[ST] Minutes of the April 22nd ConCom Meeting

[Pat Vandenberg]

Hi All:

 

I believe the Staff site includes Division and Department Heads as well.
Someone please let me know if this is Not true.

I’m going to append the minutes to the bottom of this message as I am not
sure if there are people on the list whose e-mail won’t let them read a Word
attachment.  Again, people, let me know if you would prefer the minutes as
an attachment.

 

Also, please feel free to send in any comments or suggestions.

Hugs,

Pat

 

ARISIA 2009 CON-COM MEETING OF TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 2008 at the home of Rick
Kovalcik

 

AGENDA:

Budget Meeting Questions:

Incoming Advertising Fees

Adornments:  Badges; Ribbons; Other

Art Show Fees

Comps for:  Program & Events Participants; Volunteer Hours

Dealer’s Fees:  Also, Rachel would like us to discuss lamps and tables in
the 

            proposed empty dealer’s rooms.

Food on Thursday Night:  GOH dinner or party; Areas setting up food; 

Staff Den food; Other?

Marketing and Advertising Costs:  Parties; Ads; Sponsorships; Other?

Registration Fees:  Normal; Child Care; Fast Track; Teen Track

Special Food for:  Staff Den; Program Participants; Filk; Other?

Anything else?  T-Shirts

 

In Attendance:  Lia Olsborg; Rick Kovalcik;  Jill & Donald Eastlake III; Pat
Vandenberg (taking notes) & Allan Kent; Joe Kesselman; Noel Rosenberg; Ben
Levy; Sharon Sbarsky; Rachel Silber, Steve & Crystal Huff, Mike Sprague, and
Conor Walsh.

 

Meeting brought to order by Jill at 7:35PM.

 

Buzz, who is teaching a class, sent Jill some instructions to facilitate the
meeting which Jill passed on to all in attendance.

 

Advertising Fees:  Skip and Helen have been in discussion.  Skip would like
to put a colored section in the middle of the Souvenir Book.  Our Artist GOH
has LOTS of good pictures.  Helen would like us to lower the ad rates for
the Souvenir Book, but no amounts were specified.  It was felt we needed to
make sure what the costs were to Arisia to run a colored ad.  Dealers at
Arisia get semi-pro rates.  Rate structure policy is defined on the policy
page of the website.  Do we want ads in the Restaurant Guide and the Pocket
Program?   Was felt any of these ads should be related to the subject
matter:  restaurant ads in the Guide and specific program items in the
Pocket Program.  Corporate policy is that we sell ads for all publications
to recoup the cost.  We give free ads to sponsors as a thank you for what
they have donated.

Small advertisements tightly targeted to particular program/event items
would be possible.  We might consider allowing advertisers to buy a longer
description for their related program item.  This would be allowed in the
Zambia description for that item, making the inclusion of such information
more automated.  Trade ads are also ‘free’ to the con we are trading with.

 

Adornments:

Badges:  Currently our available printer can only print the credit-card size
badges.  Our current size displays the art work just fine.  One problem is
long names which reduce the size of the font used.  Other problem is that
there is no room for stickers on the badge.  However, the hotel objects to
stickers as they are Very Hard to remove from hotel surfaces.  David
Belfer-Shevett is planning on buying a larger badge holder to sell to those
who want them at the convention.  These large pocket badge holders are $1.50
each; much too expensive for us to buy for everyone.  It is possible to use
lanyards with the larger badge holders.  It was suggested that people could
use the Registration hole punch to punch a hole in their hotel room-key in
order to add it to their badge clips.  We’ll need to check with Registration
to insure that this won’t drain too many resources from the Registration
crew on site.   Also the hotel team might check with the Hyatt to see if
they are willing to make special hotel room-keys for us with the Arisia logo
on them, (possibly already pre-punched?), and whether they would have a
problem with having a hole punched in their regular hotel room-keys.

 

Ribbons:  The hotel gives special identification to a few people who we have
designated able to sign the master bill.  Some say that the color of ribbons
are used to identify certain classes of people to the hotel staff  as
leaders.  We should keep that in mind as we plan for this year’s ribbons.
Program Participants, Artists, Tech, Security, Staff, GOHs, and Gophers all
need to be identified somehow.  Dealers no longer Need ribbons because of
Dealer’s Row, but they would prefer having one so their customers can
identify them.  Jill suggested sheriff’s badges for Security.  It was also
suggested that we get rid of our old ribbons and start over fresh.  Adding
the year would make the ribbons unique If we aren’t planning on using them
over-and-over.  Horizontal ribbons are cheaper but there is less space for
the logo and words.  We should remember to make enough ‘Climb Mount Hyatt’
special ribbons.  Art Show and Masquerade award ribbon colors will be
decided by the Art Show and Masquerade Directors.

 

Art Show Fees:

2008 – had fewer tables and panels than were budgeted for.  62-3/4 panels
and 24 tables.

Took in $2,624.00.  (Donald says this figure is within 1% of actual.)  There
was $7,766.85 in sales, including tax.

