2019 Meeting Notes

These notes were sent out via mailchimp and are archived here for reference.

You can see the originals with their intended formatting and whatnot here:

• https://mailchi.mp/snafucon/new-dates-new-venue-first-meeting-and-a-new-chat-are-you-ready-to-get-to-it-746189
• https://mailchi.mp/snafucon/2019-meeting-notes-since-june

2019-06-02 First meeting notes

Hi All,

We had our first meeting of the year on June 2. We've compiled the notes for everything we discussed below so you can keep up. Feel free to continue discussion in Discord.

If you're not in discord yet, please join us by going to snafucon.com/chat (requires a SNAFU Con registration, but payment isn't required to join).

And finally a small reminder to apply to be staff.

Out next meeting is June 22 at 10am in DMSC 102Here is a map to the Davidson Mathematics and Science Center at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Thank you all!

How did we do last year?

The number everyone cares about - we had 2107 attendees. That is a record high for us by a significant number since we've never broken 2k before. We also had record low for staff (see next section).

The bottom line was a net loss of $435.76 for the 2018 year. This was our first loss since 2010 and the reason is entirely because it's very expensive in Reno as opposed to Sparks.

We do have our annual income statements and balance sheets posted on our wiki if you'd like to see more figures, but a couple figures we find most interesting are that our attendance income went up about $8k because we had more attendees that ever, but our venue costs also went up about $20k.

As such, our budget for 2019 is roughly the same as it was in 2018, but the partners are willing to kick in extra funds where needed. So don't worry too much about the budget. As usual, if you need something for your department, you can submit a budget request and generally all reasonable requests are approved.

Staffing

Although 2018 had a record number of attendees, we also had a record low staff + volunteer count. Yes, including 2010. You can see the figures on our wiki.

To everyone who staffed last year, thank you for your hard work! We really pulled together. You all are amazing. Now get out there and recruit people so you don’t have to work so darn hard this year. We have openings in most every department. As we go forward and get a head count we'll start announcing the specific departments we need the most help on. We are considering stealing FanimeCon’s volunteer raffle/points system, giving prizes to volunteers for their hours - the more hours, the more raffle entries.

Reminders:

• Staff don't pay to attend, volunteers do need to pay to attend but get reimbursed based on hours logged
• You need to apply to staff or volunteer in the registration system
• You need to complete your staff contract

Finally, we reminded the staff that in addition to the normal food coupons and whatnot, there are two paid meals for anyone helping with tear down: one for anyone who stays until the truck is finished being loaded, and one for those who help unload the truck into storage on Monday. So please help with tear down. Also, bring a jacket because Silver State gets really cold on Sunday night.

Achievements

Achievements were introduced in year 5, and while we've added a few here and there, year 10 is a great time to introduce some new achievements. You can suggest new achievements in the new #achievements room in Discord.

Rules for new achievements:

• Must be something attendees can work towards at any point in the future. We have a couple exceptions to this rule and we do not want more.
• We need to be able to easily track achievements. Generally this requires code changes so the senior BACON team will need to evaluate suggestions. Also, really think about how we're getting that information at-con, if it's an at-con receivable achievement. We want to avoid "DMV Con" with lots of paperwork to get achievements.
• We need art for the achievements. If you want to provide art, the art needs to be in a square canvas, no smaller than 300x300 pixels. It must be distinguishable when printed at a half inch tall and it should fit in a circle.
• We need creative names for achievements. The punnier the better.

Some achievement ideas:

• People going out and doing staff recruitment.
• People recruited.
• Donating to the charity auction.
• Turning in a lost & found item has been suggested in a previous year

Marketing

We have awesome 4x6 fliers and business cards for this year. If anyone is interested in going to other conventions and helping us market there by sitting at a table and handing out those fliers and business cards, contact Thomas in Discord. The con generally picks up some of the costs of tabling including badges, fuel (if traveling), and up to one hotel room (if needed).

We are working on the 11x17 posters and maybe an 8.5x11 version for local distribution as well.

Charity Auction

We discussed several options on how to get the items for the Charity Auction organized prior to the event. The big winner was “toe tags” as a way to keep track of which item is what number since post-it notes fell off certain items too easily. We could use washi tape to stick it to things and yarn to tie it to things.

Katana offered to have a donation center as part of the Artist Alley heads tables so that there will be a central location near where artists and vendors are all the time. We discussed having an optional form that donors could fill out which could include fields such as a description, who donated it, and a suggested starting price.

