Main Page
Welcome to ConRunner, a Why and How-To reference for Convention organizers.
ConRunner was started in July 2005, and we are currently working on 337 articles. You are invited to join us, and to help make them better.
ContentsFeatured Article - Art Show - Set Panel and Table LimitsSet panel and table limitsNow that you have a floor plan, you know how many total panels and tables will fit in the art show. With this and a knowledge of how many artists are likely to want to enter, you can set policies for how many of each you will allow a single artist to reserve. If you don't expect to fill all your tables and panels, there is little need for limits. You may as well just be first come, first served. You just stop accepting artists when the show is full. This non-policy has no consistent effect on the type or quality of art in the show. If you do fill up, it may screen out the less organized artists. You might expect the professional artists to be more organized and more likely to get in first, but I've seen little such correlation. You can use this policy even if you do expect to fill the show. If you expect artists to want more space than you have available, you have many ways to limit demand. Any of these can be combined and they all interact:
Most shows do have some form of panel/table limit. What that limit is varies wildly. I've seen shows which have limited artists to one 4'x4' panel. This is usually a bad idea unless you're an internal type show or looking to reduce the show size, because many mail-in and attending artists can't cover their expenses with just one panel. A two panel/table limit has some of the same problem, but less so. Three or four panel/table limits are common. Small shows usually have smaller limits, and exceptions are often made for various reasons. |
DepartmentsThere is no One True Way to organize your committee into departments. Often times a convention will run for a few years one way, and then combine departments that share a lot of the same resources or purpose into a single department. Or a department may split, as the needs of the convention grow. Do what works for you, and recruit reliable department heads. Create, publish, and maintain a clear set of objectives and methods to document continuity of what works, what doesn't, and why. Check on the senior staff regularly to make sure they're getting whatever support they need from you and the rest of the committee, pre-con and at-con. Department heads then recruit what staff and at-con volunteers they need to accomplish the goals of the department. Have your department heads document the procedures of running their department, and train people under them so that you have a pool of people ready to be future department heads, and you are capturing knowledge from one year to the next. A common way to split a science fiction convention into departments is like so:
You can easily see how Volunteers might also go under Operations, Masquerade and Dance under Programming, etc. A small enough convention may not have a person dedicated to publicity separate from their publications head, or an information desk, or whatever. And of course, some conventions don't have Art Shows, or Charity Auctions, or whatever. Try to pick a structure that best supports what you do and how you want to do it. |
Wiki User's Guide
Please see documentation on customizing the interface and the User's Guide for usage and configuration help.