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. =)

First off let me say that I don’t care for a lot of the drama surrounding homestuck at cons. I like portal, you like homestuck, that girl over there likes naruto, that guy over there is a brony, and that guy running tech is a furry. I don’t care. A fandom is a fandom is a fandom. We’re all here to show our love in a safe place. Cosplay however you like (within reason). Show your love. Run your panels. Wear your horns. Whatever. Please just try to keep the gray off of everything you touch. I don’t want to be charged by the GSR for cleaning gray off of the carpet.

My problem comes with homestuck at artist alley and the “official” stance of homestuck not allowing prints or 3d media to be sold.

So before I go further, let me say that what I’m about to say is my personal opinion and not the official opinion of the con or anyone else in the con who isn’t me. The official stance of the convention (apparently) is that there was a complaint, and the ban notice is public, so therefore we are disallowing homestuck fan art prints to be sold in artist alley to essentially force you to comply with the artist’s wishes. This is how Artist Alley wants to handle it. This is how our completely-unofficial-and-we-aren’t-actually-taking-his-advice legal person wants to handle it. I don’t really want to bother the lawyer for an official legal opinion, so . . . whatever.

My opinion: fan art is fan art is fan art. The fact is, we allow fan art and IMO we should allow ALL fan art. You sell fan art at your own risk. There are people who go to conventions to look for fan art and then sue the artists. It’s unlikely with how small we are, but we are a rising star con – we have been picking up notice quickly.

But whatever. We can’t really police everything.

Since my opinion and that of the con’s is different, there’s not much I can do beyond saying this –
Don’t sell homestuck in artist alley. Don’t sell anything which says “homestuck” on it. Don’t have any signs or labels which say “homestuck” on them.
Do sell “candy corn horns.” Do sell “shirt with random zodiac symbol on it.”
Catch my drift? Look up the drama surrounding the Jayne Cobb Hat and you’ll see why I’m already bitter about this topic and suggesting ways around it. Sell whatever crafts you’ve got, but for the love of Cthulhu (or something) just don’t call it “homestuck!!!”

Seriously. No one owns horns, no matter what color you make them. I’m pretty sure you can even call them ‘colored troll horns’ because trolls have been around for a really long time, and they have horns. No one can stop you. But the MOMENT you even BREATHE the dreaded “homestuck” word, you’re done. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

Prints are trickier, but doable if you’re determined. You would need to figure out how what you’re selling falls under parody or fair use (and “fair use” is much harder to qualify for than one would think). It’s tricky but anybody can do it. Keep in mind that you would have to make the image with the precise purpose of parody or fair use.

The best example of a parody print I’ve ever seen in an artist alley is an image of the girl from the Ring crawling out the TV, and falling down a tall dresser or something similar. She’s sprawled down the dresser with her foot caught on the ledge of the TV, with a voice bubble in kana – “kuso!” So, that’s a solid example of parody. It’s not the artist’s character and it’s completely legal and untouchable. =D

Yes, I bought that print. xD

The more drama that I see because of that homestuck artist, the more I want to start my own comic which is a solid parody of homestuck and then go sell prints of that parody which people will try to tell me I can’t because homestuck, and I can say no, it’s not homestuck, it’s this other thing which totally makes fun of homestuck. So stuff it.

But I’m passive aggressive, bitter, vindictive, etc . . . I’d never actually do it because I spend my time doing other things . . . like con . . . and Minecraft.

And I swear, if anyone who reads this tries to say that I said it was okay to sell fan art of homestuck at AA, so help me, I will pull your badge! I am not saying it’s okay to sell homestuck fan art. The rules are the rules. What I’m saying is IF you have a legal leg to stand on through either not calling your generic props homestuck, or your prints are very obviously parody or fair use that no one can argue with, then you’re gold.

BTW – also just my opinion, here . . . The way to handle someone selling something in artist alley that you don’t like, is to talk to the artist. If the fan(s) (IDK who, it’s all hearsay at this point) had just said “hey, did you know the artist doesn’t want you selling that? Here’s a link to it on my smartphone,” the artist probably would have said “oh really, no I didn’t know that, I’ll stop.” I’m about 90% sure that’s what would have happened in 2012 if the fans had just talked to the artist alley artist instead of the art director and I wouldn’t even be annoyed right now.