Anyone looking to solicit donations should ask artists early because they are usually out of business cards by Sunday. We should also make sure the artists and vendors know about the charity auction pre-con and during con by including it in the pre-con email and designing fliers to place on tables. We may want to look into getting some local businesses donating pre-con.

About 1 hour before the auction, everything should be moved to behind main stage.

Layout & Signage

Some people didn’t like the layout but we have yet to hear better suggestions that still allow us pinch points to control for 18+ programming. If you have opinions on layout let us know. We are listening to all suggestions and we need layout figured out before we can open artists/vendor registration.

Having more directional signage would help some of the layout issues we experienced last year. It could include standee roll up signage, color coded arrow, floor mats/tape. Additionally, signage for the day-0 programming like the swap meet would help people find it.

A few fun signs we thought of doing:

• No running: “You cannot fast travel with enemies nearby.”
• Reg: “You must gather your party before moving on.”

Add your suggestions in the #theme room in Discord.

We also discussed having a projector in reg that has the same slide show of stuff going on that main stage has, or something similar so people could see what's going on in more places.

Theme

Our theme for 2019 is Adventure and (happy anniversary) this is also our 10th year! And what an adventure it has been getting here.

First off we want to remind people that BLFC's theme this year was a tabletop RPG and there's some overlap between what they did and what we've been doing, so we want to ensure we're not just copying what they did. So keep in mind that "Adventure" isn't necessarily RPG related. It could be, but there are other adventures as well (space, safari, etc.).

We have people working on a quest system and they have been buying prizes. If you are interested in brainstorming some ideas, check out the #theme discord channel. Several people want to make/get the quest giver exclamation marks for hats.

It was suggested to try to reach out to Niantic. We will try, but they have never responded to us in the past.

We were thinking of making our old mascots into buttons and doing a sort of 10th anniversary safari/scavenger hunt. We may even decorate certain areas in the style of our old themes so that could  cover the "space adventure" but also that year we had space as a theme.

Misc

• Apparently Facebook doesn’t like to show the text for shared posts by default. We should try to make informational posts that have info on a graphic/picture instead of just text.
• We may want to reach out to other local cons and trade/recruit staff.
• Reg staff might want to push volunteering harder when people pick up their badge.
• Please check out the 2019-notes-to-selves room for things you posted at con last year (it is in the process of being organized so your original message may be gone, but it's still there in the summary sections).
• Staff Wi-Fi was amazing last year. It was even enough to have gaming use it.
• Hotel booking  is up!
• We would be interested in having staff stories in the con book again. Maybe even do a Con Stories Panel on Friday evening when some of the upper staff are least busy.
• Those who have RT, time to start checking your queues.
• We need suggestions for anime to screen at con.
• We will try to reach out to Netflix, but that may be a long shot.
• Panels will be opening soon-ish.
• If you put flyers anywhere, let us know where.

Summary for 6/22, 7/19, 8/10, 9/08, combined

Hi All,

We've had four meetings since our last email update. Sorry it's been a crazy couple of months. This email summarizes what we've discussed in the following meetings: 6/22, 7/19, 8/10, 9/08. Anything from earlier meetings that became inaccurate or irrelevant has been removed or updated to current information.

Sorry, it's going to be a long read.

You can continue discussion on these items in Discord. If you're not in discord yet, please join us by going to snafucon.com/chat (requires a SNAFU Con registration, but payment isn't required to join).

Remember to apply to be staff.

Out next meeting is September 28, at 1pm, at the Sparks Library Meeting Room

Thank you all!

Important Deadlines

We discussed important deadlines. After the meeting I put together a wiki page explaining them a little further.

Deadline for VIPs is Oct 4

VIPs need to be registered by this date.

Prereg closes on Oct 12

Staff should all be registered by this date to ensure a staff badge. Badge art should be done by this date.

Conbook content deadline Oct 13

Any content you want in the con book needs to be turned in by this date.

Deadline for Hotels is Oct 15

This is our last possible chance to get hotel reservations. VIP deadline may move to this date if needed to encourage late entries.

Conbook hell: Oct 25-27

This is the weekend the graphics staff torture themselves to get the con book done. Expect previews to be posted to Discord for people to review this weekend.

Merchants to the city by Oct 30

This is the last possible chance to add a merchant to the con. After this date no more vendors/artists/swap meet/sellers at all.

