Hi All,
We've had four meetings since our last email update. Sorry it's been a crazy couple of months. This email summarizes what we've discussed in the following meetings: 6/22, 7/19, 8/10, 9/08. Anything from earlier meetings that became inaccurate or irrelevant has been removed or updated to current information.
Sorry, it's going to be a long read.
You can continue discussion on these items in Discord. If you're not in discord yet, please join us by going to snafucon.com/chat (requires a SNAFU Con registration, but payment isn't required to join).
Remember to apply to be staff.
Out next meeting is September 28, at 1pm, at the Sparks Library Meeting Room
Thank you all!
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Important Deadlines
We discussed important deadlines. After the meeting I put together a wiki page explaining them a little further.
Deadline for VIPs is Oct 4
VIPs need to be registered by this date.
Prereg closes on Oct 12
Staff should all be registered by this date to ensure a staff badge. Badge art should be done by this date.
Conbook content deadline Oct 13
Any content you want in the con book needs to be turned in by this date.
Deadline for Hotels is Oct 15
This is our last possible chance to get hotel reservations. VIP deadline may move to this date if needed to encourage late entries.
Conbook hell: Oct 25-27
This is the weekend the graphics staff torture themselves to get the con book done. Expect previews to be posted to Discord for people to review this weekend.
Merchants to the city by Oct 30
This is the last possible chance to add a merchant to the con. After this date no more vendors/artists/swap meet/sellers at all.
Deadline for printed schedule is Nov 1
The schedule gets built this weekend. This is the last possible date to change the schedule for things. (Was set as November 6 in the meeting but if we want to stuff the schedules at the last meeting, we need all changes done the weekend before.)
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Hotel
Our hotel block is currently at 15% full. We need to really push hotels hard to ensure we don't have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to the venue. Not making our room block also could result is the venue canceling our event.
If you are getting a room, book it now. Tell your friends.
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Budget Requests
Get your budget requests in! If you have anything you need for your department please submit a budget request so we know what it is. If it's a reasonable request there will probably be no problem buying it. We will work with you as best we can, but please put it in soon so we know what you need because this year's purchasing has started.
If you have items you've had in the past but you don't know if we have enough, let @Sammich know in #staff in Discord.
We will be doing an inventory of storage soon.
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Logistics Inventory
We have a date scheduled for September 15th at 10am to inventory/clean out the con’s storage unit. If you want to help or your department wants any of your specific stuff inventoried, message @Sammich in Discord.
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Website
New graphics are finally up! Thank you so much to Ami for making that happen.
It's ridiculously easy for the website to become inaccurate so please take some time to poke around the website, especially anything relevant to your department. If you find anything that needs to be updated or changed, if you have the ability, please fix it, or if you don't, please let us know. You can tell us in the #staff-and-volunteers channel in Discord.
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New features
We’re having our first ever manga library which is exciting. We're calling it the “Manga Dungeon”. They’re getting a room along the front hallway. Hours TBD but they want to be open pretty late.
The new Hospitality Department is running a prop check and social cool down area. The person spearheading this project is bringing a tent (only staff allowed inside) and setting up a camp aesthetic, keeping the checked props in coolers.
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Achievements
Katana and a few other artists are working on replacing some of our old ugly achievement icons. If you want to redo an achievement, suggest a new achievement, or discuss anything related to achievements, please post it to #achievements
Current Achievement List
Achievements Wiki
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Press
If your have any press contacts that you think would be good, Tasha is doing a major press blast soon. If you have contacts please Discord @Natasha Gonzales or email [email protected].
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Merchants
Artist alley did a new system this year. It worked out rather well. We got something like 70 applications for 45 tables and they pulled names after this last meeting. Artists were broken up into four “buckets” and each artist could fit in to two or three buckets depending on whether or not they were new, and whether they sold prints, crafts, or both.
Success!
It meant that AA didn’t have to close in 8 hours like last year. People had a week to register so the applications weren't so badly rushed.
Vendors opened 9/8 and has two weeks for everyone to sign up before we start picking vendors.
Swap meet should open soon. The swap meet size has been increased to 8x8 squares.
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Do we have all of the Departments covered
Guests - Thank you so much to Nuriko and Cassy for handling guests since we don't have any guests staff for pre-con work. Guests is mostly covered for this year but if you're interested in taking it on, it's a good time to join to see how we do it.
Cosplay - I think we're set but 1 or 2 more staff could be helpful (cosplay staff cannot compete in masquerade)
E-Gaming is generally covered.
Tabletop could use a few more people
Hospitality - It's new and a prop check and social cool down area. It probably doesn't need anyone.
