Well, we had dates, we had a hotel, we had Staff – now we were getting into the nitty gritty. I needed people to take care of things that I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do myself. First off, I needed someone who actually cared about the kind of events that take place at a con, I needed someone with some understanding of computers to get me a working registration and someone to do PR. I found people to do all these things, along with a liason with several Dealers, and a Video person…and on and on. These were all things that had to get started right off, or we’d never get anywhere.I figured we’d worry about guests a little later.

To determine what kind of Staff I needed, I looked at existing con hierarchies and made some decisions based upon reasonable expectation of our size, the functions I needed taken care of and what I could and could not reasonably expect to do myself.

When I look at the way a con functions on the actual weekend it happens, it breaks down into these basic functions:
Guests
Videos
Entertainment
Panels and Workshops
Registration
Dealer’s Room
Security/Safety
Volunteers

This list doesn’t include *alot* of what goes on behind the curtain, most especially PR, but these are what most congoers see as being “the con.” Public Relations is responsible for everbody and their cousin hearing about the con… frequently. LOL But for me, Entertainment was the key. Almost everything that comes under Entertainment are things that annoy me to pieces…cosplay, the dance, games, contests, etc. NONE of these hold an ounce of interest for me, so it was crucial that I find someone insane enough to take this on. I think I found someone more than insane enough and I can safely say that our Entertainment program rocks. LOL But this summer, as we pounded out descriptions and rules, it was alot of work – and there’s more to do.

Remember the motto – “everyone wants to help, but no one wants to help”? Welcome to PR. PR is a nightmare all on it’s own. It’s about cold-emailing and calling a gazillion people until one in a hundred gets back to you. And people freeze up and disappear before they will admit to being as scared of a “yes” as a “no.” So PR is what I like to call the “Home of the 100% turnover.” LOL

Dealers are great people, they really are. They are also overworked, understaffed and flaky as hell. This is another fear-inspiring committee. Who wants to have to play phone tag with an elusive dealer? Answer – no one.

And so it goes…committee after committee, we’re dealing with volunteers who’d like to help, as long as it means not being on deadline, or having to prove anything, or follow up on anything, or answer emails, etc. It’s not easy stuff, and it’s the stuff most people don’t think about when they think about building a con. For instance – Registration…I don’t build databases – do you? Do you know someone who can build a database with a searchable archive, that’s got adequate security? Do you think you could find someone to do that in about three months…for nothing? LOL You see what I mean.

What was I doing all this time? Promotion, promotion and more promotion. I set up a party at a lesbian bar in NYC, promoted it out the wazoo, and hoped for the best. Thankfully, the best happened. A Japanese woman came to the party and talked with us for a while. it turns out that she was a well-known Japanese lesbian mangaka – would it be alright if she came to the con? Not surprisingly, I was hornswoggled at this. *Of course* we’d love to have her! And, no kidding, that’s how we have one of our two Guests of Honor – she asked us if she could come.

All this time, up in Canada, Kathryn Williams was busting her hump promoting us too. Since Kat’s work is so relevant to us, we figured that she’d make a terrific addition as a GoH, not to mention the fact that she’s a powerhouse for Yuricon promotion. So there was GoH number two. The guests seemed to be taking care of themselves. :-)

Then con season hit. Almost every con I knew of had at least a Yaoi panel. I wrote to several asking if we could make it a Yaoi/Yuri panel, or give Yuri a panel of it’s own. Since, for many reasons, good panelists and moderators are very hard to find, I received alot of positive responses and started planning my traveling schedule for the Summer. In the meantime, we were promoting our NYC events and working to build our Committees.

I ended up with a schedule that looked something like this:

Con in Canada, week off, trip with friends, week off, con on West Coast, week off, film festival on West Coast, week off, host Guest and friend to local con, week off, con in Baltimore, three weeks off, local con. And that didn’t include the random other cons not during the “official” con season, or the festival in Florida, or my day job, or the night classes I teach. Or, just to be pissy, my writing.

It was pretty fun, actually, but I wouldn’t want to do it too often. I ran no less than a dozen panels, moderated some Guest of Honor Panels, participated in a dozen more, ran two workshops and talked to about a zillion vendors, guests and other con personel. I have to say that nearly every single person I met working for every other con was terrific. There is some serious talent and zeal out there in con land. If you haven’t offered to help out your local con, you really should – they are decent folks and always need the help.

