I have a bit of a weird sense of humor so I thought it would be funny to post one that was “Why Does Posting the Guests Take So Long” and make the entire text of it “Because Nathan’s in charge of it.”

. . .

It would be mean and mostly untrue because booking guests is quite a bit more complicated than that . . . but I wanted to at least relay that I thought that would be funny.

This post is about everything involved with booking guests.

Here are the basic steps:
1. Determine a budget for the guests.
2. Choose guests.
3. Hammer out terms with each guest.
4. Write up contracts based on the agreed upon terms.
5. Send contracts to guests.
6. Receive contracts and gather info from guests.
7. Post info on site about guests.
8. Deal with adding additional guests.
9. Buy flights, write checks, and otherwise organize things we need for guests.
10. Schedule panels with (or for) guests.
11. Book hotel rooms for any guests that need them.

Step 1. The Budget
This is 99% me. The longer I take at this, the longer it takes Nathan to start his bit. My process is to look at last year’s budget, how close we hit (or missed) the budget, and stare at the company income statement for a month or so.

My final determination is based on last year’s numbers, our income/loss for last year, attendance, and projections. I allocate as large of a budget as I feel comfortable with and I do attempt to grow it from previous years.
Once I have a number I’m comfortable with, I run it past Nathan and usually get an okay with little dickering.

Step 2. Determine the Guests
This is about 95% Nathan’s responsibility. I have almost no input on it and, honestly, I don’t really care much. Even at other cons I rarely go to guest panels, and when I do, it’s because they’re usually funny, or generally entertaining, but not because I care at all about the name. I’ve never been very “star-struck.” People are people and I just don’t care. Voice actors are actors, and actors are usually hams, and therefore will be entertaining to watch. shrug I do avoid attending anything that will pack the room, though. I like the early morning VA panels because they’re usually mostly empty and there are fewer gushing fans. Anyway . . .

Nathan usually takes quite a while on the decision once we have a number. He usually wants at least one larger-name guest, and we also have our “regulars” because they’re relatively inexpensive, local, and most importantly we like them. So I would assume he pushes and pulls numbers around to get the optimal guest per dollar . . . or something. That’s what I’d do. Although as far as I know he puts up guests on a dart board and throws darts blindfolded to choose. Not my thing. I don’t care what the process is, the point is, he figures it out, and so far he’s done a pretty good job of using the budget dollars without going over.

I also know Warky assists in the process because he knows everyone and can get us pretty good discounts on guests. Some of our guests have come on a reduced or no appearance fee because of Warky.

And yes, we have some “free guests” but very, very few of them are actually free. Most of the time, “free” just means no appearance fee. We often have to provide transport and hotel, and/or other expenses. Each dollar counts and we do favor the ones closer to $0 at this point. We just aren’t big enough to spend a lot of money.

Step 3. Hammering down terms
This is also mostly Nathan. I sometimes give input but there isn’t usually a lot of debate. It’s primarily the guest saying “I want this” and we either give it, or find another guest. After we say we’ll do what they want, we set things like the maximum we’ll pay for a flight based on current rates, the minimum panels they will be doing, and days they’re arriving and leaving. Things like that. I’d love to say it’s some high-stakes negotiation . . . but it’s not.

Step 4, 5, and 6. Contracting the Guest
In 2010 we had a simple contract which was basically, you get x, y, z, and we’re getting a, b, and c. We used it in 2011, as well and it became evident we needed more. The varying frustrations included guests bickering in front of attendees, guests not getting me flight information in a timely manner and thus costing the con more money in higher flight fees, and other petty things that just caused me (and several other staff members) a lot more headache than necessary.

In 2012 I got upset and wrote about 3 pages of “contract” (rant) in using my phone on about 3-5 days of 10-minute breaks from work. Some tech problems happened not worth writing about, but eventually we got that rant into a much calmer professional template contract. We used that template for 2012 and this year we modified it further and we are using it for 2013. The template includes things such as the maximum we will reimburse for anything, the days we’re getting a hotel for and the terms of the hotel (such as we are paying the taxes and normal hotel fees, but we are not paying for gratuity, room service, or damage to the room), and a clause on appropriate behavior and consequences for inappropriate behavior.

Part of the contract process is to take all the terms which were hammered out and apply them to the contract template. It takes like 1-2 hours to do all the guests. This year Llama did them with Nathan and I had very little to do with it beyond the initial edits on the contract template. Once they’re all “done” they go back to me for final edits and final approval. When I’ve gone through them I send it all back to Llama and he turns them into signable PDFs and sends them to all the guests.

Some guests sign them and send them back immediately with any requested information. Many of the guests have already sent us their headshots and bios so we only need whatever info is needed to register them and/or book their possible travel. . . . Some guests take more poking. In the past we’ve had guests take months to return contracts.

