Difference between revisions of "Departments"

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(disambiguated short films to be distinct from Video Room. Continuing to group AV-Heavy departments into the same area.)
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*** [[LARP]]
 
*** [[LARP]]
 
*** [[Video and Computer Gaming]]
 
*** [[Video and Computer Gaming]]
 
  
 
* [[Contests]]: Regularly fall under the department that contest most closely fits.
 
* [[Contests]]: Regularly fall under the department that contest most closely fits.
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** Fan Art  
 
** Fan Art  
  
* [[Art Show]] and [[Auction]]
+
* [[Art Show]]  
 +
** [[Auction|Art Auction]]
 
** [[Artist Alley]]
 
** [[Artist Alley]]
  

Revision as of 12:35, 10 July 2007

There 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. See what works for you, but do recruit reliable department heads. Make sure they have the same notion of the purpose of what they're doing that you do, and check on them regularly to make sure they're getting whatever support they need from you and the rest of the committee. Department heads then recruit what staff and at-con volunteers they need to accomplish the goals of the department.

If you can, 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: (Many conventions will have variations on this and the larger you get the more beneficial it will be to have more than one vice chair or division chief. Divisions may encompass multiple departments. See the article Checklist for some alternate ideas.)

  • Guest Liaisons
    • Interpreters: An absolute necessity in Anime conventions.
    • Green Room: Sometimes is part of the guest department in many conventions to make clear separations from the consuite.
  • Contests: Regularly fall under the department that contest most closely fits.
    • Young writers contest
    • Anime Music Video
    • Original Animation
    • Fan Art


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.