And while I was doing all that, my Committees were reinventing the wheel and trying to figure out how to handle things like registration databases, running a live event, organize a Security team. LOL

Now, at the end of all that promotion, I’ve gotten alot of feedback praising my panels and speaking. (And one VERY long, diseased negative feedback.) I thought I’d offer my insight into what makes a good panel:

1) Moderators should moderate – you are not there to function as a doorstop. Come to the panel with several prepared questions. Don’t ask the guests to introduce themselves and then just say “go ahead and keep talking.” Coming up with ideas is *your* job – not theirs. I don’t know when the doorstop moderation technique became the standard, but it doesn’t work and makes for a sucky panel.

2) Instruct the audience, politely, that you are willing to entertain *questions,* not comments, rants or complaints. The panel is about the panelists opinions, based on their experience and expertise – not a time for some audience member to discuss the crappy state of fanfic and how different it was when they created fanfic in 4 BC. It’s boring and not fair to people who actually *do* have questions.

3) Direct questions to participants who are being overwhelmed by other panelists. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible when the moderator is the loudest person in the room. (She says sheepishly.) But it’s good to make sure that everyone gets a say. I usually direct questions to each panelist in turn, so everyone gets to talk and no one feels left out or overwhelmed.

That’s it, really. Just remember it’s supposed to be fun for everyone, panelists and audience. LOL

Next time: Ways to lose money

So, now that I had decided that ALC would be “real” in the sense that it would become an actual event where people would meet face to face, I needed three things: 1) dates; 2) a hotel and; 3) staff. I put a general call out to the mailing list, recruited a few folks I knew personally and hit the boards running.

I started with the Hotel part of the equation. If I couldn’t get that, then there was no point in going further, really. I did a little market research and realized that basically, either people will come or they won’t, so I picked hotels close to where I wanted to be. After some preliminary investigation, I chose the hotel that Shoujocon had used in its first year. There are a variety of good reasons why this hotel is a good choice – primarily, location. They were amenable and we took out first step forward.

Now we had 1 and 2 – dates and place, but we needed staff.

Let me tell you right now that *staff* is the biggest issue you will run into if you want to run an event. My motto is “Everyone wants to help, but no one wants to do work.” That’s the basic truth. Everyone thinks it will be “fun” to run an event, get a title, a free t-shirt and their name in the credits. What most people don’t realize is that between here and there, there’s a ton of stupid things to do that have to get done – and done right – or the con sucks.

I am very lucky. My staff is primarily made up of really nutty people who, like myself, are pretty tired of cons and aren’t planning on having any fun during this one – this frees us up from the illusion that Yuricon will be “fun” for us -and means we can focus on the work. That doesn’t mean we don’t all flake out, or have disappearing spells or nervous breakdowns along the way, but it does mean that we take less time to cull our staff of people who don’t hold up under the pressure. Being Staff is not like being a Volunteer, being Staff is taking on a job that will actually require follow-up and organizational skills. Here’s a few thoughts for those of you who think you want to be on Staff:

Staff Rule #1

Don’t mind rejection.

Seriously. Most people are *terrified* of being rejected, and fans in any fandom are moreso, because they start off a little fettered, socially.

But it’s okay, really. So, you send an email to a person you’ve never heard of asking for something. They don’t answer you. You mail again. They don’t answer. You stop emailing them. Or, they say no, you thank them, express your desire to work with them one day and move on. *Don’t* take it all personally! Just send the damn emails. ^_^

Rule #2

Don’t disappear. If you get overwhelmed, by life, or exams, or a personal thing…don’t just not answer emails. Take 5 seconds, tap out a “sorry, I can’t do this” when you *first* realize that you can’t do this. Don’t wait until you’ve annoyed your Committee Chair, pissed the rest of the folks who are doing the work off, and had everyone lose faith in you. There’s no reason to act that way. A polite note, not a three page long rant with personal details, gets the point across just fine and saves your dignity.