This year is the first year we haven’t announced the guests pre-contract, which is a lot of why it’s taking so long. As we receive contracts back we often don’t get all the info we need so there are further emails to get the last pieces of information. We need legal names for any checks we’re cutting, birth dates for registration and flights, etc.

This is also when the agent tends to step in and talk for the guest. Drives me crazy, sometimes. We have one agent who represented several of our guests over the years. She pissed me off in 2011 so much that I was ready to put it in the contract that we won’t work with her, and will only talk to the guest directly. I didn’t . . . but I ranted about it at Nathan a lot.

Long-story-short, in 2011 she was incredibly unprofessional to me, and in 2012 she tried to go above my head. I had two anger-filled paragraphs of story, but I don’t feel that it’s terribly professional on my part to post it. If you’re curious, ask me in person. You’ll get the added benefit of listening to me rant (some people seem to enjoy it shrug).

Anyway.

Step 7. Posting Info on Site
This used to be all me. I’ve been trying to pass it off to Social Media. Not sure how well that’s working. Part of the problem is that no one forwards pertinent information as it should be. Nathan just hoards it, (almost never forwards all the right info) and me, if I’m looking it up out of our email I’m just going to post it . . . why waste the time forwarding it?

I am just posting it myself this year. I’m hoping to solve this in 2014, though.

Step 8. Additional and Last-Minute Guests
Usually about the time we’re contracting guests and buying flights and things we somehow end up with more guests. People that have contacted us and said they’ll do it free, or with reasonable fees (“half off my usual price”). So if we decide it’s worth it, we have to complete all the above steps again for one or two more people to get them posted. These are often times locals and they are usually really worth working with. We’ve gotten some amazing genuinely free guests in the past.

Step 9. Organizing the Itinerary
Buying flights, writing checks in the accounting system, buying weird things like charcoal for a guest panel. That’s all me and I take care of it as soon as I can. I can’t do anything until we have a signed contract though. =\

I usually buy flights within a few days of receiving the signed contract. Misc items and hotel rooms wait until closer to con.

Step 10. Scheduling Guests
This is primarily programming’s problem. Someone has to get all the guest contact info to them, which is always challenging because of the same reasons Social Media can’t get the info to post about guests.

Programming goes back and forth with the guests until we have a solid list of panels that we can schedule. They also make suggestions such as “join this panel with this guest – you know about that topic, right?” and “we’re running a panel on X, do you want to participate?”

Step 11. Book Hotel Rooms
Although this might seem like an urgent step to some people, it’s not. I book rooms as close to our deadlines as possible so we can see how much of our block is taken up. I book guest rooms by the contracts, and then any missing room nights are made up by booking staff rooms. I do all of it at once and via email with a contact at the GSR. It’s a pretty important but easy and laid-back step.

It’s roughly:
“Hey, I want these rooms on this card.”
“K.”

And that’s about the entire pre-con process dealing with guests with a few exceptions.
The first exception is we receive emails trying to sell us on booking a guest. Sometimes it’s an obvious mailing list or an agent “Get the voice of ____ for your convention!” Sometimes it’s actually the voice actor just trying to get some business. We mostly ignore all emails which are obviously mailing lists. They’re kept in our email records so if we ever want the information, it’s there, but we so far don’t care. I do try to make it a point to email back to voice actors who are obviously emailing as themselves and are out fishing. Especially ones that sound like a good fit with us.

A few years ago I had a voice actor email us looking to be a guest. We couldn’t budget them in that year, or the following year (2012), but I made it a point in early 2013 to email him back myself and try to get the info needed before we had any guests decided on. He never emailed me back. His agent did. I didn’t get another personal email from him again. I lost interest quickly. =\

He’d obviously become too important (or at least busy) in the last two years to talk to me any more. Too bad. He seemed fun. He was also expensive. I don’t remember how much, but he would have been more than anyone we’d brought in so far. Maybe we’ll have him another year when our budget is bigger.

Additionally, we get emails from attendees and staff suggesting guests. I don’t respond to those because I figure it’s Nathan’s job. I don’t think I’ve seen Nathan respond to any of them. =\

As far as I’m aware, Nathan DOES take suggestions into consideration when choosing the guest lineup, so don’t stop! I think we need a more organized way of doing it, though. I don’t know how, but votes are needed, and notes so we can mark someone as to expensive for x year, a possibility for y year, or will not be asked back because of a problem in year z.

I’m sure I have more to say about guests, and as guests correspond with us (and me, specifically) over the coming weeks I’m sure I’ll have something to rant about. ;)

Guests are in the process of being announced as we receive their contracts. =)