[ST] Registration Report

[Amy Chused]

[Note:  I took a nasty cold home with me from Arisia.  Please blame
any typoes, accidental insults or logical fallacies to
report-producing with a cold-clogged brain. --Amy]

Arisia Area Head Report

Name of Area?

Registration

What you did?

It wasn't just me; it was me and Jasra and LA and Jan pre-con, and
lots more people at con, but what we did was:

Pre-con: Enter the registrations for everyone with an earned comp from
last year.  Process all the year-ahead and on-line registrations for
this year.  Send helpful e-mail to folks having trouble using paypal
to purchase registrations.  Answer questions from folks about whether
or not they were registered.  Work with Dealer's Liaison to get all
the dealer registrations processed.  Work with events, programming,
gaming, fast track, babysitting, massage den, ops, etc (all the
various divisions) to do our best to get everyone's staff comped ahead
of time, using both personal e-mail and some spreadsheets shared via
Google Docs.  Arrange a rough staffing schedule for registration ahead
of time, again using Google Docs.

At-con: Staff the registration desk on Thursday for a test-setup and
to print staff badges, and then on Friday through Monday for our
registrants.  Print many many badges.  Sell year-ahead memberships.
Track how close we were to the various caps as the cap was changed,
and make sure that the conchair and the E-board were aware as we
approached each cap.

What went right?
1. Registration in general – 2369 registered, 2280 badged, and the
lines never got terribly long.

2. Using the rope and stanchion to make a line area, and having the
for pay folks in the far corner, so that the pre-reg folks could get
through quickly.  (Although after the Saturday evening rejiggering of
the line for the Masquerade, it was never returned to the formerly
helpful configuration, and was more confusing than helpful for the
last two days.)

3. Dave's software (congo, coconut) rocks!

4. The policy that anyone who should have been comped but wasn't
needed a note from their dept/division head (or anyone senior,
including Tem) and could get comped quickly – this was not so much
hassle that folks didn't get comped as needed, but it allowed us to
track how many last minute comps there were (Many – Jasra has all the
notes).

5. Creating the book of useful information to hold the schedule,
contact information, comp lists and other such useful registration
information turned out to be, in fact, useful.

6. Asking for volunteers to loan us space heaters.  They weren't
enough, but they did help.  Also, the drape that we borrowed from Tech
for the Monday load out – it helped decrease the gusts of sharp cold
air, although it didn't do anything to improve the ambient cold
temperature.

7. Having the gmail reg at arisia.org archives available at the
registration desk.  There were some people whose registrations were
missed in the on-line processing, but they were easily found in the
archives and fixed.

8. The $10 off Sunday coupon for people who couldn't get in Saturday.
To my knowledge, only one person used it, but it was a nice touch.

9. Knowledgeable, hardworking volunteers, both experienced and new,
that pitched in and helped reg run smoothly.

What went wrong? and What should be done differently next year?

1. The registration area was FREEZING.  The registering members
complained about it, but the registration staff really suffered.  Many
of us have gotten sick as well. I wore my pretty Arisia staff T-shirt,
and then put a long sleeve shirt on that and then put a sweater on top
of that and then a winter coat on top of that.  Some of my staff had
pretty hall costumes that needed serious compromising to prevent them
from freezing.

Recommended Solution: I would need to look again to see if it would be
possible to move registration into the hallway between the garage and
the lobby.  Unfortunately, I suspect that space is just too narrow.
Failing that, we need to give some serious thought to heating the
registration area.  It was uncomfortable on Friday and Saturday, when
the outside temperatures were relatively warm, but on Sunday and
Monday, staffing registration was painfully cold.  Perhaps the
convention or the hotel could hire the kind of ambient heaters that
restaurants hang over doors?

2. We blew the fuse when we had two space heaters on the same circuit.

Recommended solution A(preferred): Move registration so that we don't
freeze next year.
Recommended solution B: No more than one space heater per circuit

3. Dealer's registrations were challenging at best.  The information
from dealers liaison was not specific as to how many memberships had
been bought at what price for what dealerships and what individual
names.

Recommended solution:  Add an optional Company Name field, plus/minus
a "dealers" check box to the on-line registration form and ask all
dealers to purchase their memberships through the on-line registration
form.  This will also ensure that the prices dealers purchased their
memberships at will be recorded automatically.