But – in the words of Dennis Miller – that’s just my opinion; I could be wrong.

(Comments will be turned off on this post because this isn’t a debate. I don’t care what you or anyone else thinks about it. What matters is what Nuriko and Llama think. I just wanted to bitch share. Do not get yourself in trouble over my rant, and do not cause them any grief. Or me.)

To SNAFU people – my cat is very sick. We don’t know how much longer he has. He is now my top priority. I will be checking on him before I check my emails. It may get in the way of some SNAFU stuff but I will try to stay dedicated to the con at the same time. It is entirely likely that I may miss a meeting or something if he needs to be put down before that meeting. I may not. I will cross that bridge when I come to it.

He may have years, he may have days. I may need more help getting things done. I will do every reasonable thing I can to help my cat. The vet gives him very low chances so it’s a matter of what misery do we want to subject him to to “save” his life, or do we want to try easier methods which also may help, lower chances, but are also easier for him. Hospitalization is expensive and I think he would be miserable the whole time – 20% chance. Sub-Q fluids are less expensive, and give him less of a chance, but he can stay with us and keep living fairly normally until the end. He is still eating and not in any obvious pain. We have high hopes. As best we can tell, he is a fighter. Regardless of what we do, it’s terminal. It’s all just a matter of time and comfort.

Anyway. I will attempt not to let SNAFU Con slide and I will attempt to delegate more so that nothing is lost because of this. The cat will remain my first priority until he “recovers” or dies.

First off, I want to say that we’ve lost our video programming director for this year. Again. We joke that it’s the Defense Against the Dark Arts position, because we can not keep a head in position. We lost two because each didn’t know what he was doing and did not ask what to do. We followed up “sooo… is this done?” “No, you didn’t tell me what to do so I didn’t do anything” . . . which I can’t stand. If you don’t know what to do – ask. We’ll tell you; we’ll help . . . but just doing nothing is unacceptable. When we told our second what to do, he stepped out saying that since we knew what to do, then we obviously didn’t need him. >_<

Our third one did beautifully as a last-minute stand-in for the second, but fell apart when some things went wrong and, again, didn’t let us know so we could help. In fact when I asked if any help was needed I was told “No, I’ve got it” . . . she didn’t ‘got it.’
DX

Our fourth has stepped down because of personal things getting in the way. I can respect that. We were given enough notice and he is welcome back in the future once his life-things are handled, if he wants to come back. I still don’t know if he was only giving me an excuse I wouldn’t question, but whether his given reason was truth, or even if his true reason was that he just didn’t want to, he let us know with enough time to handle things.

But that still leaves us without a VPD. =\

So how VP works . . .
The basic idea is that we come up with anime we want to show, we ask permission to show it, we get permission to show it (and screeners and prizes) from the various companies which license it, we schedule it, and we show it.

It’s really one of our most basic departments, and it isn’t that hard. It isn’t even as time-consuming as some of our other departments, but it will take a little time to figure out the year’s list and what company licenses each anime.

In the event we don’t have enough licensed anime permissions, we look to fansubs. In 2010 there was a large drama burst about whether or not we should show fansubs, so to err on the side of caution, we avoid them as possible. However, fansubs are the only way to show unlicensed works. I think the drama came about because people thought we might be showing work that was licensed already. Whatever. I won’t debate it any more with anyone. We won’t show them unless we 1. need extra programming, or 2. have someone dedicated to contacting the companies in Japan and asking permission.

I think if we write Japan and ask permission, we will get it and then there will be no more gray area. Until we have someone dedicated to that, it’s not happening. (Do you want to? Email me…) I would love to have someone on staff that is dedicated to fansub programming because nothing would make me happier than to announce we are showing all sorts of fansubs and the nay-sayers from 2010 wouldn’t really have a way to debate with us because we’d have permissions and it would be 100% legal. No more gray area!

For the record, to date, we haven’t used fansubs in our video programming, so it’s all moot.

