Pre-Con Guest Process

You really need to have a lot of social spoons to handle this particular set of tasks. This covers everything we need to consider before the convention happens.

Before we can start

• Before anyone can do anything we must have a contract with the venue and have dates for the year. Once we have our dates, there's no reason we can't get started on contacting guests.
• If you're going to be emailing with guests you need to be able to log into RT and have proper permissions for the guests queue
• If you have actual MS Word, you can update contracts. You'll need access to Bitrix24 and access to the Guest workgroup

Step 1 - Update the Contract Template

Before we can actually reach out to people, something else we need to do as part of the guest department is update the guest contract for the year. We haven't had a lot of updates that we've had to make anymore. Any updates we usually end up doing are when we run into things; we just update the guest contract and go forward from there with the new contract. Normally, we try to get the contract pinned down perfectly before we send it out, but the last few years, it's been more like we update the dates, read it over, and if there's nothing obvious to us, we send it out. Then we remember all the things we need to change, so we've turned it into more of a fluid process. We update the template for the next person and send the updated contract out to the next person.

Our contracts have a Word template that you have to use; you can't use Open Office or any of its forks like LibreOffice.

The actual benefit of using Word is that when you open it, there are various sections you just click on to select the appropriate text.

Editing those sections permanently for the template is a big pain though. Will document later.

Fix all dates in the contract template, and don't forget the date in the header on page 2.

Actually editing parts

• Insert --> Quick Parts --> Building Block Organizer to see names of the sections. Save the name of the section you want to edit
• Copy text you want somewhere not in the building blocks
• Make changes
• Insert --> Quick Parts --> Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery
• Fill out the form using the same Name as the part you want to overwrite
  • Gallery: AutoText
  • Category needs to be the same as the one you want to overwrite
  • Description is usually blank
  • Save in {template name}
  • Options: Insert content only
• When it asks if you want to redefine the entry, choose yes

Step 2 - Contact Potential Guests

Step 2A Regular Guests

We determine what guests from previous years we want back, reach out to them with an invitation and an offer. I like to take their previous year's contract and just make a new contract with that, with no changes unless we have changes we need to make.

So once we have a venue contract, we can start actually contracting guests. We contact them and get a contract ready to send with the initial contact. It usually goes something like, "Hey, we're reaching out about SNAFU Con for whatever year; we'd like to have you back as a guest. Here is a starting contract. Please review it, let me know if you have any changes; if it's all good, please sign it and send it back." That right off the bat gets us in contact. If they're okay without any significant changes, they'll just sign it and send it back, and we can go forward. We cannot announce a guest until we have a signed contract; as soon as we have a signed contract, we can say, "Oh yeah, they're a guest."

Step 2B New Guests

Although we sometimes receive guests from guests emailing us, and sometimes from suggestions from other guests, we have started relying more on agents. We've used a couple over the years and don't have a set one we prefer.

Generally we reach out to an agent who has reached out to us. There are many.

We let them know that we're looking for guests for an anime and gaming convention. We're looking for guests that are inexpensive who can bring good quality panel content to our convention. We are also a small con and do not have any handlers or green room.

A piece of text we've sent out in part of emails to new guests:

We have no green room. We have no handlers. We do usually provide an assistant during scheduled autograph signings when requested. Guests are generally left up to their own devices between panels and programming. Some just hang out at their tables. Others hang out at the con in general with other guests and some hang out at the casino.

This was the exact text I sent an agent in 2020, there were COVID concerns:

We're mostly a programming con, we care much, much more about the quality and quantity of panels a guest can provide than the "largeness" of the name. Our budget is fairly small, ranging between {redacted} for appearance, travel, and per diem depending on the programming they bring in, plus hotel. We're much more willing to drop {redacted} on a guest that will integrate themselves into the con vs a guest that comes and does a few panels and then disappears into the casino for the rest of the event (not that a guest shouldn't check out the casino, we know that's a big draw for people outside of Nevada). Our standard ask is that a guest participate in four panels, opening and closing ceremonies, and a VIP meet & greet which is usually a catered lunch, but we're trying to figure out what we're doing for this year due to COVID and not wanting people unmasking to eat in a gathering like that. While panels can be grouped with other guests, we usually prefer if the guest has at least one or two that they're bringing to the table either to host alone or for other guests to sit in on.
We cannot offer any handlers although we can offer temporary assistance at scheduled autograph signings, usually only one person though. This year we're pinched tighter than usual with some of our usual staff just not wanting to risk exposure.

