RunningAnOnlineCon

How To Run An Online Con

Hi! I'm Dragon Paragon, SNAFU's head of Tabletop Gaming for like a decade now and the organizer for the first SNAFU Online. Over the next couple paragraphs I am going to try to teach you about running an online event, because I did it one time and it was Sorta Okay! Beta was adamant somebody write about it, and she was able to force me to do it because my cat is very easy to kidnap. I have since gotten a more feral variety of cat. Anyway, Dear Reader, please follow the steps outlined below and you'll be well on your way to entertaining people over the internet.

Step 1: Convince People To Do It

This one may seem obvious, but it's really important! Talk to staff. Say "Hey let's have an online con." Be prepared to answer difficult questions, such as "Why?" and "What are you doing in my house?" Although the primary reason for having an online con is because you can't do a physical one due to catastrophic global events, a good secondary reason is to have an online presence alongside the physical con. Not everybody can make it in person, and having some e-presence can really flesh out any event!

Step 2: Make a Plan

Assuming people at least begrudgingly accepted your online event proposal, you can get started on the logistics. This is the website, the schedule, the event catalog, and registration. Talk to the logistics people. Get down to brass tacks - go over your options and see how you want to do it. At the end of the day, it's a bunch of events, so having a hub is a good way to do it. We used Discord for the first SNAFU Online, I think it's a great platform and I'd highly recommend it, but it's by no means the only option. Either way, you should have some static webpages listing events and describing how to get to the con, because you don't know where people will be coming from or how tech-savvy they're going to be.

Step 3: Plan Events

You're going to need to think up some things for people to do, and the more, the merrier! This was accomplished by talking with every department head and seeing which of their current activities could be formatted to go online. We also held open forums for all staff, brought it up during meetings, lifted ideas off other online cons, and generally pestered all and sundry about doing stuff. And for heaven's sake, if anybody asks you if you want an army of online furry DJs, SAY YES.

Step 3a: Continue Planning Events

Going to elaborate on this one because it's like 90% of what I did. You're going to have 10 bad ideas for every good one, so get spitballin'. Your good ideas aren't the ones you think they are, so be prepared to explore any even remotely viable concept! A rule of thumb I used was 'Every Department Is Represented', so I made damn sure there was something from everybody at the con to really get variety on SNAFU Online. In the case of manga, it meant changing an event four times, finding new people twice, and in one very memorable occasion, doing it yourself with no warning and realizing the content is definitely NOT age appropriate. More on that later. For now, make a spreadsheet to stay organized with every possible event and the people behind it, and check progress on them weekly! start a tentative show schedule and update it as often as you can. Be conservative about your plans and encourage others to be so as well - it's very easy to bite off more than you can chew and then get discouraged, so it's really important to work with your people to temper expectations and have events run smoothly.

Step 3b: Make Sure Everything Is Age Appropriate

So I don't think I've ever cared about age-appropriateness (in tabletop we basically keep things PG13 and call it a day) until I started slapping a 'G' rating on things and then actually went to them. Let me tell you, it is plumb hard trying to find a family friendly event that's actually worth doing, because swear words are commonly available and make the user sound cool. Furthermore, a good deal of funny jokes are also not family friendly! Even worse, you can get into Legal Trouble (note the capital letters) if you don't advertise age ratings properly, so go over everything you've got planned with a fine-toothed comb. Read content ahead of time, watch videos of previous panels, have dry runs, anything you gotta do to make sure things line up, do! If you have any doubts whatsoever, bump an event up an age rating. I mean it. Age ratings are dead serious and you need to make sure everything's labelled correctly.

Step 3c: Appreciate Your People!

This is Really Really Super Duper Important. All the con staff and volunteers are putting in their own time and effort to give back to the community, despite them all having lives to live! In many cases, they're balancing doing SNAFU with having a full-time job and a family, and they're attending meetings or planning/running events instead of playing Ghosts of Tsushima, and that game is fantastic so you had better treat everyone helping out in the con right. You'd also better make sure to, at the very least, verbally thank them and appreciate all the effort they're putting in every time you see them! Which should be weekly, minimum. Ask them how things are going with their events and also if there's anything you can do to help! Sometimes, just having a conversation about it is enough, but you're not going to know more is needed if you don't have that conversation, so talk to everybody and make time for them!

Step 4: Community Outreach

As soon as you have things set in stone (or at least ecthed in polystyrene), you start telling people about it. Have a plan for social media! Start advertising as many months in advance and you can manage, and try to have weekly updates showcasing your events. More important than that, get together with your event organizers and department heads (which you're already doing weekly, remember?) and find ways to advertise in their circles. For example, Joriel of Chair G Tables, who did all of our fighting game tournaments, went to the community organizers of pretty much all of their games and got SNAFU Online plugged on their official pages! As a result, the fighting game stream was jumping all weekend. So, in addition to shotgunning things out over Facebook and the like, you gotta get to where the interested people are and let them know the thing they're interested in is happening, and it should be tailored for every event! Emails and forum posts cost nothing and they can bring in big attendance.

Step 5: Amend Your Plans

By this point, you've got a Plan, and went through a whole lot of think-tanking, debating, and testing, so you know where it's strong, where it's weak, and where it's outright lunacy. Things are going to look different a couple months into the Plan, so change what needs to be changed! Drop what events aren't gonna work out, strengthen the ones that are solid, and find ways to rectify things that seem iffy or cut them. You should have a tentative schedule you're updating as often as you can already; when the schedule goes public, it becomes gospel, so you make sure it's as bulletproof as it can be leading up to showtime.

Step 6: Plan Contingencies

Running a show means things are going to go wrong. That's arguably the point! Plan for things to break, people not to show up, or too many people to show up. Have a back up for everything. Than have a back up for your back up. This looks a little different for everybody, but if you're in my chair, it means you hold the events you're doing personally during times nothing else is going on, because you're going to have to sub in and handle for whoever goes out of action. For SNAFU Online, it meant interviewing Bill Timoney for his panel, picking up a DnD game, and doing a webcomic reading - and that's not including any of the moderation or actual planned events. If you're in a department head position, keep your schedule light and stay on your toes, you WILL find things to do. Also, keep some time open to unwind inbetween events, to get food, and to sleep. These are all very important things and a well-rested individual makes good decision, so be well-rested.

Step 7: Finalize Your Plans

This is basically Step 5, but with more "oh, CRAP, the show's a month away!" all your plannings and prep should be done by now, so it's the perfect time for stress-testing and dry runs, those little things that let you bring your event to the next level. There are also going to be those huge things, like the guy with the prototype game he's kickstarting next month has a family emergency and can't make it, but you already told everybody and have tables booked solid for demos every evening. A sane person would cancel that event - a SNAFU department head would learn all the rules of the game 3 days before con and run it. There's no shame in canceling something if you have to and making the necessary public announcements, but remember - the schedule is gospel, so you don't want to go against it if there is anyway you can avoid it.

Step 8: Do The Thing

Show time! Do your online con. You worked hard and it's gonna be a blast!

And there you have it! A step-by-step guide to having an online event. It's by no means comprehensive but if you internalize the concepts here you should be able to navigate the minutiae with a little elbow grease and uncommon sense. And if there is only one thing you take away from my schpiel, let it be this: Ghosts of Tsushima is a really good game.