So again, here’s the entire job:
1. Develop a list of Anime we might want to run.
2. Determine what companies own the anime on the list.
3. Reach out to each company for permissions for the list of.
4. Poke companies until we have final decisions on what we can and can’t show.
5. Develop the schedule for the year based on what we do have permissions for.
6. Using the Video Programming hard drives, put together MKV files of schedule blocks for minions to run.
7. Make sure everything runs smoothly during con.

That’s it.

I don’t know why we can’t seem to find someone to handle it. It doesn’t require a lot of input or oversight from the convention chairs – you pretty much have free reign. It’s not hard to do . . . it’s a very basic job. It’s not even super time consuming. Maybe 10ish hours of pre-con work, if you don’t include ripping disks to the hard drives that we don’t already have on the hard drives, and muxing the MKV files.

Mux the files right and you probably have the least amount of work at-con out of all of the staff.

I just don’t get it.

The only way more time would be involved is if you are also part of the hentai dept. Although it does fall under VP, hentai is mostly it’s own thing. The only thing the general VP director has to do is ask permissions for the hentai that is provided by the hentai dept. You don’t need to know about hentai or watch it, just get us the permissions.

How Hentai works –
Search for in-theme hentai.
Search for anything new and interesting.
Get together and watch it in an all-night session with as many cool people in the room as possible (because watching it alone is lame).

What disqualifies a hentai – It’s boring or we can’t make fun of it. Generally if we start having separate conversations during the hentai, we have stopped watching it and it obviously couldn’t keep our attention so it’s not going to be shown at our con. If there’s too much plot, it’s not really good for us and if there isn’t enough plot it’s also not good.

Once we have a hentai we like, we qualify it into an “early night” or a “late night” showing. Early night hentai are things like Darling, or Tentacle and Witches. Things that are very funny on their own, and pretty fluffy. No hard fetishes. Nothing to scare off the newbs. We’ve made that mistake before . . . not happening again (the “bondage clock” one from 2011 is now a late night hentai xD)

All in all, it’s a hell of a fun night.
We get permissions for what we can out of our list of favorite regulars, and new finds, and at-con, we show things based on how the room feels. We have our starters and just . . . go from there.

It just . . . isn’t for everyone. The regulars are pretty jaded about the more “hard-core” stuff and look right past it and see the plot, as confusing as that plot can be. We very recently scared a newbie off by previewing something too hard core which most of us were watching with “WTF am I watching” feelings about the plot, and she saw the hard fetishes and just . . . left. Couldn’t take it. Matrix-hentai. It was trippy. xD But definitely a late-nighter.

So yeah. That’s pretty much how video programming works. There are some smaller details about it, but my detailed handbook I wrote is only 3 pages long (shorter than this post) so IMO it can’t be all that bad.

Will you be our next Defense Against the Dark Arts Video Programming Director?

After reading though a giant flame-y thread about SNAFU Con feedback and people saying it sucked, and people saying it didn’t and on and on. . . I want to make a few things known.

I also want to preface this with – I understand that this blog is primarily for staff and that most attendees won’t see this, but some will. Staff knowing my views on this can spread it to attendees best. Plus this serves as a “for the record . . . “

It’s a local con and MANY staff, volunteers, and attendees consider it “their” con – which I strongly encourage.
It really is your con. It’s all for fans, by fans. Volunteer fans. You.

But that possessiveness makes some of us a little overly defensive about the con. I get it. But . . . I do want to know what people think. If you hate the con or a piece of the con, let me know why. I may be able to do something about it, or I may not. I also may choose not to do something about it because it goes against the way I want things done.

You can’t please all of the people all of the time. I don’t expect everyone to love us, and I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. Just understand that like everyone, I’m doing my best and I truly care about the convention.

That being said, I care very deeply about what people think about the con. When I’m not neck deep in con things, I spend a lot of time worrying about what people think and OMG what if they hate it, and I’ll just cry and hide under a rock and . . . and then the work starts and I get too busy to even bother thinking about it any more.

And constructive criticism is always preferred over “You suck! (runs away)”