On Convention Events and Running on Time

[kevin_standlee]

In a venue that I cannot name or quote, I saw a sarcastic retort from someone working in a technical position on a certain convention's events that I interpreted as, "But of course big events will always run late, by their nature, and we techies will be held responsible for it, so we simply have to work until we drop dead." I started to reply, but thought better of it. However, I'm going to get it out of my system here.

In general, I would say that convention events running late is a management failure, not a technical one. (This discounts acts of Ghod and truly unforeseeable developments.)

In my years of convention attendance (going back to 1984), I've encountered an attitude that "of course, all Events start late." When the 2005 Worldcon in Glasgow asked me to manage their Events division, I decided to make starting on time a priority, and every one of the area heads knew that, and all of the staff under them knew that. It was not easy, but we did it. The latest start was 1 minute late, and that was partially because we actually forgot to include in our timeline a single person who could say "go," which left me — because I was actually the first speaker on the event in question — running around at about curtain -10 minutes trying to figure out who would give me a cue. (We fixed this before the next night's event.) We also had a Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads to not run long, because on the final night, we had to be 100% out of the building by midnight or face a large (high four figures in GBP) half-day rental on the event center. We did it, and I was happy to approve the expense voucher for drinks and food for the events crew who made it happen, but as far as I could see, nobody was killing themselves trying to make it happen. Working hard, yes, but not destroying themselves.

Our doors opened on time (and could have opened 30 minutes early, but the paid stewards wouldn't open them). Our events started on time. I'm pretty sure we had some people turning up at 8:45 for the 8 PM masquerade saying, "What do you mean, it's already running? These things always start an hour late." (In railroading, the equivalent is "How dare you actually have the 5:12 PM departure actually leave at 5:12!" which was said to be the reaction of commuters when the Rock Island cleaned up their act with their commuter trains and got them running on time.) Our events ended within the expected envelope, and we were out of our venues on time.

We managed to do this because everyone, at all levels, knew that it was a priority to get it done, and they worked to make it happen. The priorities were communicated through every level of the event as far as I could tell. (The staff did throw me out of backstage during rehearsals because as they put it in keeping with the convention's "Spaceport Glasgow" theme, having the Captain prowling around belowdecks was making the ratings nervous. They were right to do so.) I'm proud of the job we did in Glasgow, and I am happy to point to it as an example that says, "We can do this."

Events is not my responsibility at this Worldcon. I'm merely a staff member over in the Business Meeting. But I'm saying here that it is possible to make things run to time, as long as everyone involved, including the event participants, commit to doing so. If you assume that things are going to run overtime, they will run overtime.

Comments

[clothsprogs.livejournal.com]

I was Mightily Impressed not only by the fact that the Masquerade ran on time, in Glasgow, but that it went so smoothly.

Teddy

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I was also incredibly impressed by how well everyone — and that includes the "talent" such as you — hit their marks and did their jobs. It showed that we can do this, even if we are all a bunch of amateurs. (And I mean that in the classical sense of "amateur" as someone who does something for the love of it.) When we got to Glasgow, my job was mostly limited to walking around in a white captain's uniform and encouraging people, plus giving a short safety speech at the start of some of the major events. It was up to everyone else to make sure things actually happened.

[(Anonymous)]

It's always been possible - it's just a case of making it a priority - I'm not even a little surprised that you were able to pull that off :)

~Twilight2000

[kproche.livejournal.com]

We had similar priorities for the Reno Worldcon masquerade in 2011. We had to hold for 15 minutes because a judge got lost because of the casino lights (literally), but we made up the time and ended exactly when we said we would.

I have a similar massive distaste for the term "drag time"

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

I was mightily impressed at how you did a live reality show in the masquerade half time. That was extraordinarily well done. But then again, we didn't ask you to wind up early, either. (Remembers the one time a convention asked us to do Match Game SF as a masquerade half time and then cut us off short to make up for other parts running long. Never Again.

[qeldoq.livejournal.com]

I found that one of the key things to determine was what did "starting time" actually mean -- was it the time that the doors were opened or was it the time that the show started? Once that key decision is made, everything else flows from it.

