120 Gaming Events and Counting...
For those wondering why I seem to have dropped off the face of the planet, the explanation is simple: the preparations for TempleCon 2008 have consumed my life.
As one of the co-founders of the convention, I wear many hats in the TempleCon organization. The official hat is, of course, Creative Director - that person who determines the direction of TempleCon's image and the design of our promotional materials, as well as organizing the art show and acting as the convention liaison to Guest of Honor Artists. This year, we have four Guest of Honor Artists: Quinton Hoover, Heather V. Kreiter, Rick Sardinha, and Cyril Van Der Haegen. In addition, we have two Gaming Industry Guests of Honor coming out from Privateer Press: Press Gang Quarter Master Dan (PPS_Biggie) Brandt and Developer Kevin Clark (a.k.a. "the rules guy"), and they are organizing a WARMACHINE Hardcore event for TempleCon 2008 - one of only five such events in history. Thankfully, the arrangements for the guys from Privateer Press are being handled mostly on their end, or by the local press gangers, but it does make for a whole bunch of additional publicity to be done, including the TempleCon write-up in January's No Quarter Magazine. Which brings us back to those many hats I wear...
One of the side-effects of having been an Art major/English minor in college is that one gets called upon to both create images and write stuff... In this case, the "stuff" is more of what I already currently do on a freelance basis for Gallery Z in Providence: publicity. As one half of Owl and Crow Studios (or as we half-jokingly refer to it, the Ministry of Propaganda), I write email newsletters for the gallery on a semi-regular basis, and Grant designs the graphics for them. While there are some nights when I have to fish for potentially-usable content from a maze of email snippets from the gallery owner and his assistant as well as websites of groups co-sponsoring events at the gallery, ultimately, the lion's share of the difficulty in constructing these newsletters falls on Grant's shoulders - he is extraordinarily good at making crappy source material look darned good, but it sometimes takes hours worth of work for something that people will skim through in minutes.
Now apply that to the convention: Grant is in charge of the website and its graphics (among the other hats that he wears), and I write content. Not only website content, but posts to online convention listings & those forums that allow posts regarding events as well as mailing lists for gamers and other groups, plus the press release and related information. Have a question about the convention? Chances are that I will be the one answering it. Registering for the convention? Your confirmation of your registration comes from me. Thinking about running a game at the con? Your game-master application and all future correspondence about your event runs through my email.
Which leads me to another hat: Event Coordinator. Because I have inhuman spatial reasoning skills, I am the person who determines allocation of space for events, and juggles the various time slots until everything fits. This means that I know what events are being scheduled, what events still need to be scheduled, and I know what we're running before our website tells anyone else. Not only do I coordinate gaming events, but also other related events, such as the reading by Writer Guest of Honor C.J. Henderson, or the weekend-long costume contest, or the miniatures-painting contest, or the screening of the independent horror film "The Sacrifice." It all goes into my files, and somehow, thus far, I've managed to keep it all coordinated.
The strange thing is, now that we are in our third year, with attendance and volunteer numbers continuing to jump each year, you would think that I could start delegating some of this stuff out to other staff members. Unfortunately, that is just not the case. Most people who volunteer at conventions are doing so with the expectation of a limited chunk of their time being taken up by that convention, and they certainly don't expect to have to devote several months out of each year to the planning and coordination of an event that lasts only three days. For all of the wonderful, dedicated people that we have on board this year as staff, in the end, the responsibility for making sure that TempleCon 2008 meets the increasingly high standards that we set for it falls squarely on the shoulders of those with the original vision. It's our baby, and no matter how proud we are of it, we can't expect it to be able to go running off on its own without a few more years of pretty intense involvement on our part.
Watching this event take shape, I am sometimes a little startled by what it's becoming - seeing the TempleCon name turn up in places where I never mentioned it, having people contacting us out of the blue about art space, and vendor space, and events, and so forth. I am grateful that I still continue to be pleased with this convention's direction and the audience that it is attracting, that it is still something that I can be proud of, and that it has gained more positive recognition than I had ever previously imagined. But as proud as I am, I know that at no time between now and February can we afford to rest on our laurels. To be the TempleCon that we have envisioned requires ongoing work.
