2023 Meeting Notes

During 2023 we switched from people actively taking notes during the meeting to using transcription bots to do (honestly kind of terrible) transcriptions of the meetings and then feeding that into AI to come up with detailed notes for minimal effort. While ChatGPT was relied on heavily at first, due to the ability to understand huge text files and its more conversational tone, Claude.ai became the go-to note-taker as the year went on.

2022-11-05

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HdV10yhyfFbQOzCFh33-IM8V60W6b6-qlRhSiHAPXxk/

• Introductions
• Next SNAFU Con: Nov 16-19, 2023
• Theme: Folklore
• Going to continue the “Beach Episodes”
  • Community Outreach is the lifeblood of getting people invested in the con
  • Any event we are interest in, please reach out the them to see if we can get our name out there more
  • Trying for at least 1 a month
• Opportunity
  • We have TIME!
• Any dedicated staffer who has the time, please consider working a 4 hours shift at reg
• Loadout needs more volunteers.  
  • Organization plan for loadout so people know what to do and don’t have to sit around.
  • Sunday night AND Monday morning
  • Jared will give you a task during loadout.  He has a BIG logistics badge
  • Dept heads need to know what they need to do for load out
  • More coordination between eGaming and the rest of SNAFU Con for loadout
• Goals
  • Dragon wants to grow the con
    • 5k attendance
    • People act like we are a big con, even though we aren’t
  • Beta is taking a step back this year
  • Get more staff
    • “It’s time for new blood”
• Con Outreach
  • Do we have anyone who wants to be part of con outreach?
  • Do we have a way to reach out to non-geek spaces?
    • Reaching out to anime clubs at high schools
      • If you have any contacts for this, please put it in #staff
    • Call schools and see if we can speak to the Anime club advisors
    • Talk to school district activities people they have a phone number
    • North Valleys high school has an anime club
    • Raley’s has a board to advertise on; coffee shops may have some, too. Other boards around town?
  • There are parades we can try and get banners into to advertise with, Sparks hometown parade
    • Get cosplayers into a parade Ethans and Tobi’s job
• Music events for the end of the year?  
  • We need to pay for their license if we use it this year.
  • Soft no
  • Try and keep music events held off till January.
• Next meeting
  • Dept. heads updates
  • Put topic items in #meeting-agenda
    • Accessible to Dept. Heads
• Safety for next con
  • Get the general feeling of the staff about vaccination requirements and mask requirements
  • Do an opinion survey about requirements to make our best informed decision
  • Non-binding poll up to the owners
  • Make our decision and stick with it early on.
  • Announce soft guidelines and have a date where we publicly lock in the mask and vaccination guidelines
    • Early July?
• Survey for Staff
  • We are doing a survey about what departments need how many staff
  • Please fill out the survey if you are a Dept. Head or high staff
  • Survey is posed in #castle
  • Open up Chair Support positions
• Questions
  • Prize room?  Need staff to help with giving away prizes and running games.
  • Iron out the value of tickets and ensure everyone involved knows the values, put up poster boards or flyers with the value of tickets
    • Advertisement boards with rules
  • Theme needs its own dedicated staff instead of the art department.
  • Double check before con that we still have our events covered.
  • Thoughts on ARG and what to implement this year.
    • Cryptid hunting  “YES!” -Dragon

2023-02-04

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FuNbSEY8vOrr5A93Ryc2RU_KG4V4LAEoTZzO4ZxDv4g/

Departments

• Tabletop will be moving toward less structured campaigns. Also moving away from WotC due to recent issues.
• Registration needs to work out its to do list.*
  • The automation for registration code deployment probably still needs work.
  • There are a few big features we are hoping to get out this year.
  • Angie and Cassy are going to work on procedures. Vill and Dragon are interested in looking over them.
• Main stage brainstorming is needed.
• Merchants
  • We need contracts
  • Floor plan
  • Registration’s work is blocking this.
• Locke is planning chair support.
• We have the same convention space.
• Charity: Tasha seems to be interested.
• Jared from Logistics needs to work with the Sams to figure out inventory
  • Inventory generally works best in spring
  • Looking to the logistics schedule
  • https://wiki.snafucon.com/wiki/Logistics#Time_Table
  • Need to work with gaming/arcade to figure out what their plans and resources are
• Gaming doesn’t need more consoles.
• Arcade has a new truck. New scheduling with the truck will need consideration in the logistics schedule.

