If you are working in a customer-facing role for a convention, do try not to be rude to the members. And if you are going to be rude to someone, do try not to pick Nick Mamatas as your target.
And congratulations to Lucy Snyder for cleaning up the mess.
Of course it never ceases to amaze me that people think conventions have a bunch of paid staff…
Conventions like the World’s SF, Fantasy and Horror need to try and pass along knowledge like they pass along funds.
There are attempts. For online and easily accessible, see the Conrunner Wiki. For in-person and interactive, there’s SMOFCon and a few similar regional events. The SMOFs list is also a pretty good repository of Worldcon-running knowledge.
As things stand, though, the onus is nearly always on the next batch of volunteers to seek the knowledge out, and there are many non-meretricious reasons that some do not (starting with, many people don’t know these resources exist).
Jeff,
I’ve chaired WHC2004, WFC2004 & Westercon 62 in 2009. I will talk about details on running those cons to anyone who asks 🙂
Mike Willmoth
Mike Willmoth: You know, inflicting details of running WHC2004, WFC2004 & Westercon 62 on the unsuspecting could be considered cruel, etc etc.
Of course it never ceases to amaze me that people think conventions have a bunch of paid staff…
Sometimes, I wonder if that wouldn’t be such a bad idea for senior posts at the larger events (Worldcon, WHC, WFC), since the ‘amateur’ status can then be tripped out as an excuse for performance at anywhere near the appropriate level of incompetence.
We’re not big enough. ComiCon, with over 100,000 members and a turnover of seven figures, can support a small number of paid staff, none of whom are particularly overpaid. (The figures are available online since ComicCon’s parent is a 510(c)(3) organization that must file them in publicly-available statements.) DragonCon doesn’t have to publish its figures because it’s not a non-profit/tax-exempt organization, but I also think it has a tiny number of paid employees.
A Worldcon is right at the bottom edge of having enough turnover (about $1M annually) to possibly employ a full-time Executive Director. Smaller conventions couldn’t afford it. But to have such a full-time ED implies more permanent organization and central control that is the “third rail” of Worldcon politics. (“WSFS Inc.! To the barricades, comrades!”) On top of that, having even one paid employee might well de-motivate the many people who now work very hard and do very good work as unpaid volunteers. We simply couldn’t afford them.
Note: I do not begrudge ComicCon their paid employees. They need those people in order to run an organization that large. Worldcon would have to grow by one order of magnitude (up to DragonCon size) before it could support the overhead.
Jeff Beeler: World Fantasy does not have pass along funds as the Worldcon does. As for the “knowledge” aspect … well, sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Steve Green: The problem with paid staff is that of taxes and all of the resulting paperwork involved in having employees. I suspect most volunteer run cons would not deal well with such.
Mike, I quite agree, and I also think it would distort the aesthetic of the typical convention (too many members of larger events already attend with the mindset of being a consumer who has paid for a service, rather than seeing themselves as being within a community which works best when everyone chips in).
Out of interest, where does any surplus from WFCs go to, if not at least in part to providing start-up cash for the latest successor?
Whichever group organized the convention keeps the money and spends it as they will. There are no restrictions on it. Indeed, as I recall, there may have been at least one WFC that was explicitly run as a profit-making enterprise by its organizers, although I may be mis-remembering the specifics.
SFSFC, for instance, has run two WFCs. The surpluses (not huge) have been used to run some of the convention’s other functions, particularly those that are not necessarily profitable of themselves, and to pay for the (relatively small) corporate overheads. You can look at our financial statements on the SFSFC web site for specifics of where the money has come from and where we’ve spent it.
WFC does not impose any restrictions upon the groups that run the convention regarding any surpluses they may run, although as I understand it, the WFC board doesn’t like penny-pinching and expects to see the money the members pay spent on giving them a good time. I think we did a pretty good job of that at San José last year.
Steve: What Kevin said. In the case of the DC WFC (2003) the Washington SF Association retained the surplus. It has enabled the club to restart WSFA Press and to deal with any possible deficits Capclave might run, tho in recent years we’ve pretty much been in the black.
And any deficits a WFC runs is also their’s to deal with.