.

• Consuite - Menu Planning
• Consuite - Notes from ConFusion
• Consuite - A Sample Shopping List

Room Layout

There is a magical art to planning the layout of a ConSuite. You have two main goals: support the flow of traffic through any area that is serving food and drink, and support the existence of eddies where people might stop, relax, and converse. Do one without the other and you have something suboptimal.

Themes and Other Decor

If your convention has a theme you may wish to carry it through in the decor of the consuite. Or each room could have a different decor, each night could change with the theme of the party, etc. In any of these approaches, planning ahead is a good idea.

Staffing and Schedules

It is best to plan to have a staff member -- a trained, knowledgable volunteer, who knows what's going on -- present in the consuite at all times. You can supplement this staff member with gophers, and in a minimal consuite you may not need them at all, but unltimately, your staff are your saviors. Because really, you do need to sleep.

Post the staffing schedule in your prep area and give both your staff and Ops a copy of this schedule and of your contact information. You should also have a menu schedule posted in the prep area so people coming onto shift know what to put out.

Regional Variation

When you're planning how to run Consuites and observing how other people run them, you will rapidly realize that there is both regional and international variation. Some of this is due to culture and architecture, some of it to law, and some simply to Tradition.

In the UK, for example, a hotel might have a pub that has rather a family atmosphere. The convention might rent out some rooms in that pub to hold its hospitality functions. The same process would not fly in the US, where bars do not have the same atmosphere.

Some conventions serve alcohol, others do not. As far as I recall, it is more common to find beer in the consuite in a Midwestern con than at one on the coasts. You should do well to find out what previous consuite heads before you have done for your convention, not only to make your planning easier but also to make sure you aren't skipping anything that fans steeped in the "Tradition" of last year might kvetch as you about.

Another variation is in time schedules. Many conventions maintain a 24-hour ConSuite. You do not have to do this. Many conventions don't. But ConSuites that at least run late into the night are one of the many ways SF conventions stand out from other types of events.