Itasha car exhibition

• Working with the itasha anime car people
• Dragon established contact.
• They were okay with doing it outside.
• We probably need to work with the venue on this.
• Maybe using the Silver State loading dock area?
• Maybe at the Adventure Center
• Probably the best spot would be in the parking lot closest
• Beta will be reaching out to former Kraken Con con runner for tips with these people

Merchandise

• The cups weren’t great before, but they were rushed.
• Dragon is interested in upgrading cups. Apparently he has a contact.
• The owners are interested in looking.
• We have a lot of old cup inventory.
• We sold about 120 cups in 2021 and have roughly 451 per QuickBooks.
  • The cups were $1.48598 /ea.
  • There’s a discrepancy between reg inventory and QuickBooks of exactly 200 cups. It is suspected that reg inventory has not counted closed boxes
• Stickering cups takes a while.
  • There is room for process improvement.
  • The holo stickers are difficult.
  • We should probably start with and maintain a buffer of cups.
  • But we can’t keep too many, for security and keeping cups between years inventory reasons.
• We give away stickers and buttons a lot. We could use those as merch.
• We could probably sell 2.25” buttons.
• The cups are Thermos-style cups with vinyl wraps. Prices: $5. Maybe sell for $15 with soda.

Outreach

• Roadblocks on high school clubs
• Investigating having a manga club at a library
  • Dragon talked with libraries
  • Like book club
  • Manga Library has a low bus factor.
  • Dragon is interested in buying more manga for the con.
  • The Wandering Library is interested in buying all the manga the con owns.
  • But reverting to pre Manga Library is not a disaster.
  • Compare with arcade, which we don’t have a fallback for
• Beach episodes
  • Dragon is planning a beach episode for board games near end of Feb
  • We’re looking for more opportunities.
  • Art episodes had good times previously. Art department is a little tired.
  • Art has issues with venues. But the new Sparks location of Coffee ‘n’ Comics seems like it would be good.
  • School spring breaks are coming up in March
• Battletech?
  • Jared will talk with Dragon and other people he knows.
  • Dragon thinks Coffee ‘n’ Comics will be a good venue
  • Jared and Dragon will talk on Feb 2.
• Board game day: Feb 25, 5 PM at Kobold’s Keep
• We should try to get more people for meetings earlier.
  • This could help with getting departments up and running sooner.
  • However, Discord has limits on voice rooms after ending pandemic protocols.
  • Idea: have a survey to collect ideas for agendas.
• Fighting game tournament
  • Gaming department is interested. Timing needs working out.
  • DJ will be looking into their schedule. Maybe in March?
• Omega is talking with a North Valleys high school club and has some contact info.

Misc

• Task management to keep people on task
  • Ami likes Asana, but it’s expensive.
  • Bitrix, which we already have, does most of these things, but doesn’t have a great UX.
  • Beta is looking to replace Bitrix, but doesn’t have a great timeline.
  • Ami likes the timeline view of Asana
  • Pinging people, keeping people on task
  • Ami will get screenshots to Beta for UI ideas/what to look for in a task manager
• Work out COVID restrictions for floor plan
  • Distancing limited artist alley
  • Artist alley thinks that the spacing could be closer
  • We should look at other cons.
  • SacAnime provides 8x10 space with 6’ tables, but they have a really big space.
  • We want to balance various concerns: safety, artist happiness, community friendliness
  • Artists Alley is cool with removing spacing with mask + vax
• Please reach out to Beta if there’s a procedure that needs writing up.
• BLFC restructured people to coordinate communications with three superdepartments.
• Maybe facilitate communications by making it clear who does what?
  • Org charts?
  • "My emergency is" and who to talk to or how to handle it in a badge sized/punched card

2023-03-03

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13vnAvm30xM0ffbp3i1S6HD4QgtMMJDe4vneOJN719AY/

Masks and Vaccines requirements need to be set in stone before Con registration details go out.  Con heads and chairs need to have a meeting about this and take staff input.