Step 3 - Contracting Guests

Before you can actually send a contract to the guest, you have to get it approved. Usually, I'm the one approving it, but if I'm not available, Sammich or Dragon can approve it. Our contracts have a Word template that you have to use; you can't use Open Office or any of its forks like LibreOffice.

The actual benefit of using Word is that when you open it, there are various sections you just click on to select the appropriate text. For example, sometimes a guest has a hotel room and sometimes they don't. Under the hotel room section, there are two different pieces of language, and you just select the right one. There are many highlighted areas in the contract; these highlights indicate that something needs to be changed. For example, the number of panels a guest is required to participate in might vary. The yellow highlights are there to indicate what needs to be changed, so make sure to unhighlight them before sending out the contract.

In the contracting process, there are various considerations for a guest. Do they have an appearance fee? What do we have to pay for travel? What information do we need to book them a hotel room? Do they have entourage members? All of these questions are covered in the contract, so you should be able to use the contract as a guide for what information you need.

Generally, we don't offer things that the guest doesn't ask for. So, if we contact a guest and ask them what their requirements are, and they say they've got a $250 appearance fee and they need a hotel and travel, that's pretty common. But if they didn't ask for a per diem, we don't offer per diem. If they say they've got a $250 appearance fee and $30 per diem and a hotel room, but they didn't ask for travel, we don't offer travel.

We don't have a lot of money to pay for guests. So we go with the cheapest guests we can get for the most amount of panels, you know, the most bang for our buck really. And we don't offer to pay them extra ever.

A few of the things that we contract them for need to be dealt with on our end once we have them contracted. For example, if they have a flight, we need to buy them the flight. If they have a table, we need to make sure that their table gets set up in the registration system. If they have entourage members, we need to make sure their badges get set up in the registration system. If they have an appearance fee or per diem, accounting, which is me, needs to make sure that those checks get entered.

Something we need to know in terms of contracts is that some guests will require a W-9, but most will not. This is based on the appearance fee. If the appearance fee is over a certain amount, we need to get a W-9 because we will be issuing a 1099-MISC at the end of the year. I believe that amount is $650, but it could be $500; it could have changed so it's good to double-check on the IRS website.

Going back to things we do and do not contract for, guests sometimes ask for us to cover parking. We will do that if asked, but we never offer to cover parking unless they specifically request it.

Step 4 - Recording Guests into Guest Manager

All of the things from the contract get entered into the guest management system in the registration system, so that we can keep everyone on the same page regarding guests.

It's vitally important that the information in the registration system matches whatever we've contracted. If you enter anything wrong in the registration system, it's going to be wrong for what we do.

We do not have guests register themselves. While it's nice when they're comfortable doing that, for the most part, we set up their badges and their entourage badges ourselves through the guest manager. Currently, there is no way of directly making a guest badge, but there's a workaround. There's a button for "force-auth" into them, and someone who has permissions for that can force-auth into the guest user, make their badge for them, and there we go.

Step 6 - And the rest...

All of these happen in whatever order they have to happen in which can vary, so they are lumped into a "okay they're contracted, do all the things" step.

Announcing Guests

Before you can start you need

• The Guest Headshot and Bio
• Proper permissions to access and use the webpage editor

Steps

1. Review Bio for typos, formatting, etc.
2. You may need to resize the headshot for web sized
3. Make sure headshot gets onto the webpage (either by you or by BACON team)
4. Post headshot and the bio to the guest page You might include a single sentence blurb about who they are and then link back to their guest page. All of the headers on the website have an anchor, so you can actually link directly to the person's bio.
5. Post an announcement to the index page
6. Get with Social Media dept to announce guest on social media ("@Social Media Staff we've got so-and-so announced on the website. Can you please get them announced on social media?")

