C14 Postmortem

This page is for the C14 committee to write a postmortem of their experience.

C14 Postmortem

It's over... done... finished... the shark has been jumped (sort of...) and everyone has gone home! Now that we've had few days to relax and get back into the grind of normal life, it's time to reflect on everything that happened, both good and bad, in the whole process of organizing Convergence 14.

This page has been created for the purpose of documenting both the good and bad that we dealt with in putting together C14. The idea behind this is to create a page where future Convergence committees can look to see what worked well for us, as well as what didn't work so well. This should help them to avoid any problems that we came across, and help to create progressively better and better gatherings in the years to come!

Spud 04:26, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Theme

There was beer involved. Huge surprise, that.

In the wake of the "wrong direction" we (and others) felt Cx had taken with C11, 12 & 13, it was put forth that "Convergence has jumped the shark." Xany then suggested we do a snarky bid with that as the theme. Embellishing upon this, TheOneBob offered to don the alter ego of TheOneFonz and perform the jump. [Editor's Note: Better him than me, photographic proof to follow].

In the main, this all fit well as a "back to basics" / Kegger Contingent-style bid, eschewing the Gothapalooza aspect that had tainted the previous couple of iterations. --Rafe 18:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Venues

Hotel - Hyatt Regency Downtown Tampa

The Hyatt was the main storage facility for all the freaks for the weekend, as well as the venue for Saturday night's events. Their staff was outstanding (this point simply cannot be emphasized enough from a planning and execution standpoint); guest relations issues, primarily due to elevator maintenance and occasional room-key demagnetization being met with less-than-perfect customer service were present, but seem to be of the "very minor" sort. Despite sharing space with a very large professional body-building competition, there were no real issues from the organizational side of things that I could see.

Whether I needed to clear up a misunderstanding about our space needs or just had to have an extra extension cord, the staff at the Hyatt, after going out of their way to give me their business cards, contact info, and locations where I could find them if need be, their answer to pretty much every request made of them was invariably, "Sure, give me about five minutes." This, more than anything else, is something future committees should strive for - an excellent working relationship with the hotel and venue, especially when that staff is competent and professional throughout. Anecdotal evidence suggests that even potential trouble spots were met with good-natured equanimity on the part of the Hyatt's staff - a bottle of absinthe was taken out to the pool area, and rather than insist it be gotten rid of, the security agent came back with a handful of plastic cups, so that Cx-style shenanigans could continue while still complying with the hotel's policy.

Venue - The Cuban Club Friday night: fashion show / Voltaire concert / Skarey-oke / DJs

Had undergone extensive renovations in the year leading up to C14, and wasn't completely finished. Easygoing to work with, but not on a par with the Hyatt or Convention Center in terms of professionalism or execution. Some details were lost in translation or difficult to get answered, or left until the last moment. When dealing with a smaller, private venue as opposed to a large, corporate entity, organizers need to be more pro-active and may need to verge on "nagging" to make sure everything that is supposed to happen does so.

Venue - Tampa Convention Center Saturday Night: Bands & DJs

This was a relatively late venue selection due to persistent turmoil and unresponsiveness from other, more freak-friendly options that ultimately didn't pan out, and as a consequence, somewhat expensive and inflexible. Employed a rather weird ticketing system for bar service (I wasn't drinking, so someone who was will have to speak to how this worked in execution), as well as had an eleventh-hour (but laughably low - $500 per bar) sales guarantee that they had to present to us.

Professional to deal with, though obviously accustomed to much larger and more organized/structured events than Cx. Didn't go out of the way to make us feel like amateurs, but I sure did merely by comparison. This differs from the "handshake deal" feel of working with the Hyatt and Cuban Club, but is understandable, as they are a large municipal facility.

In retrospect, having both Saturday and Sunday at the Hyatt might not have been a bad idea, contractual obligations notwithstanding, but that carried too strong a whiff of Goth*Con's modus operandi for us to pursue, even without the Convention Center's binding contract. --Rafe 18:08, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Volunteers

We had a transition occur in the Volunteer Coordinator (VC) position about two months prior to the gathering. Anastasia found that she would not be able to attend C14, so I (Spud) stepped up from being her assistant to take over the role of VC. Having managed both security and volunteer staffs at large conventions and gatherings in the past, I thought I could take this on with little worry. That didn't prove to be the case, and while (hopefully) everything appeared to most attendees to have gone smoothly, there were definitely some things that could have been done better in managing the volunteer staff!

Assistant Volunteer Coordinator

In taking over the role of VC, my role as the Assistant was no longer filled. This is something I definitely regret, as there are times where I needed to be in two places at once, or simply was too overwhelmed with other issues and couldn't get timely messages sent out to people. The extra assistance can make all the difference in the world when it comes to keeping everyone "in the loop" and stress levels to a minimum. I definitely suggest that anyone acting as VC for a future Convergence should make certain that they have an Assistant Volunteer Coordinator as well.

Getting the Volunteers on-board

The call for volunteers really only went out about a month before the C14 event was scheduled to begin. In hindsight, we should have started posting out calls for volunteers at least three months in advance. This would have given a lot more time to make sure that we had enough volunteers to work with us, and allowed for more time to work up appropriate schedules for all of the volunteer staff. We posted out to a.g. and the convergence LJ communities. I think these were the best and most appropriate forums for this, as it kept most everything internal and within the a.g. family.

Know how many Volunteers you need!

Once our schedule for C14 events was really set in stone, I began to realize that I had nowhere near enough volunteers to be able to support all the jobs we needed them to assist with. We did manage to keep most everything covered well in the end, though some people ended up working for several hours more through the weekend than I would have preferred. The following outline is what we found to have worked well in figuring out how many volunteers are needed:

The following should be figured as a minimum of two (2) volunteers per three hour shift

• Badge pickup
• Badge Purchase and Sponsored Event purchases
• Vendor sign-in and Badge Pickup
• Convergence Merchandise sales

As you can see, that comes to eight (8) people covering four separate tables for only three hours. Our Meet-and-Greet ran from 12pm to 6pm on Friday, and I didn't have sixteen (16) people to cover six hours of time. A portion of the volunteer staff had not even arrived at the hotel by that point. Luckily, committee members and staff joined in to assist, and everything worked out pretty well.

The point to consider here is that with just the Meet and Greet, we could easily have used sixteen volunteers for three hours each. Volunteers are there because they want to help, but they also want to be able to enjoy the weekend that they paid to attend.