Logistics always needs people. We need a dedicated logistics head. We need people to just help with truck loading, setup, tear-down, and (on Monday) unloading the truck. Stay to the end of tear down Sunday night and get free food at a really fun dinner where we're all tired, loopy, and happy from con. Come to load the truck into storage and we buy lunch for everyone who helped (traditionally at a Chinese restaurant).
Marketing - We've got a few great social media people and that's about it. Marketing is kind of covered, but could always use more people. Everyone should get a few fliers to hand out. Please Discord @thomas to let him know where you put the fliers.
Philanthropy - Tasha is handling it and Big Brothers Big Sisters is happy to come back
Programming needs people. We technically don’t have a head. Programming needs people to watch the panel rooms, check attendance in panels, let people know when their time is up, get tech when needed, and check-in panelists. Main stage needs people with good stage personalities to entertain the crowd.
Video - We hopefully have video pre-con covered. Thank you to Amber who is basically heading it.
Registration needs people. We need people to sit at computers and check people in, make badges, and handle line control (like a greeter position).
Rovers always needs people. Rovers is the convention customer service. They make sure people have their badges, are being safe, handle complaints, give directions, etc.
Tech always needs like two more people than they have. Tech only has 2 people right now. Tech head says: "If you ever plugged in a VCR to a TV, you are probably qualified to do tech." Tech generally sets up the panel rooms, plugging in the projectors and speakers, resets the panel rooms after panelists mess with things, hangs out at main stage, and tears down the panel room projector and speakers.
Vendors - Susana will not make it to con this year. Vendors will merge with Artist alley to make Merchants. They seem to be covered because lots of people joined AA staff for some reason this year. (AA is planning on loaning staff out as needed.)
Rave wants a personal badge checker to make it more exclusive but we’d like to avoid wasting a volunteer on that when last year we were so short on volunteers. The rave/2nd stage area is getting cut in half so it shouldn’t feel so empty. If we do end up with extra people, it’s fine for rave to have a badge checker if they want, though.
In general we need more people and Rovers, Registration, and Programming always needs people.
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Recruiting
Have a sad graph. We need more staff and/or volunteers because "many hands make light work."
- We've heard from volunteers that they want to know what they will be doing before they volunteer. The answer is, as always, "I don't know, whatever we need." Most people don't like this answer so we're trying to make up a list of potential tasks. It's WIP, but this information will be added to the soon-to-be-revamped Staff/Volunteer page on the website. Sam put a lot of effort into cleaning up that page and we're just waiting on a few staffers to review the changes before it goes live.
- One of the quests for prizes will be to volunteer for an hour.
- To help us figure out some things for next year, we want to add a small questionnaire to the at-con volunteer signup process to ask "Did you intend on volunteering before you came to the con or did you make the decision after arriving?" This may get a little skewed due to the quest task, though.
- We're planning on adding a small spiel to the end of the registration workflow that includes something along the lines of "Are you interested in volunteering for a partial to total refund for your badge?" and directions to go talk to the volunteer desk right next to registration.
- Information about volunteering should be on our opening email we haven't sent out yet.
- We want to make a "Mr. Squid wants you" flier to try to attract more volunteers, with a QR code that takes you to the Staff/Volunteer page.
- There was a suggestion for making a Mr. Squid plushie to raffle off to the volunteers. Which sounds very cool, but probably too expensive or time consuming.
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Signage
In general we want to expand our signage. People have had trouble finding the panel rooms in the back hallway so we want to put several signs at the end of the hallway facing different directions to catch people from different angles.
Swap meet and the rave both want more signage about their event. Possibly floor-arrows. Possibly black light floor arrows (we do already have a roll of black light spike tape).
We want to get some Big Standup Signs, but we need to know what we should put on it, how many we need, and a template designed. These signs should be generic signs that we can use for multiple years. We're thinking of using them for broad general areas like "Merchants." It would also be great if we could use one or two for when we market at other conventions.
Some suggestions were:
- Entrance for artist alley/vendor;
- "Badge Zone"
- Welcome to SNAFU Con
- Merchants
- Swap Meet
- Dual purpose for at con and marketing at other cons
- Lost and found
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Layout
A few main points of interest regarding layout:
- Video is moving to the main area so we can watch it with fewer dedicated people. (If anyone wants to see video without a badge, we can escort them in. We are also hoping to put some seating and video in registration (unscheduled) and that’s an unbadged area.) Additionally, having video here makes the giant area seem smaller. Spaces seeming too big makes people feel like they’re empty.
