Construction: Saturday Night at the Zoo

As Saturday night's social activity, most of the members of the convention gathered to play If I Ran the Zoo...Con, the simulation game of bidding, planning, and running a Worldcon first used at SMOFCon 3 and published by NESFA Press. Although it was written twenty years ago and therefore has some elements that have dated a bit, it remains a fun game for a large group of people with an interest in convention-running to work through the challenges and trade-offs inherent in such a large, complex undertaking.

( I'm running out of photo space already, but... )

As is usual, we had difficulty getting this game started on time, and we therefore did not get to play enough scenarios to get the full impact of how decisions made early can have consequences later. It is a little slow to start, because most people hate social mixers. I'm only sorry that some of the people who came for the SFSFC Board meeting did not stick around for the social after, even some who had ConStruction memberships. As I said, people who have not seen the game may think it's one of those contrived socials where you're forced to do silly things. I don't think this game does that. Mainly your teams just discuss decisions. Once we get started, most people start getting into the spirit of it and enjoying themselves.

I had a great time hosting the game, as I always have in the past, and I think ConStruction for asking me again to run it this year. But now it's nearly 1 AM and I am just dead on my feet and must get some sleep. Now I'm really glad that I didn't commute to the convention, as there would have been a good chance of me falling asleep at the wheel driving home to Fremont.

ConStruction: Sunday

Today's program consisted of Sunday "Networking" Brunch, followed by panels and workshops on networking and strategic planning, then a wrap-up session. I was again the Portable Registration Desk, and -- knowing that we were going to have a few Sunday-only attendees -- asked co-chair Craige Howlett what a Sunday-only membership was. He looked at me like I'd suddenly sprouted a second head. I said, "It'll be twenty dollars unless you say differently, because there's only about one-third the programming today that there was yesterday. He said that was okay, so I dealt with people like bovil accordingly.

In the feedback session, people generally said they found the panels and workshops valuable, although they wondered why the workshops (which usually immediately followed a panel on the same subject) were always in a different room than the panel. This turned out to be deliberate, and would have been more obvious if the hotel had set the "workshop" room the way originally requested, with several round tables instead of lecture-style-with-head-table. I once again encouraged people to apply for the SMOFCon scholarships, there was a final round of thank-yous, and then we were done. Many people stuck around to go hang out in the bar or go to dinner, but I had to go home. It's been a long weekend.

I'd write more and point people to photos; however, the photos are only on my camera, I'm out of room on my own LJ account and want to post the photos to the SFSFC ConStruction web site first, and I'm very, very tired and need to get a few things done for work before falling into bed and getting up early tomorrow for yet another early-morning conference call. Photos of ConStruction will have to wait.