More Training the Trainer

[kevin_standlee]

Tom Whitmore has said, and I agree with him, that conrunners are awful at training. We do apprenticeship, and sometimes not even that very well. We say, "Here, carry this anvil for me, and walk off this diving board into the swimming pool. Hey! We even put some water in there so it will be a soft landing!" Later, if the person comes back up, we repeat the process. If they don't come back up again, we go look for someone else to carry the next anvil.

The intent was that the first part of the panel was to be Tom running his "Elevator Party Host" training. I've been through this a couple of times, and have done EPH duties myself, and was able to help out with the role-playing (both the troublesome cases and demonstrating some of the mechanics of keeping the elevator going smoothly). Others here who have done the job, like Patty Wells (who was one of the original crop of EPHs at the Atlanta Worldcon where they invented the EPH concept as a reaction to the overloaded elevators that (slowly) slid down into the basement without stopping), chipped in her anecdotes about helping invent a job that has never been done before.

This ended up taking 45 minutes -- probably more than originally intended -- which gave us less time to critique training or to discuss how to go about creating a training process. However, it got people thinking about the whole concept, and maybe that will be useful for the future.

Comments

[lysana.livejournal.com]

That is so true. And it contributes to burnout. blackfyr and I tried to make sure the folks who took over the BayCon newsletter knew enough to fly solo before we handed the reins over.

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

And if we dig far enough back into fannish history, I believe that kevin_standlee himself used to be the Baycon newsletter expert...

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, I did do the newsletter for a couple of years and also was on its staff for at least one other that I recall, but I (a) didn't do the first BayCon 'zine and (b) didn't do particularly good succession planning.

There was a time around 1989-92 when I was specializing in convention 'zines. I did the 'zines for BayCon and SiliCon, and also once for OryCon. But it's a young fan's game, at least the way I do it, and I can't take the hours anymore. During one particular BayCon I think I might have gotten as much as eight hours sleep over the entire four days of the convention. I could do that when I was 25, but not when I'm 40.