- The Rave/Ballroom/Dance room from last year is getting cut in half to prevent the giant empty-space barrier between the hallway and the dance floor and stage like we had last year. This should also help the room feel fuller.
- Pending discussion with the Karaoke head, we’re planning on putting Karaoke in the back room behind rave. The walls are actually surprisingly sound “proof” but there will be some noise bleed.
- Gaming is getting more tables and we worked on their layout so they won’t have to move around so much at-con.
- We are changing how the merchant area flows so that you can access the back hallway from the merchants room during the day. This should get people more used to going back there so that at night it’s not such a shock that there’s programming there.
- We’ve moved the cash bar to the main room. No one could find it in the vendor area and having it across from port of subs was a bad move. Having it in main should mean more business so that hopefully it won’t have to close this year.
- We will have the coloring table in the main area this year. Everyone please check it out when you happen to be walking by for inappropriate material (“dick checks”). If we all keep an eye on it, we should be able to keep it clean.
- We are having our 18+ special art exhibition again. They have a less awkward room this year so we won’t have the normals practically running into it off the escalator.
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Reno Pop Culture Con
Reno Pop Culture Con is the week before our con. They’ve been super nice to us and are helping advertise for us. We need to talk to them more. They’re also a great point of sadness for much of the staff since we’ve seen a vocal portion of the community praising them while simultaneously denigrating SNAFU Con. We’re hoping for the best and trying to build a good relationship with this new con, but talking is hard.
If we did a table, we don't know who's going to man the table because no one is going to have time for it. But if we could, having something like coupons on easy-to-hand-out business cards would probably go a long way.
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- Maybe talk with Sparno about approaching their sponsors for prizes/discounts/vouchers for VIP swag. Something that would drive business to the sponsors.
- We should approach Cinemark - they have Ghibli fest, and Princess Mononoke will be playing Nov 17. Maybe cross promotion with them advertising us and us advertising Ghibli Fest, since a lot of our attendees are locals. Giving them the attendee numbers for last year with demographic numbers might help. The conversation would depend on the limitations Corporation sets for local involvement.
- Kawaii Box sponsory things?
- Sponsoring community day for a Pokemon Go group.
- Need more community outreach. Someone should go out and talk to the various nerd groups.
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Theme
Theme is everyone's favorite topic and we always have a lot of fun discussion about all the things we could do. This year's theme is "Adventure."
We want to have a few guilds that impact the theme planning but we don't know if we're going to try competition (like we did for multiverse) or just have the different guilds "sponsor" quest lines. My personal favorite guild, though is "Guild not appearing at this con."
The quest shop for our theme is going in the Silver State foyer desk. It’s lockable and pretty central. Our theme team has lots of great prizes they’ve been acquiring at various sales.
Sam has made a QR code scavenger hunt to encourage people to visit certain areas around con (sponsored by the Explorers Guild, I think). We brainstormed some ideas on what to name certain areas. A couple fun examples: Singing Caves for Karaoke, Bizarre Bazaar for Merchants, and {Color} {Fantasy Animal} Tavern for Tabletop. Literally "{Color} {Fantasy Animal} Tavern" and we're thinking of making some sort of flipable sign with a bunch of colors and fantasy animals people can flip to change it throughout con.
We also brainstormed some other quests other guilds could do, like a face painting quest.
One potential idea we had for the theme is a light story line that picks up after multiverse where the multiverse broke the time line and made some sort of portal and there were a bunch of paranormal things that popped out and now we need to go on an adventure to fix it. The conclusion of that would be the portal closing up at closing ceremonies. (Oh no, you're all trapped here, guess you have to help tear down the con and load up the truck!)
We were considering decorating each location based on previous year’s themes but . . . that’s a lot of work and we do not have anyone willing to dedicate the amount of time it would take to that. So we’re going to do easier more general things. We’re honestly focusing more on things to do than decoration, but we don’t want to completely ignore decoration, either.
It's hard to summarize what was essentially a brainstorming session, so a lot of details have been left out. If you have ideas for the theme, please add them to the #theme channel.
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Potential fun things
No promises but . . .
We are considering contacting a different escape room after the one last year never showed up. At this point I’m not sure anyone wants to do what's needed to make it happen, though. BLFC had a decent one and we might be able to find out the specifics on theirs and see if using the same company is feasible.
Another idea is a bounce house. Hydra Comic Con had an amazing bounce house. If we did that, though, it would have to be a pretty serious place with clean product because a lot of them tend to be pretty disgusting. We’d need a dedicated person to enforce “no shoes” and whatnot, but we've seen it work.
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