Reapercon Report

[Argentee]

32 minutes ago, Heisler said:

Well the alphabetizing should be something we can easily rectify the rest of it is up in the air. While it is easy to say just move up the time slot, judges and other volunteers are doing things that take up that hour when they should be able to eat. While everyone else is taking classes or gaming or relaxing or eating. The MSP Open volunteers are doing all kinds of last minute things that have to be done to pull the awards ceremony off. That can cut heavily into that hour and asking them to figure out food for themselves when giving up their time is not an easy thing to do.

Maybe Reapercon can spring for a meal for the judges and volunteers working the awards ceremony? Or at the very least a cooler stashed with bottled waters and sodas? Would that help?

[Guindyloo]

23 minutes ago, Heisler said:

Well the alphabetizing should be something we can easily rectify the rest of it is up in the air. While it is easy to say just move up the time slot, judges and other volunteers are doing things that take up that hour when they should be able to eat. While everyone else is taking classes or gaming or relaxing or eating. The MSP Open volunteers are doing all kinds of last minute things that have to be done to pull the awards ceremony off. That can cut heavily into that hour and asking them to figure out food for themselves when giving up their time is not an easy thing to do.

 

Which is why I personally think it would be better to reschedule those Saturday afternoon classes to other days rather than ask volunteers to scramble to eat and then get back to work. Incidentally, it is also the volunteer judges and associated positions that I'm also thinking of regarding the award ceremony running so late in the evening. As it was the ceremony was over 2 hours long. What about when it expands to 3 hours? Or 4? That is my thought process. If cuts can't be made to make the ceremony any shorter without fundamentally changing the competition, then changes will need to be made to schedule it earlier in the evening. I don't think it's fair to expect the judges or other various volunteers to work a 3+ hour ceremony and then also stay after for a couple of hours giving feedback. I just don't see that being viable in the longterm.

 

I don't think that an 11am Saturday cutoff is that drastic so long as it's communicated well ahead of time so that people can plan for it. Honestly, I don't think I can think of any other competition that even allows entries to be submitted the same day as the awards ceremony. I wonder if a possible option for Saturday entries then, to shorten the process, might be an online pre-registration? Have a solid cutoff for that on Friday at midnight (or whenever) and that way you know ahead of time how many Saturday entries there will be.

 

Perhaps next year is too soon to make such big changes, and certainly it is for Reaper to figure out a suitable solution. My thoughts are just looking toward the future of an ever-growing convention and awards ceremony. Whatever changes are made, whether they're big or small, there's going to be someone unhappy with it, that's the nature of things. But so long as changes are communicated as early as possible so that people can plan for the changes, whether that means arriving earlier, preparing to stand in longer lines, buying a sandwich ahead of time, etc. I think people will be able to cope even if they'd rather not.

 

I think the smallest positive change that could be made would be what I mentioned previously, to have a scheduled 15-20 minute intermission at the halfway point to give people time to run to the bathroom, get a drink, a snack, stretch their legs, deal with restless kids, etc. And not to beat the already dead and beaten horse, but yes, for the love of god please return to calling out awards in regular all Bronze A-Z, all Silver A-Z and all Gold A-Z format.

[Paradoxical Mouse]

The other thing I think should happen is maybe call all the youth awards at the beginning in their own group. If the award ceremony is going to be lasting longer, there needs to be a way for younger children to be taken off to bed before the end. I know there are entrants as young as 5. I'm not personally a parent, but I'm sure there are parents who'd appreciate it.

[Jubilee]

6 hours ago, Dragoneye said:

My last name starts with O, I should be in the middle of anything.... I was literally the LAST one called for Silver... I can't count how many time I thought I'd finally hit gold.... sigh, the silver was was fine with me, but the nerve wracking made me want to throw it through one of those f'd up projector screens.

 

We learned late on Saturday that the system was sorting people by score then alphabetically, so the good news is that as the last that means you had a 3 3 4 score, which means you were pretty close to a gold.  I think Kit will fix it for next year, but there wasn't time in Saturday.

4 hours ago, Argentee said:

 

 

 

All of this. ALL OF IT. 

 

 We should have had Anne warn everyone about the weird order this year, but I think we were focused on the short of medals issue instead.

