Running a Worldcon filk track

[oreouk]

This is a set of notes in no particular order which were collated by me (Lissa Allcock, should anyone be stumbling on this and not know) as a result of working on Loncon3's filk track in 2014.

I'm not kidding about the 'no particular order' bit - this is just as the memories struck me.

Comments

[bedlamhouse]

Great list! Here's some things I would add from our experience at LoneStarCon 3 (LSC) among others - maybe this can become a wider set of experiences and notes or morph into a "guide":

- North American Worldcon experience is that having multiple night time filk rooms is desirable. In recent years, 3 rooms seems plenty and two is probably sufficient. However many there are, one will ALWAYS be packed and one will ALWAYS seem empty - Sod's Law ensures that the packed one will be the smaller room and the empty one will be the larger one. Sigh.

- especially when integrating filk into an overall music track watch out for a too-large concert room. At LSC we landed by default into a huge and boomy space because our original space was put under renovation by the hotel. Since it was done last-minute we were unable to ameliorate the problem but our suggestions were to bring in curtains or portable walls to reduce the space (among other things).

- an early-in-the-con open sound desk 101 seminar can attract new tech runners to the fold, sometimes bringing in people who can be trusted to run easier setups during the con itself. Be sure to work with your tech crew on scheduling so that it does not interfere with setup time - though we have been very successful making setup a PART of the seminar at smaller cons heh heh heh...

- if tech is not coming from the filk community it is even more important to communicate what is needed in terms of equipment. They may have assumptions based on previous professional work and so may not anticipate that some filk performers are not familiar with what is available.

- music stands and guitar stands are an often overlooked necessity. Performers traveling from a long distance can't transport these easily.

- constantly confirm with the program(me) coordinators to make sure concerts and music performances are present in PRs and specialty grids/lists. Lack of listing is not out of malice, it is out of habit that certain items are performances and other ones aren't on the radar. To help with this, try to schedule any anchor items (such as performances by con guests or high profile musicians) as early in the planning cycle as possible.

- (LSC Specific) the first night of the con was listed as "music night". We weren't able to do everything we wanted because not enough dependable performers had arrived by Thursday (in particular we wanted "buskers" at strategic points all over the con), but we were able to cluster the biggest draws (Seanan, Leslie Fish, etc.) to take place in the same room as Opening Ceremonies immediately following Opening Ceremonies (and therefore held a much larger than usual crowd).

I will come back to this as I think of more things. This is a great idea.

[oreouk]

Thanks. Once it's been up for a while and accumulated anything else we want to add I would not be averse to trying to edit into something more coherent and linear to be an ongoing resource to people running filk streams and other such events. Some of it is relevant to general con running, but there are a lot of extra things involved in running the con side of a filk con that I didn't want to include.