After we have all the guests

1. Get a mailchimp campaign scheduled (below)
2. coordinate an at-everyone blast in discord to go out with the campaign

Mailchimp Campaign

And then the next big thing that's up to the guest department is emailing a guest announcement out to the mailing list. This happens once we have all or most of our guests contracted. Someone needs to go into Mailchimp and put together a campaign to announce our guests. Generally, you want to include their headshots and bios, and you just kind of go down the list. It's more or less a condensed version of what's up on our website for the guest page.

The goal of this is to get the information out to everyone and build some hype for the convention. It's also a good email to throw in some reminders at the bottom, like remembering to book your hotel, to register if you want to staff, and other last-minute pushes. Maybe some calls to action to get these things done. This goes out to our entire mailing list.

Booking Flights

As part of getting the transportation booked, if the guest is close enough to drive, that's great. We reimburse them twice the amount of their gas receipts to cover both the trip there and back. We don't ask for them to send the receipts for the return trip. We just take whatever gas receipts they have given us, double them, and give them that amount at the convention.

For flights, we have to gather all sorts of information from the guest. Most of that should already be in the contract, so you usually won't have to go out of your way to ask.

And then we look up flights. We send the flight information to the guest and make sure they're okay with it, and then book for them. If a guest is comfortable booking for themselves and getting reimbursed, hooray, that's so much easier for us. Make sure we get the flight itineraries regardless, so that we know when they're supposed to be coming in order.

Realistically, when someone is flying out, we should be texting them and asking if they got on their flight. We should also be texting them when they are supposed to land, asking if they've arrived okay, and reminding them of the shuttle that can take them from the airport to the hotel. Because, unless we have someone that is willing to go pick them up, generally we can't go pick them up. So in the contract, we let them know there is a free shuttle. In the event that the shuttle starts to charge, please send us the receipts, but otherwise, there's a free shuttle from the airport to the hotel you're going to need to use.

Getting Panels Scheduled

Things that we have going on is guest panels. The reason we have guests is to get their programming content. We don't usually get big enough names where the guests are a draw in and of themselves, although sometimes people are really excited about some of the smaller names. But the panels are super important. We used to try and have the panels department reach out to the guests, and that just did not work.

Now, pretty much the person who contacted the guest is the person who will be managing their panels. It's your responsibility to sit on the guest and make sure they send you a panel list. Once you have that panel list, send them over to the programming department and let them decide what they want.

Make sure to let the programming department know how many panels the guest is contracted for. So, if the guest is contracted for three panels and they send us a list of ten, then we have to decide which ones we want. The programming department can make that decision; you don't have to. Unless there's one in particular that you're like, "Oh, I want to go to that," you can also tell the programming department to make sure they schedule that one. But otherwise, I think they'll pick as long as you tell them what the limits are.

Make sure that the programming department gets the panels scheduled.

Before the schedule is finalized, we will send the guests all of the schedules of all of the guests. So we send them, "Here's your schedule. Here's the schedule of all of the guests. Please let us know if there's any you would like to sit in on." I have an email template for that, and I can get that into the wiki when I have a chance. It allows them to double up on things so we can have more guests involved on the same panel. For example, if there is a panel that's about stories in the voice acting industry and we've got three voice actors, we should probably have all three of them in that panel.

The responsibility of who sends out that email technically should fall on programming. But because programming has a hard time coordinating with guests, it makes more sense if the guest department sends it out. As long as someone sends it out, that's all that matters.

Final Communication

Something we need to be very clear on this year is making absolutely sure that the guest understands that we require vaccines for Covid to get your badge. That means they have to have had their last booster since September of 2022. Additionally, they have to wear a mask when they're officially interacting with attendees.

We also had an issue last year where a guest wanted to take off their mask in a panel. They asked the room if it would be a problem to just take off their mask, which of course the attendees didn't care so they took off their mask. That's not allowed and that's not okay. If they would prefer, they can wear a face shield for their panel, but they have to at least have a face shield when talking to the room. If we find out that they are unmasking during their panels, we will probably have to have a staff member sit in on their panels to remind them constantly. If we have to cancel their panels, then we cancel their panels. If we have to remove their guest status over it, we will — hopefully, we don't have to do that.

