On With the Show
Behind the cut is a photo of our Match Game SF set-up on Saturday night of Westercon 66, before people began to arrive.
I have been trying to take pictures of all of our sets to show to convention Programming people who have not seen one of our shows but hear about this "Match Game" thing. Since fewer and fewer people have seen the original show, they have difficult visualizing it. More than once we have been given a room with a single head table, since all program items are talking head panels.
Honestly, as a conrunner myself, I can completely understand why a convention wouldn't be interested in carving out at least four hours of program time on an item that requires a complete room re-set. We need three head tables (two of them staggered oddly), plus two more tables for tech and for displaying prizes. It takes at least an hour (two is better) to set up the tech gear. We generally cannot rely on the gear on-site. At one convention the Super Tech Team insisted that we should just use their kit. Lisa just kept setting up her smaller kit that she knows how to work. We were 45 minutes into our show before the Super Tech Team found the power switch on their kit.
We also refuse to be the "Masquerade Half Time" show, after an unfortunate experience where we had been expecting to do at least three and optimally four games and instead were booted out after two games and told that there was something more important to go on after us. (In other words, because other things had run long, we had to be cut.) Honestly, there's so much gear in our show that we'd really prefer not to do it at all unless we're going to play at least four games. Even better turns out to be a four-game show early in the convention and a "late night" show late in the convention.
If this is too much for a convention to do for us, I have no hard feelings. Conventions are difficult. Programming/Events managers have to balance a lot of things. I feel no sense of entitlement. But if you do invite us, and provide us with the room and set-up we request, we'll work our tails off for you to entertain our fellow fans and give everyone a good time.
I have been trying to take pictures of all of our sets to show to convention Programming people who have not seen one of our shows but hear about this "Match Game" thing. Since fewer and fewer people have seen the original show, they have difficult visualizing it. More than once we have been given a room with a single head table, since all program items are talking head panels.
Honestly, as a conrunner myself, I can completely understand why a convention wouldn't be interested in carving out at least four hours of program time on an item that requires a complete room re-set. We need three head tables (two of them staggered oddly), plus two more tables for tech and for displaying prizes. It takes at least an hour (two is better) to set up the tech gear. We generally cannot rely on the gear on-site. At one convention the Super Tech Team insisted that we should just use their kit. Lisa just kept setting up her smaller kit that she knows how to work. We were 45 minutes into our show before the Super Tech Team found the power switch on their kit.
We also refuse to be the "Masquerade Half Time" show, after an unfortunate experience where we had been expecting to do at least three and optimally four games and instead were booted out after two games and told that there was something more important to go on after us. (In other words, because other things had run long, we had to be cut.) Honestly, there's so much gear in our show that we'd really prefer not to do it at all unless we're going to play at least four games. Even better turns out to be a four-game show early in the convention and a "late night" show late in the convention.
If this is too much for a convention to do for us, I have no hard feelings. Conventions are difficult. Programming/Events managers have to balance a lot of things. I feel no sense of entitlement. But if you do invite us, and provide us with the room and set-up we request, we'll work our tails off for you to entertain our fellow fans and give everyone a good time.