Logistics need to catalog everything in storage and need to Poll for Saturday or Sunday to see who is available and when.

Con folk tale book.  Either a QR code game for the spirit of competition or to take photos to make the story of the con.

• Check with Ethans Photography about Reno city and Nevada State business license.
• Local Cosplay facebook group "Reno Cosplay"  might be available for con folk tale book.
• Folk tale Trading cards or QR codes as a possible idea for a con game.
• The cost of trading cards may be very cost prohibitive.  We may be able to do photo gloss sheets and paper guillotine them.

Post the 2021 cosplay images to facebook in groups to help generate hype for the con.

• 2021 cosplay photo's.  Some may need to be edited.
• Dragon wants to know if we use amature photographers.  They are free and have their own equipment.  If anybody wants to volunteer who knows how to shoot in .RAW and can follow a schedule.  Need to be able to give .RAW a copy of EVERY photo to the con for records.  Double check photographers know what .RAW is; do not take their word for it at face value.

Department heads need to give dragon an outline for what they need for con by next monthly meeting.

• What steps they need to do for their department to be ready at con by November 16th.
• Heads have a departmental meeting with your people.  Brainstorm, Find more things to do, Get more people to help at con.  Get your department on the same page going forward into the con.

Street fighter 6 release launch party event for SNAFU.  Ran by Biggest little fight club

Make more of an effort to talk in the Public parts of the discord so attendee's fee more welcomed and they know the staff better.

Make people aware that SNAFU con is happening

• Flyers need editing we need an editor
• Flyers need the date, Logo, and the various events, Front should be pretty with dates and basic con info back needs more detailed information
• Give Ethanice the materials to make the flyers

2023-04-01

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uazifRO9oNa1tu2S9CakaDM15pwrH8XwFNfd-Squ-9c/

• We forgot to remind everyone about the meeting.
• Dragon’s doing 1:1s for per department goals with heads later.
• Vaccines up to date for all attendees and staff.
• N95/KN95s needed for customer-facing staff and merchants while they’re selling.
• Cloth masks required for performers.
• Medical exemptions for vaccines will require N95/KN95s masks at con.
• We will have a good number of KN95s for staff.
• Performers can use cloth masks and face shields.
• Getting theme ideas is cool.
• Working documentation
• Masks will be strongly encouraged for most attendees.
• Beach episode ideas
• Truck-kun April Fools’ Day joke
• Incorporate masks into the theme?
  • Like having color masks for factions
  • That seems tricky to make it good
• Con merch
  • Fabric masks
  • Cups
  • Wearing cloth masks over N95s as a sign
• We’re not going to guarantee that the masks we’re getting for staff are comfy.
• The faction fight game is cool.
  • The QR code game is cool.
  • Wearing buttons is cool
• Folklore blurbs + art for social media
  • Beta made some arts for social media.
    • Maybe could use bigger font
  • Are using screenshots from Jim Henson sufficiently transformative?
    • Probably not
• Post theme ideas in #theme on Discord.

Meeting proper ended here

• Folklore
  • Jersey devil
  • Beast of Gevaudan
  • Legend where village where goat prints were on villagers roofs
• Folklore trading cards
• What if we had staff members work as storytellers?
  • Requires someone to own it at con
• Use public domain art for social media memes?
  • A lot of classic art
  • Might requiring additional
• Japanese folklore
• Closing up meeting with folklore brainstorming
• Put folkloric costumes on old mascots
• Get a folklore book and do live readings on main stage. Thomas could do it.
• Bring in expert speakers would be cool
• Should look into local folklore
• Posters posted around con with folklore stories on them