A few years ago, I unexpectedly ended up with tickets to see Wicked in LA. It was the first professional production I had seen since dealing with main events at a convention, and I had as much fun watching the setup and crew as the show. I learned that it does take understanding about the many moving parts, that you have to have a specific person who is the "House Manager" or "Stage Manager" who says it's time to open the doors, etc. Having a "lobby" area with a bar and food goes a long way to keep people happy. And taking 30 minutes to get 5 more people seated is not in the best interests of the show as a whole.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I learned a lot by tagging along the year before I ran the Events division and learned why you need a Front of House Manager, etc. That running around I mentioned above (because we somehow forgot the final cue) was me taking responsibility for my own mistaking and going to each of the various people (the Event Manager, the House Manager, the Tech Manager, and whatever else we had and getting a "go" from them.) You could certainly color me relieved when the word was "go" from everyone. The following night, the Stage Manager (on communication to everyone else) was able to do the poll to make sure she could tap me on the shoulder at the Voice of Ghod microphone to cue me: "Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome aboard the WSFS Armadillo, pride of the White Star Federated Spacelines...."

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

I tuned out a lot of that conversation, but I think he was referring to the setup or rehearsals running late. E.G. you have more Masq entries than you planned for and you don't want to turn them away and they all need more TLC in the rehearsals, so rehearsals run late, and then you need to reset the room, and then you have less time than budgeted for dinner. Or the FGOH (Filk) shows up late for sound check and takes a long time and you run over. Etc.

Also, people have been trying to recruit staff for that convention. And have been falling. This isn't just Tech. I know at least two other areas (which I will share with you privately if you want) that feel they are badly under staffed. I'm not sure exactly what is going on. Probably lots of things. A lot of people got badly burnt out after London. The economy is still in the toilet in many ways. Etc. (I can think of at least two more reasons which I am not going to speak of publicly.)

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, I recognize that things can go wrong. We probably over-provided for Bad Things in Glasgow, many of which never happened so you never saw the provisions. (For example, there was an open breezeway between the back stage and the staging area for the Masquerade, which means that if it had rained we were going to send someone out to buy every golf umbrella they could find and draft people into forming a human shield for the participants. Thankfully, it did not rain.)

But you know, I've been hearing "the economy is in the toilet" for most of the past two decades. Based on what I've heard, the economy is never good, and it never will be good. Ever. We're all screwed, and everyone is flat broke. We might as well just shut down Worldcon, stop running SF conventions, and all go home and huddle in the darkness until The End. I'm sort of wondering if maybe the overheated economy of the late 1990s tech boom is what too many people think is "normal," sort of like how some manic-depressives think that the manic phase is "normal" and everything else is abnormal.

[howeird]

Thanks for the first-hand take. I would say you were fortunate in your tech. I've seen filk cons with the best of intentions run late because of complex tech changes required between sets. I've also seen masquerades and dances run late because tech could not set up in time, or the techies got contestant media out of order.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

That's true, and there's no denying that things can go wrong. But much of that can be ameliorated by sufficient application of resources up front, or possibly cutting back your ambitions to match available resources. We did both of these in Glasgow. We managed to coax sufficient resources to get a portable tech studio brought in (the "tech trailer"), which significantly reduced set-up problems, and we cut back some things I wanted to have (we would otherwise have been the first Worldcon to live-stream our Hugo Awards) because the money and people points needed to do it weren't there.

Things do go wrong. We got lucky in many places. We had some really good people who worked well and gave their fellow members an excellent set of shows that I think most of them enjoyed. For a bunch of amateurs (yes, many of them were on "busman's holidays" doing their Day Jobbes for free for the love it) we were great, and I'm proud of the entire team. OTOH, I'm not sure I ever want to run an Events division ever again. In many respects, I found it harder than chairing a Worldcon. Middle management is hard.

[rono-60103.livejournal.com]

I've been on programming operations enough to know that programming not only can, but pretty much has to, run on time. (The fact that a major use of prog-ops staff is to run the "5 minuets remaining" and "times up" sings, at many cons is strong evidence of this).

But, events does seem to at least function differently. As you showed in 2005, if the expectations are there, it doesn't have to - or at least start times should be met. I can see a situation where masquerade could end up runny longer than planned - if it got significantly more enteries than expected.

On the other hand, tech can be an area where there is a smaller pool of volunteers capable of doing skilled work, which can lead to delays. For example, I know that last year we risked delays with the concert at Westercon (since it was on Friday) given that was a smallish pool of capable people who were able to work on getting the lights set up - and they were the chair, treasurer (who was functioning as more of a vice chair than the vice chair at that point), a very skilled volunteer (a lighting pro from local public TV, IIRC) and Rick, who was there to discuss Worldcon issues while we were trying to get this done and ended up helping a bit. We also had a similar issue with the masquerade since the sound tech was doing double duty and was covering concert sound during rehearsal and nobody was there to sort out the sound cues correctly.