Deadline for printed schedule is Nov 1

The schedule gets built this weekend. This is the last possible date to change the schedule for things. (Was set as November 6 in the meeting but if we want to stuff the schedules at the last meeting, we need all changes done the weekend before.)

Hotel

Our hotel block is currently at 15% full. We need to really push hotels hard to ensure we don't have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to the venue. Not making our room block also could result is the venue canceling our event.

If you are getting a room, book it now. Tell your friends.

Budget Requests

Get your budget requests in! If you have anything you need for your department please submit a budget request so we know what it is. If it's a reasonable request there will probably be no problem buying it. We will work with you as best we can, but please put it in soon so we know what you need because this year's purchasing has started.

If you have items you've had in the past but you don't know if we have enough, let @Sammich know in #staff in Discord. We will be doing an inventory of storage soon.

Logistics Inventory

We have a date scheduled for September 15th at 10am to inventory/clean out the con’s storage unit. If you want to help or your department wants any of your specific stuff inventoried, message @Sammich in Discord.

Website

New graphics are finally up! Thank you so much to Ami for making that happen.

It's ridiculously easy for the website to become inaccurate so please take some time to poke around the website, especially anything relevant to your department. If you find anything that needs to be updated or changed, if you have the ability, please fix it, or if you don't, please let us know. You can tell us in the #staff-and-volunteers channel in Discord.

New features

We’re having our first ever manga library which is exciting. We're calling it the “Manga Dungeon”. They’re getting a room along the front hallway. Hours TBD but they want to be open pretty late. The new Hospitality Department is running a prop check and social cool down area. The person spearheading this project is bringing a tent (only staff allowed inside) and setting up a camp aesthetic, keeping the checked props in coolers.  

Achievements

Katana and a few other artists are working on replacing some of our old ugly achievement icons. If you want to redo an achievement, suggest a new achievement, or discuss anything related to achievements, please post it to #achievements

Current Achievement List

Achievements Wiki

Press

If your have any press contacts that you think would be good, Tasha is doing a major press blast soon. If you have contacts please Discord @Natasha Gonzales or email [email protected].

Merchants

Artist alley did a new system this year. It worked out rather well. We got something like 70 applications for 45 tables and they pulled names after this last meeting. Artists were broken up into four “buckets” and each artist could fit in to two or three buckets depending on whether or not they were new, and whether they sold prints, crafts, or both. Success!

It meant that AA didn’t have to close in 8 hours like last year. People had a week to register so the applications weren't so badly rushed.

Vendors opened 9/8 and has two weeks for everyone to sign up before we start picking vendors.

Swap meet should open soon. The swap meet size has been increased to 8x8 squares.

Do we have all of the Departments covered

• Guests - Thank you so much to Nuriko and Cassy for handling guests since we don't have any guests staff for pre-con work. Guests is mostly covered for this year but if you're interested in taking it on, it's a good time to join to see how we do it.
• Cosplay - I think we're set but 1 or 2 more staff could be helpful (cosplay staff cannot compete in masquerade)
• E-Gaming is generally covered.
• Tabletop could use a few more people
• Hospitality - It's new and a prop check and social cool down area. It probably doesn't need anyone.
• Logistics always needs people. We need a dedicated logistics head. We need people to just help with truck loading, setup, tear-down, and (on Monday) unloading the truck. Stay to the end of tear down Sunday night and get free food at a really fun dinner where we're all tired, loopy, and happy from con. Come to load the truck into storage and we buy lunch for everyone who helped (traditionally at a Chinese restaurant).
• Marketing - We've got a few great social media people and that's about it. Marketing is kind of covered, but could always use more people. Everyone should get a few fliers to hand out. Please Discord @thomas to let him know where you put the fliers.
• Philanthropy - Tasha is handling it and Big Brothers Big Sisters is happy to come back
• Programming needs people. We technically don’t have a head. Programming needs people to watch the panel rooms, check attendance in panels, let people know when their time is up, get tech when needed, and check-in panelists. Main stage needs people with good stage personalities to entertain the crowd.
• Video - We hopefully have video pre-con covered. Thank you to Amber who is basically heading it.
• Registration needs people. We need people to sit at computers and check people in, make badges, and handle line control (like a greeter position).
• Rovers always needs people. Rovers is the convention customer service. They make sure people have their badges, are being safe, handle complaints, give directions, etc.
• Tech always needs like two more people than they have. Tech only has 2 people right now. Tech head says: "If you ever plugged in a VCR to a TV, you are probably qualified to do tech." Tech generally sets up the panel rooms, plugging in the projectors and speakers, resets the panel rooms after panelists mess with things, hangs out at main stage, and tears down the panel room projector and speakers.
• Vendors - Susana will not make it to con this year. Vendors will merge with Artist alley to make  Merchants. They seem to be covered because lots of people joined AA staff for some reason this year. (AA is planning on loaning staff out as needed.)
• Rave wants a personal badge checker to make it more exclusive but we’d like to avoid wasting a volunteer on that when last year we were so short on volunteers. The rave/2nd stage area is getting cut in half so it shouldn’t feel so empty. If we do end up with extra people, it’s fine for rave to have a badge checker if they want, though.