Something that we should probably look into is providing specific directions on getting to the shuttle from the airport and how the shuttle works, so that we can give them a little guide on what they need to do when they get to the airport from wherever they've left.

When the guest arrives and they make it to the hotel, one of the first things they usually want to do is check in and drop off all their stuff. They generally don't want to go straight to programming, so ideally we want to make sure that they are arriving with lots of time before the opening ceremonies. That is the first thing that we expect all of the guests to attend, so you want to make sure that their arriving flight is at least a few hours before the opening.

When they arrive and go to the hotel to check in, we need to make sure that they know how to check in. While they should be set up to not have to put down a credit card, the hotel staff are not trained on how to handle that. So, what we need is basically a cheat sheet of how to get through this process. I've asked our venue liaison, to get with the venue and ask for how we can check in without having to put down a card. This is a problem every year. The hope is that we can get a little cheat sheet of magic words that we can hand out to all of the guests before they even arrive on the property, to tell them how they need to check into the hotel.

Things that need to be sent to the guests before the convention, before they've even left their house, include things like their flight itinerary, their schedule, maybe a reminder of our policies, and probably a venue map. Where are they getting dropped off by the shuttle? How are they getting to the convention from where they're getting dropped off by the shuttle? Can we get a venue map to them to show them, "Here's where you check in for the hotel, here's how you get to the convention, here's where you get your badge"?

Before the guests arrive, we should have a list of who they can contact if they run into trouble. This is primarily going to be Dragon or the chair. But if you're comfortable giving out your phone number, that would be helpful.

It's in the contract, but you might want to remind them that we will give you your per diem when you show up, if they have per diem. Don't say anything about per diem if it's not in their contract. You will get your appearance fee partway through the weekend, and if you have any reimbursements, you will get them by the end of the weekend.

Appearance fees will not be paid until we have a W-2 in our possession. They don't need to email it; they can fill it out on site. In fact, we would prefer they fill it out on-site because it contains social security numbers, so make sure they know not to email a W-9.

What would be good is the guest department reminding the guests to promote their appearance. Technically, we've put it in the contract, but we don't actually follow up on that. Reminding them to tell all of their fans that they're going to be here this weekend once or twice would probably be really helpful to get some more hype for the con.

That's something we need to do as part of the guest/programming department.

Registration Bags

Before the guests show up, we put together their registration bags. The guest bags are a different color than the other registration bags. This should be done as far in advance as possible after we get the guests sorted. However, some of the things we need sorted happen very, very close to con.

Per Diem

1. Put together a list of what guests receive per diem.
2. Find the previous year's Per Diem Cash Receipts.docx in the Con Printing Workgroup (check in the "completed" folder)
3. Copy it to the current year's folder
4. Clear out any data you don't need for the current year left over from last year
5. For each guest with per diem:
   1. Count out the cash twice and put it in an envelope with the guest's name on it
   2. Update the annual receipt document with the guest's name and amount they are receiving
6. Save the document and make sure it gets printed for con.
7. Once printed, cut up the document into relevant slips for guests to sign when they receive per diem.
8. Attach the slips to the relevant envelopes and save for the con bags

If we are short on cash, Beta or Thomas can go to the bank and withdraw some for the per diem.

Appearance Checks

Appearance fees get handed out partway through con and aren't needed for the registration bags.

Schedules

1. For each guest, get a pocket schedule and a large schedule.
2. Highlight each guest's schedule.
3. Save for the con bags

Put together bags

1. Pull the guest badges out of the main box to ensure they can't be handed out accidentally.
2. Attach their badge to the guest colored bag
3. INSIDE each bag gets
   1. a con book,
   2. any guest swag (usually similar to VIP swag),
   3. a logo lanyard and an annual theme badge clip
   4. and their highlighted schedules
4. If the guest has per diem, cash is placed in an envelope and attached on the outside of the bag along with a receipt the guest has to sign to verify that they received the per diem cash.
5. Attach the guest's badge to the bag on top of the per diem
6. Set all bags in a place away from the main reg flow but still where the reg managers can find them.
7. Make sure Cassy and any other registration managers are aware of where the guest bags are located