From The List That Shall Not Be Named

[kevin_standlee]

Consider the words "amateur," "amateurishly," "professional," and "professionally." Note the subtle distinctions in meaning between the nouns and the related adverbs. Discussions about convention-running can get derailed when people use the terms meaning one of those senses to mean the other one.

I am an amateur convention runner, in that I do it for love, not money. (You really couldn't afford my professional rates.) I attempt to carry out my hobby professionally, in that I want things to work well and not look badly-organized.

Comments

[redneckotaku.livejournal.com]

That is one of my mantras in convention running. I am also not the best at that. I do have fanboy moments and it is why you will never see me as a Guest Relations person at a con. One thing I want to say to that list that shall never be named is what Christian Brock told me about Budgets, "You budget to Break even by Budgeting for a small profit." You put in a little extra to cover cost overruns (like emergency runs on Saturday for the Con Suite).

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, and there are plenty of people on that list who would agree with you. ConJose was budgeted to have a surplus of between $100,000 and $200,000 (on $1m turnover), but that's including all of the contingency funds and the planned post-con reimbursement of over $100,000 in memberships for the program participants, volunteers, staff, and committee. And we ended up not having nearly as many things go wrong as one might expect, either, but that's how contingency planning goes; sometimes you get lucky.

Obviously, if we were an ongoing convention, we would have built up a contingency fund that would have allowed us to not have to hold back close to 20% of our anticipated revenue just to cover contingencies. That extra expense, which otherwise could be returned to the members in the form of lower membership prices or enhanced membership services of some sort, is literally the price we pay for having Worldcon be independent and new each year.

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

Please, you should not be describing yourself as an

amateur

convention runner, but as

Kevin Standlee, Gentleman Convention Runner

.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, of course! Now you may have inspired me to make business cards thus inscribed.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

I still remember a conversation from high school during which the yearbook advisor (I was on the newspaper staff) embarrassed me for saying I was trying to do a professional job of something.

He told me I was using the word improperly. Now that I'm a teacher myself, I don't think it was right for a grown man to try to shame a teenage girl, especially when we're talking about the same distinction.

Yeah, I think that guy was kind of a jerk.

[(Anonymous)]

The problem is that some misguided people might still take these words out of context. If you say you tried to run a convention professionally, you are likely to get comments like "See! See! I told you Kevin was getting paid for running the convention!" even though that is nothing like what you meant.

--Joshua

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're quite right. That's why you must be careful in the way you word things. For example, I'd never use the sentence you proposed, exactly because of the potential for misunderstanding.