• In general we need more people and Rovers, Registration, and Programming always needs people.

Recruiting

Have a sad graph. We need more staff and/or volunteers because "many hands make light work."

• We've heard from volunteers that they want to know what they will be doing before they volunteer. The answer is, as always, "I don't know, whatever we need." Most people don't like this answer so we're trying to make up a list of potential tasks. It's WIP, but this information will be added to the soon-to-be-revamped Staff/Volunteer page on the website. Sam put a lot of effort into cleaning up that page and we're just waiting on a few staffers to review the changes before it goes live.
• One of the quests for prizes will be to volunteer for an hour.
• To help us figure out some things for next year, we want to add a small questionnaire to the at-con volunteer signup process to ask "Did you intend on volunteering before you came to the con or did you make the decision after arriving?" This may get a little skewed due to the quest task, though.
• We're planning on adding a small spiel to the end of the registration workflow that includes something along the lines of "Are you interested in volunteering for a partial to total refund for your badge?" and directions to go talk to the volunteer desk right next to registration.
• Information about volunteering should be on our opening email we haven't sent out yet.
• We want to make a "Mr. Squid wants you" flier to try to attract more volunteers, with a QR code that takes you to the Staff/Volunteer page.
• There was a suggestion for making a Mr. Squid plushie to raffle off to the volunteers. Which sounds very cool, but probably too expensive or time consuming.

Signage

In general we want to expand our signage. People have had trouble finding the panel rooms in the back hallway so we want to put several signs at the end of the hallway facing different directions to catch people from different angles.

Swap meet and the rave both want more signage about their event. Possibly floor-arrows. Possibly black light floor arrows (we do already have a roll of black light spike tape).

We want to get some Big Standup Signs, but we need to know what we should put on it, how many we need, and a template designed. These signs should be generic signs that we can use for multiple years. We're thinking of using them for broad general areas like "Merchants." It would also be great if we could use one or two for when we market at other conventions.

Some suggestions were:

• Entrance for artist alley/vendor;
• "Badge Zone"
• Welcome to SNAFU Con
• Merchants
• Swap Meet
• Dual purpose for at con and marketing at other cons
• Lost and found

Layout

A few main points of interest regarding layout:

• Video is moving to the main area so we can watch it with fewer dedicated people. (If anyone wants to see video without a badge, we can escort them in. We are also hoping to put some seating and video in registration (unscheduled) and that’s an unbadged area.) Additionally, having video here makes the giant area seem smaller. Spaces seeming too big makes people feel like they’re empty.
• The Rave/Ballroom/Dance room from last year is getting cut in half to prevent the giant empty-space barrier between the hallway and the dance floor and stage like we had last year. This should also help the room feel fuller.
• Pending discussion with the Karaoke head, we’re planning on putting Karaoke in the back room behind rave. The walls are actually surprisingly sound “proof” but there will be some noise bleed.
• Gaming is getting more tables and we worked on their layout so they won’t have to move around so much at-con.
• We are changing how the merchant area flows so that you can access the back hallway from the merchants room during the day. This should get people more used to going back there so that at night it’s not such a shock that there’s programming there.
• We’ve moved the cash bar to the main room. No one could find it in the vendor area and having it across from port of subs was a bad move. Having it in main should mean more business so that hopefully it won’t have to close this year.
• We will have the coloring table in the main area this year. Everyone please check it out when you happen to be walking by for inappropriate material (“dick checks”). If we all keep an eye on it, we should be able to keep it clean.
• We are having our 18+ special art exhibition again. They have a less awkward room this year so we won’t have the normals practically running into it off the escalator.

