Organizing Cons

[kelsokid18]

What does it truly take to organize a con?  Things like budgeting, committee organization, how to get speakers, bartering with the location(s), etc. etc. To Anybody who has been a veteran of cons or has worked at one, what are the behind the scenes usually like, etc. etc.

[Saint]

Depends on what kind of con and how many people are attending it.  At a con like Dragon Con, where there's 60,000 people attending, you need about a thousand staff members.  For a basic con just starting out, you'll need at least 25 staff members.

First thing you shold probably do is call around to hotels where you want the con and ask about rates for renting some space for 'seminars' or something like that.  You will probably need smaller rooms starting out, max capacity around 65-100, and depending on the demographic you should guess at how many people will show up. 



--Saint

[kelsokid18]

Okay,  I've been calling and talking to locations around the 360 here.  The Red Lion Hotel in Kelso, WA seems cool with the idea, but the real big fish is the Vancouver, Washington Hilton Tower.  When I went to talk to the Catering Coordinator at Hilton, they offered me drinks and hors d'ouvers just to keep me talking to them.

[Raptor]

hotels can run quite pricy...

[rbcp]

Okay,  I've been calling and talking to locations around the 360 here.  The Red Lion Hotel in Kelso, WA seems cool with the idea, but the real big fish is the Vancouver, Washington Hilton Tower.  When I went to talk to the Catering Coordinator at Hilton, they offered me drinks and hors d'ouvers just to keep me talking to them.

What kind of prices are they giving you?  And what kind of con are you planning to run?

[kelsokid18]

Well, the Hilton was giving me all kinds of outrageous numbers that would require me to gouge out the prices, and for this to work, I'd rather establish a customer base, before I take hundreds of dollars.  The Kelso Red Lion was slightly more helpful, they were giving me prices in the hundreds of dollars per day, while the Hilton asked me for $16,000 for their biggest room.  I am looking to have your average, run-of-the-mill Hacker/Phreaker con, namely because of the lack of such activities around here.  I'm not even sure if there is a scene around the 360, so whatever planning I have done may be for nothing.

[rbcp]

One of the Phreaknics I went to was in some seedy motel in a bad neighborhood.  There was one small conference room for speakers and an even tinier area for people to sell hackerish stuff.  At that time their con was free.  I doubt they paid too much for that place.  Maybe you should look into crappy little hotels instead of major chains.

Back when Rubicon was still around, I was always trying to talk RijilV into trying a very unconventional way of having a convention.  It went something like this - you lease a large building to open up a business in.  Like maybe a downtown storefront.  You pay your deposit and your first month's rent and you convert all the space into convention space.  Make sure it's within walking distance of a large hotel so everyone will have a place to stay.  You could divide your large building into a few different rooms for speakers and vendor tables by just throwing up some 12 foot high dividing walls.

Another part of my idea was hiring a homeless man to sign all the paperwork for the con.  You could probably just offer to give him booze all weekend and he'd do it.  That way, any damages to anything would be his problem.  And breaking the store's lease would too.  He'd also be responsible for all the underage drinking.

Just a few thoughts.  Hey, Dark Tangent lives in Washington.  Maybe he'll go to your con!

[kelsokid18]

Thanks, RBCP.  I will mull some of this over and come up with a plan of attack.  In the meantime, what else can I do to add to the plan?

[linear]

Thanks, RBCP.  I will mull some of this over and come up with a plan of attack.  In the meantime, what else can I do to add to the plan?

misleading advertisements on anime forums that make it out to be an anime/cosplay con. guranteed turnout.

[CountyKid]

As shown by the technical difficulty shown in my (single handedly) organizing CountyKidCon (or CKC), having your own conference is no joking matter, a responsibility taken on only by those with the most dedicated hearts and minds. Mere mortals can rarely reach this feat. I am one of the chosen few with my conference, CKC. CKC-06 was excellent, with turnout exceeding even my expectations. CKC was (and always will be) a invatation only event. But remember, dreams come true. Someday, maybe you will be invited to CKC.

   Although probably not. Anyway, don't have your own con. Hacker cons need more people to show up at them, not to further spread themselves thin. Don't be a jerk. Attend either Defcon, HOPE, or CKC. The three greatest conferences of all time.