Which brings us to the Corollary to Rule #2 – Sign up for your staff mailing list with an email you actually check. When you use an email that you never check, it means that you are essentially ignoring this list. This can cause pointless confusion. Don’t like how much mail you’re getting? Well, that’s the price of offering to help. Even if it seems like a little chitchatty and no work, it’s important that you can be reached when other Staff need you. Or you might as well not have signed up.

Rule #3

Ask questions!!

When you first volunteer to do something, there is an excellent chance that you have no idea what you’re doing. There is also a good chance that your Committee Chair and possibly the entire Organizing Comittee also has no idea. So, if someone says, “email ADV and ask for permission to show therse three titles,” and you don’t know what that means, or how to go about it…ask. Please don’t put off doing it, then hide and not answer emails. Someone, somewhere, was relying on you to do your bit. Just ask what they mean, or how to find the emails to mail or what to do. Maybe all of you don’t know what’s going on and the committee chair has to clarify – or learn. Just ask and find out.

***

Anyway, back to ALC. We started to pull together a basic staff and a few committee chairs and then it was time to admit that if this was going to be real, we were going to have to act like it was. :-) My original intent was to use the name Yuricon for the convention, and use ALC as the organization behind it. One weekend our mailing list crashed and I recreated it with the new name. And so we headed into 2002 as Yuricon, a celebration of shoujoai and yuri in anime and manga.

Next time: On the road

Since my public appearances are over for the year, I thought I’d invite you into the back stage area of Yuricon, so you can see just what kinds of nonsense go into making something like this work.

We’ll begin your tour with a Brief History of Yuricon– it’s a nice little bitchy story, you’ll like it.

The story begins in 2000, when I came out of a 15-year long avoidance of all things “fannish” after a horrific sci-fi convention experience. The guests were cool, but the the fans were just appalling and I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. I made an interim skirmish into a different fandom and found the same thing. (In retrospect, I realize now that these two conventions were run by the same organization and that may have had *something* to do with it…) I went, under duress, to Otakon 2000 and found it to be rather less horrible than I supposed. Anime fans were, for some reason, less heinous than other fans as a whole.

In 2001, I volunteered to work Security for a convention. (The con will remain nameless, obviously. Let me state for the record that I have a very good relationship now with this con and am pleased to help them out whenever I can.) The con went well, I had fun, and at the end I was asked to be on the organizing committee. When the Con Chair asked what we all wanted to see more of, I, jokingly but typically, replied “more girl/girl stuff.” To my surprise, this comment was met with a reaction that I couldn’t help but perceive as mild homophobia. (Let me digress for a second – I am SO the last person in the world to scream “bigot!” at anyone. In my life I’ve never experienced more than very mild prejudice and frankly, I figure most of that is my problem, not the other person’s. I can deal with it. This surprised me because of the context – not the content.) Anyway, after a short, pointless discussion about the potential audience for shoujoai at the con, I decided I was beating my head against the wall.

I hadn’t expected that kid of reaction, really, with the obsession about boy/boy stuff that was just beginning to peak here in the West, and was embraced by this particular con…but I’m not the kind of person to argue a lost cause – I just go off and do what I want, anyway. In this case, I built a website. I called it AniLesboCon after the convention for anime lesbians that Juri from Utena was running in Dreiser’s hysterical Scenes From an Elevator spamfic. I asked her if I could use the name, she said yes and we were off!

At first, I genuinely assumed that this would remain an online or “virtual” con. I built the website with an eye to creating a community online, rather than a real event, because, as I saw it, this was just me being pissy anyway – how many other people would be interested? I ran a few contests, built a mailing list, started “The List” and polls, to give the site a little interaction with the fans. And I promoted it. Everywhere I could find. People either found it condescendingly amusing or were afraid of it, but the folks that joined up thought it hysterical – and those were the people I wanted. To my amazement, a bunch of other disenfranchised g/l/b/t anime fans joined the list, all excited about a place where they were welcome and not just a fringe part of the fringe. And I realized that I had a great vehicle here – something that could really make a difference to a few people. I’m not interested in changing the world – but if I do, then fine. :-)

ALC remained “virtual” for about 6 months, when I received an email from a very enthusiastic Kathryn Williams, a shoujoai mangaka from Toronto. She basically said, “let’s make it real” and, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a good reason to not try. So that was that. ALC was going to grow up and become a “real” convention.

My little fit of pique was growing up…

Next time: Making it “real”