Reno Pop Culture Con

Reno Pop Culture Con is the week before our con. They’ve been super nice to us and are helping advertise for us. We need to talk to them more. They’re also a great point of sadness for much of the staff since we’ve seen a vocal portion of the community praising them while simultaneously denigrating SNAFU Con. We’re hoping for the best and trying to build a good relationship with this new con, but talking is hard.

If we did a table, we don't know who's going to man the table because no one is going to have time for it.  But if we could, having something like coupons on easy-to-hand-out business cards would probably go a long way.

Sponsorship & Outreach

• Maybe talk with Sparno about approaching their sponsors for prizes/discounts/vouchers for VIP swag. Something that would drive business to the sponsors.
• We should approach Cinemark - they have Ghibli fest, and Princess Mononoke will be playing Nov 17. Maybe cross promotion with them advertising us and us advertising Ghibli Fest, since a lot of our attendees are locals. Giving them the attendee numbers for last year with demographic numbers might help. The conversation would depend on the limitations Corporation sets for local involvement.
• Kawaii Box sponsory things?
• Sponsoring community day for a Pokemon Go group.
• Need more community outreach. Someone should go out and talk to the various nerd groups.

Theme

Theme is everyone's favorite topic and we always have a lot of fun discussion about all the things we could do. This year's theme is "Adventure."

We want to have a few guilds that impact the theme planning but we don't know if we're going to try competition (like we did for multiverse) or just have the different guilds "sponsor" quest lines. My personal favorite guild, though is "Guild not appearing at this con."

The quest shop for our theme is going in the Silver State foyer desk. It’s lockable and pretty central. Our theme team has lots of great prizes they’ve been acquiring at various sales.

Sam has made a QR code scavenger hunt to encourage people to visit certain areas around con (sponsored by the Explorers Guild, I think). We brainstormed some ideas on what to name certain areas. A couple fun examples: Singing Caves for Karaoke, Bizarre Bazaar for Merchants, and {Color} {Fantasy Animal} Tavern for Tabletop. Literally "{Color} {Fantasy Animal} Tavern" and we're thinking of making some sort of flipable sign with a bunch of colors and fantasy animals people can flip to change it throughout con.

We also brainstormed some other quests other guilds could do, like a face painting quest.

One potential idea we had for the theme is a light story line that picks up after multiverse where the multiverse broke the time line and made some sort of portal and there were a bunch of paranormal things that popped out and now we need to go on an adventure to fix it. The conclusion of that would be the portal closing up at closing ceremonies. (Oh no, you're all trapped here, guess you have to help tear down the con and load up the truck!)

We were considering decorating each location based on previous year’s themes but . . . that’s a lot of work and we do not have anyone willing to dedicate the amount of time it would take to that. So we’re going to do easier more general things. We’re honestly focusing more on things to do than decoration, but we don’t want to completely ignore decoration, either.

It's hard to summarize what was essentially a brainstorming session, so a lot of details have been left out. If you have ideas for the theme, please add them to the #theme channel.

Potential fun things

No promises but . . .

We are considering contacting a different escape room after the one last year never showed up. At this point I’m not sure anyone wants to do what's needed to make it happen, though. BLFC had a decent one and we might be able to find out the specifics on theirs and see if using the same company is feasible.

Another idea is a bounce house. Hydra Comic Con had an amazing bounce house. If we did that, though, it would have to be a pretty serious place with clean product because a lot of them tend to be pretty disgusting. We’d need a dedicated person to enforce “no shoes” and whatnot, but we've seen it work.

Links & Reminders

• Our dates are November 15-17 at the GSR. Same space as 2018.
• Join Discord
• Apply to be staff
• Staff Wiki
• List of tentative meeting schedule
• Meeting Policies
• Customer service is everyone's responsibility.
• We would like staff to add to our social media content. See Social Media Policies.
• If you need help you can always reply to this email if you're not in Discord.

Previous Meeting's important points

• Hotel booking is up. Book your hotel
• Apply to be staff/volunteer (Staff get food vouchers and there is some provided food)
• Get your friends to apply to be staff/volunteer
• We're redesigning some old achievements and creating new ones. Discuss in #achievements. See Achievements Wiki.
• We have 4x6 fliers. Pick them up at meetings or coordinate with Thomas in Discord. Make sure to let us know in discord if you put them anywhere.
• Do you have theme ideas? Discuss in #themeNote: "#word" refers to a discord channel