And when it is all done? Sleep. ;)
As one of the co-founders of the convention, I wear many hats in the TempleCon organization. The official hat is, of course, Creative Director - that person who determines the direction of TempleCon's image and the design of our promotional materials, as well as organizing the art show and acting as the convention liaison to Guest of Honor Artists. This year, we have four Guest of Honor Artists: Quinton Hoover, Heather V. Kreiter, Rick Sardinha, and Cyril Van Der Haegen. In addition, we have two Gaming Industry Guests of Honor coming out from Privateer Press: Press Gang Quarter Master Dan (PPS_Biggie) Brandt and Developer Kevin Clark (a.k.a. "the rules guy"), and they are organizing a WARMACHINE Hardcore event for TempleCon 2008 - one of only five such events in history. Thankfully, the arrangements for the guys from Privateer Press are being handled mostly on their end, or by the local press gangers, but it does make for a whole bunch of additional publicity to be done, including the TempleCon write-up in January's No Quarter Magazine. Which brings us back to those many hats I wear...
One of the side-effects of having been an Art major/English minor in college is that one gets called upon to both create images and write stuff... In this case, the "stuff" is more of what I already currently do on a freelance basis for Gallery Z in Providence: publicity. As one half of Owl and Crow Studios (or as we half-jokingly refer to it, the Ministry of Propaganda), I write email newsletters for the gallery on a semi-regular basis, and Grant designs the graphics for them. While there are some nights when I have to fish for potentially-usable content from a maze of email snippets from the gallery owner and his assistant as well as websites of groups co-sponsoring events at the gallery, ultimately, the lion's share of the difficulty in constructing these newsletters falls on Grant's shoulders - he is extraordinarily good at making crappy source material look darned good, but it sometimes takes hours worth of work for something that people will skim through in minutes.
Now apply that to the convention: Grant is in charge of the website and its graphics (among the other hats that he wears), and I write content. Not only website content, but posts to online convention listings & those forums that allow posts regarding events as well as mailing lists for gamers and other groups, plus the press release and related information. Have a question about the convention? Chances are that I will be the one answering it. Registering for the convention? Your confirmation of your registration comes from me. Thinking about running a game at the con? Your game-master application and all future correspondence about your event runs through my email.
Which leads me to another hat: Event Coordinator. Because I have inhuman spatial reasoning skills, I am the person who determines allocation of space for events, and juggles the various time slots until everything fits. This means that I know what events are being scheduled, what events still need to be scheduled, and I know what we're running before our website tells anyone else. Not only do I coordinate gaming events, but also other related events, such as the reading by Writer Guest of Honor C.J. Henderson, or the weekend-long costume contest, or the miniatures-painting contest, or the screening of the independent horror film "The Sacrifice." It all goes into my files, and somehow, thus far, I've managed to keep it all coordinated.
The strange thing is, now that we are in our third year, with attendance and volunteer numbers continuing to jump each year, you would think that I could start delegating some of this stuff out to other staff members. Unfortunately, that is just not the case. Most people who volunteer at conventions are doing so with the expectation of a limited chunk of their time being taken up by that convention, and they certainly don't expect to have to devote several months out of each year to the planning and coordination of an event that lasts only three days. For all of the wonderful, dedicated people that we have on board this year as staff, in the end, the responsibility for making sure that TempleCon 2008 meets the increasingly high standards that we set for it falls squarely on the shoulders of those with the original vision. It's our baby, and no matter how proud we are of it, we can't expect it to be able to go running off on its own without a few more years of pretty intense involvement on our part.
Watching this event take shape, I am sometimes a little startled by what it's becoming - seeing the TempleCon name turn up in places where I never mentioned it, having people contacting us out of the blue about art space, and vendor space, and events, and so forth. I am grateful that I still continue to be pleased with this convention's direction and the audience that it is attracting, that it is still something that I can be proud of, and that it has gained more positive recognition than I had ever previously imagined. But as proud as I am, I know that at no time between now and February can we afford to rest on our laurels. To be the TempleCon that we have envisioned requires ongoing work.
And when it is all done? Sleep. ;)