 

2009 – Our fees are $24/unit.  We do not charge commission.  Arisia units
are smaller than Boskone units.

 

Do we have any idea of what Arisia’s Art Show equipment upkeep costs are?
There is some pegboard which currently needs to be replaced.  Equipment
replacement is a Corporate expense.  

 

Should the corporation sponsor free panels for past Artist GOHs?   It was
suggested that the previous GOHArtists pay ½-price.  However, the one-free
panel may be a way to entice them and possibly get a 20-year retrospective.
However, this ‘free panel’ should be for Attending Artists only, not for
mailed-in art.

 

Comps:  We had 683 comps for 2008 with 1686 paid; approximately a quarter of
our attendees were ‘free’.  There were 51 day-comps.  So far we have 250
earned-comps for 2009.

Since it is a longer convention should we require more hours to earn a
T-shirt and/or a comped membership?  Believe we will have about the same
number of participant hours for our 4-day Hyatt convention as we had at a
3-day Park Plaza convention.  Are we giving away too many comps?  Worldcon’s
require people to pay ahead and then pay those who worked afterward.  This
is not usual for a Regional.  Corporate formed a committee to figure out how
to increase the number of volunteers.  Increasing comp-hours to16-hours was
suggested.  Should we give extra credit to volunteers who work overnight?
There are areas such as ConSuite, Anime and Video where it is difficult to
get late-night staff.  However, sleep-over staff are getting a free ‘room’
and should not get extra hours.  Should we leave it up to the Department
Heads to decide whether their late-night staff deserve extra-time?  We would
have to change the Corporate policy in this regard.  The bigger problem is
getting people to work when we need them.  Set-up and tear-down people do it
for the double hours and so they can enjoy the convention.  

 

Dealers’ Fees:  $4,100 income in 2008.  For 2009 we have arranged with the
Dealers to buy and take home the lights they get for those rooms that will
have no furniture.  Cost approx. $25 apiece.  Could we rent lamps instead?
The Dealer reg form will include an item for number of lights the dealers
want.  Dealers’ rates will stay the same as last year.

 

Food on Thursday night:  Staff food is the largest amount over-budget for
2008.  However, the convention’s hotel food budget was actually
under-budget.  It was felt that part of the staff food problem was that the
luncheon trucks didn’t show up.

 

There was no Staff Den Thursday night. Staff Den would have to set up
Thursday morning in order to be ready for Thursday night; would cost another
room-night plus a lot of extra work.  However, Staff Den has been open on
Thursday nights for some previous Arisias.  Staff Den will be open for
Friday morning breakfast in 2009.  It was suggested we have a Pizza Party
with the GOHs on Thursday evening for all workers on site.  Pat will extend
an invitation to all the GOHs to come early to attend a Pizza Party Thursday
night.  Because of increasing food costs budget should go up by about 20%.

 

Marketing & Advertising Costs:  No comments.

 

Registration Fees:  It was suggested that the Student rate at the door
should be half of the general at-the-door rate, $30.  Teen rate is Student
Rate.  Rate changes will need to be okayed at Corporate level.  There was a
suggestion that we reduce the overall at-the-door rate, but it wasn’t
popular.  Also, it was felt that the rate at-the-door should be higher than
the pre-reg rate.

 

Special Food for:  Staff gets to tell people what to do and volunteers
don’t.  Do we have numbers of Staff vs. number of volunteers for 2008?
Suggested we give some cold platters to Volunteers’ Lounge with the hours
they will appear posted in the lounge.

Load-out needs food.  Tech needs coffee Friday morning.  Tech had a budget
overage of $650 for food and Logistics had a budget overage of $115 for
food.  For those who work these areas it is a timing issue.  If we feed them
they stay around, if we don’t they take at least 2 hours and usually
disappear.  It was suggested we Either give them double hours Or we feed
them.  However, it was felt that our need for these people is such, and the
amount of work they do is such, that doing both is worthwhile.  Should we
set up a corporate account with a Pizza place?  Hotel charged $12 for a
cheese pizza.  Cinderella Pizza is 3-blocks from the hotel and very good.  

 

Other:

Should we do an Art Show reception?  Felt Phi should be involved in this.  

 

May need budget additions to deal with the empty rooms.  Rachel felt there
are too many outstanding questions at the moment to deal with this.  It was
felt that we would probably need the same number of tables as we had last
year.

 

It had been suggested we do only one T-shirt.  Our Artist GOH is able to
produce as many  pieces of art as we require.  Volunteer shirt with good art
does help increase the number of volunteers willing to work.  Two t-shirts
approved.  Full-color art requested.

 

Suggested that people who need volunteers post who/number needed at what
times outside their doors so people walking by are reminded.  Also suggested
we have video screens on loop with presentations of our various areas which
also includes a scheduling bulletin of people needed when.
Schedules/screens could also be at Info Desk.  Fast Track also needs more
helpers.  Communications is a problem as radios have difficulty working on
some hotel floors.  Need telephones in some rooms that currently don’t have
them.  (Have to also make sure telephones are turned on by the Hotel
operators.)

 

Meeting ended at 9:50PM.

 

 

 

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