4. Many people who believed that they should have been comped weren't
comped until the day of the convention.

Recommended solution:  This is a multi-part problem.  Some of these
folks probably didn't turn in their time sheets.  Some of their time
sheets may have gotten lost.  Some of the time sheets that didn't get
lost probably weren't transcribed into the registration system
properly, and some of the double checking that needed to happen
didn't.  We need to be precise about our time sheet tracking this
year, but I would recommend one further step:  Pre-con, that we
publish an periodically updated alphabetical by last name (+/- sorted
by comp type) list of everyone that is in the registration system as
comped, and ask department and division heads to check their expected
people against that list so that, ideally, we can fix missing comps
pre-con.

5. There was no clear registration type for the Student Art Contest
finalists and their parents.  Students were given Art Show Comps and
their parents/relatives were given single day Event comps, but this
was not clearly defined ahead of time.

Recommended solution: Define a type for Art Show Student Finalists and
Art Show Relatives or declare that they are properly comp'd under
either events or art show.

6. There is no mechanism in the registration system to show people
purchasing 2 one-day passes.  Some people wanted to purchase
Sunday/Monday.  They were given full weekend passes with the price
changed to 40, but that throws off our full price full weekend pass
count.

Recommended solution: Create a Sunday/Monday membership type.

7. Many complaints pre-con about being unable to purchase single day
memberships ahead of time, and thus being unable to plan with
confidence

Recommended solution: After the prices reach the at-the-door price, it
would be reasonable to sell non-cap-applicable (ie,
Friday/Sunday/Monday) single day badges on-line.

8. One of our volunteers was excellent at cleaning things up so that
they couldn't be found the following morning, and at consolidating
boxes so that items from multiple sources were in the same storage
unit.

Recommended solution: Either ask her not to help clean again, or have
a manager watcher her closely.

9. Some people didn't reach the desk with IDs out, and some students
neglected to bring their student IDs to the con with them.

Recommended solution: Better signage next year

10. Having an insomniac night-owl (me) be the person in charge of
opening registration every morning did not harm registration, but was
rather hard on the insomniac night-owl.

Recommended Solution: Next year, we plan to divvy up the
responsibilities so that we don't have the same person opening all 4
days.

11. A number of events folks whose badges were pre-printed stopped by
reg to get their badges.  A number of events folks whose badges were
not pre-printed picked up their event packets and then back-tracked to
get their badges.

Recommended Solution: Since the registration lines weren't that long,
we might consider having all the events badges be printed on demand
and/or allow the event coordinator to get all their people's badges
printed when the event coordinator checks in.  Alternatively, we need
to post a sign about which events badges were pre-printed and which
were not.

12. A number of panelists were shocked to find that they didn't have 3
panels and that they weren't pre-registered.  They would get sent to
program nexus to try to negotiate a third panel, and then sent back to
registration with a note from programming saying "comp 'em".  Or
they'd just pay and be shocked.

Recommended Solution:  Better programming <-> panelist communication pre-con.

What sort of schedule/timeline did you use?
Pre-con, we processed registrations as they came in.  We set deadlines
for comp-requests (by January 1 for snark-free comps, by January 8th
for snark-lite comps), but received several last minute comp requests
regardless.  At con, we manned registration on Thursday from about 5
to about 7 or 8, and then on Friday through Monday in accordance with
our published schedule.

Are the any changes you'd make to the schedule for next year?
I'd like to make the comps deadlines a bit tighter, since having a lot
of last minute comps makes it very difficult for us to accurately
anticipate the caps.

Vendors you used?
Stonekeep Consulting (aka Dave Belfer-Shevett & co) provided the
hardware, software and pre-illustrated badges. (Thanks for the
gorgeous artwork Mouse!)

Staples provided paper, pens, notepads, notebook, etc.
Trader Joes provided registration staff snacks.

Experiments to try next year?

HEAT!!!!!

Having several different people share responsibility for opening and
closing registration.

Posting a list of comped people to the staff web site and asking folks
to make sure that everyone they expect to be comped is comped, to see
if that will give us fewer last minute comps.

Any comments about the rest of the con (other divisions, hotel, ...)?

Hotel liaison and the hotel itself were very helpful when we needed
our water and when we blew a fuse.
Tech was fantastic about lending us a heavy drape to cut the drafts.
Next year we'll ask earlier.
Sign shop was very responsive about fixing missing signs, after a slow
start that involved missing signs *wry grin*.
Program Nexus was great about letting us store our stuff in their room.
Ops was great about making sure we had a radio (and finding ours when
we lost it), and getting us the apology letter when we capped on
Saturday, and coping with after hours reg questions and getting us the
Year-Ahead form, even if it was a pain to rip the non-perforated
receipt off that form.

--Amy Chused