[kelsokid18]

As shown by the technical difficulty shown in my (single handedly) organizing CountyKidCon (or CKC), having your own conference is no joking matter, a responsibility taken on only by those with the most dedicated hearts and minds. Mere mortals can rarely reach this feat. I am one of the chosen few with my conference, CKC. CKC-06 was excellent, with turnout exceeding even my expectations. CKC was (and always will be) a invatation only event. But remember, dreams come true. Someday, maybe you will be invited to CKC.

   Although probably not. Anyway, don't have your own con. Hacker cons need more people to show up at them, not to further spread themselves thin. Don't be a jerk. Attend either Defcon, HOPE, or CKC. The three greatest conferences of all time.

Well, some of us don't have the kind of cash just laying around to throw at going to DefCon or HOPE, and some of us don't have parents who will just throw money at us, nor do some of us still live in their basements.  All I'm saying is that there needs to be more localized cons, and less of these corporate juggernaut kinds of things where the airlines get your money to go and come back, the hotel gets your money to sleep there, and the con itself can take a sizable amount of cash from you.  Maybe I'm being selfish here, or trying to get something for nothing, but it does seem to me that cons are taking a corporate turn for the worse.

[CountyKid]

But, of course.


   Well in that case, try organizing a local meeting at a coffee shop. Or go to 2600 or something. Start small. Hitler did.....

[Zoro]

Best advice I could give, check out backpackit.com, it helps with the project management side of the thing, and make a list of shit and just check it off. Give people tasks and check back on it every couple of days.  Define the budget, divide the work, sit back and delegate. And meet once a week.

See what thinkgeek has to say about meetings..
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/posters/5cd9/

[Saint]

One of the Phreaknics I went to was in some seedy motel in a bad neighborhood.  There was one small conference room for speakers and an even tinier area for people to sell hackerish stuff.  At that time their con was free.  I doubt they paid too much for that place.  Maybe you should look into crappy little hotels instead of major chains.

Back when Rubicon was still around, I was always trying to talk RijilV into trying a very unconventional way of having a convention.  It went something like this - you lease a large building to open up a business in.  Like maybe a downtown storefront.  You pay your deposit and your first month's rent and you convert all the space into convention space.  Make sure it's within walking distance of a large hotel so everyone will have a place to stay.  You could divide your large building into a few different rooms for speakers and vendor tables by just throwing up some 12 foot high dividing walls.

Another part of my idea was hiring a homeless man to sign all the paperwork for the con.  You could probably just offer to give him booze all weekend and he'd do it.  That way, any damages to anything would be his problem.  And breaking the store's lease would too.  He'd also be responsible for all the underage drinking.

Just a few thoughts.  Hey, Dark Tangent lives in Washington.  Maybe he'll go to your con!

That is a great idea, I never thought of that!

But yeah the hilton is crazy expensive.  You'd be looking at a best western that has seminar space.  Or if you could swing renting a floor of a hotel with huge rooms, but not sure how well that'd work out (just thinking out loud).

Well, some of us don't have the kind of cash just laying around to throw at going to DefCon or HOPE, and some of us don't have parents who will just throw money at us, nor do some of us still live in their basements.  All I'm saying is that there needs to be more localized cons, and less of these corporate juggernaut kinds of things where the airlines get your money to go and come back, the hotel gets your money to sleep there, and the con itself can take a sizable amount of cash from you.  Maybe I'm being selfish here, or trying to get something for nothing, but it does seem to me that cons are taking a corporate turn for the worse.

I don't think you're being selfish at all, if there were a local con I'd go to it (being in SF, it's surprising that there's not one).  I do think that a lot of cons are getting huge and pretty much eliminating the possibility of smaller cons coming up.  The same thing is happening with anime cons.  There used to be tons of anime cons in georgia and florida, but since some of the larger cons added anime tracks more people go to those because there's more overall to do.  I think it's the same reason with defcon, more stuff to do so competition feels quashed without ever getting off the ground.

The big thing is that you need something that makes your con unique, something that it offers (besides better interaction) that you can't get from defcon.  Once you have that you're set.

[kelsokid18]

Duly Noted, Saint, Thank You.