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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.
Featured Article - Party MavenThe Party Maven coordinates arrangements for parties being conducted at the convention. The primary job is to ensure that parties, particularly room parties, are grouped together to be sure the noise does not inconvenience other hotel guests. Simultaneously, the grouping enhances enjoyment by the members, since it minimizes travel distance between parties, and takes stress and waiting time off the hotel elevators. You may wish to photograph or videotape the condition of the party host rooms before and after the convention to substantiate or refute damage claims. If your hotel will remove furniture from guest rooms for a reasonable fee, encourage your party hosts to use this service as it will save wear and tear on the furniture. Consider coordinating a large ice delivery, either through the hotel or a third-party vendor, to reduce the drain on the customer ice machines. Some conventions sublet function or guest room space for parties if there is space they are using during the day but not in the evening; this usually also falls in the domain of the Party Maven. It's a nice touch to provide a list of party titles, times and locations to the Newsletter staff ahead of time. This is especially useful on the first evening of the convention as party hosts may not make it to the convention to post their announcements before press time for that evening's issue. The Party Maven may also be responsible for providing supplies to parties, providing hotel information to hosts, assisting with special arrangements with the hotel, deconflicting incompatible parties and party locations, publicizing parties to the members, coordinating with convention Security and Hotel Liaison, and generally helping make the parties go well. |
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. |
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