[Jubilee]

3 hours ago, Argentee said:

Maybe Reapercon can spring for a meal for the judges and volunteers working the awards ceremony? Or at the very least a cooler stashed with bottled waters and sodas? Would that help?

 

It isn't so much about the cost as the amount of time it takes to corral everyone, figure out orders, get someone to pick it up or deliver it, and then distribute it.  For Uber eats and grub hub, you can't make an order to arrive at a certain time, which means someone needs to organize making an order when we're in the thick of the busiest, most frazzling point of the process. :(. There's just not enough people with enough free time during the con to do it. 

 

Reaper pays for meals for volunteers but the amount of us has gotten too unmanageable, so we're mostly expected to plan for ourselves or band together to figure things out in smaller groups.  They used to take the judges out to feed them before judging began but now that we need so many, that takes way too long and too much transportation.

 

Also I used grub hub on Friday to order drinks from Kung Fu tea (~5 minutes away by car) and it took 2 hours and 20 minutes to show up, apparently drivers weren't showing up at the store.  I also heard there was a massive rain storm that may have been a contributing factor, though..

 

On Sunday afternoon, we were trying to order food from cowboy chicken for the four of us at registration and it took at least 30-45 minutes to get the order in because we were all constantly being pulled away to do other work. It seemed to take forever to arrive, but maybe we were just really hungry by the time 1:30 rolled around.

[Shadowphaze]

Okay, who gave me this nasty bug/virus/alien thing in my chest?  I wish to file a complaint.

[ironman1231]

3 hours ago, Crowley said:

Someone had a pizza delivered to... was it the auction or the awards ceremony? I saw some other food being delivered during the con too. I just went over to IHOP and Cheddars across the parking lot. 

It was me. Door Dash delivered just fine, I met them in the lobby. 

 

 

[TGP]

21 minutes ago, Guindyloo said:

Which is why I personally think it would be better to reschedule those Saturday afternoon classes to other days rather than ask volunteers to scramble to eat and then get back to work. Incidentally, it is also the volunteer judges and associated positions that I'm also thinking of regarding the award ceremony running so late in the evening. As it was the ceremony was over 2 hours long. What about when it expands to 3 hours? Or 4? That is my thought process. If cuts can't be made to make the ceremony any shorter without fundamentally changing the competition, then changes will need to be made to schedule it earlier in the evening. I don't think it's fair to expect the judges or other various volunteers to work a 3+ hour ceremony and then also stay after for a couple of hours giving feedback. I just don't see that being viable in the longterm.

Is the format like this:

a) Call out one name,

b) Display a photo of their entry,

c) Wait for them to scurry out of the crowd,

d) Hand them their medal,

e) return to step A unless list of names is exhausted

 

???

 

 

21 minutes ago, Guindyloo said:

...but yes, for the love of god please return to calling out awards in regular all Bronze A-Z, all Silver A-Z and all Gold A-Z format.

Ummm. How horrible would it be if all the (for instance) Bronze awards were called in a random order?  Is that even worse?  Is the goal to create a little bit of suspense? (I’m not advocating this ...I’m with the Goblin regarding it all... are there folk who think suspense is fun?)

[Jubilee]

2 minutes ago, TGP said:

Is the format like this:

a) Call out one name,

b) Display a photo of their entry,

c) Wait for them to scurry out of the crowd,

d) Hand them their medal,

e) return to step A unless list of names is exhausted

 

???

 

 

Anne calls names in batches and people come up to get their medals from the group of 3 "lovely assistants" of the year.  There's an occasional pause to allow for clapping and a pause between medal types so the assistants can be organized.  Certificates cause a bit of a scramble amongst the assistants, because names are printed on them and you have to figure out who is who when they come up.  

 

Anne does a great job keeping things moving

[TGP]

Already doing the names in batches then. That’s what I was wondering. 

[Guindyloo]

Just now, Shadowphaze said:

Okay, who gave me this nasty bug/virus/alien thing in my chest?  I wish to file a complaint.

 

I didn't do it and you can't prove that I did.

 

Just now, Jubilee said:

Anne does a great job keeping things moving

 

Yes, she certainly does. There's only so quick one can be when calling out a massive list of names, but Anne has always kept things moving not just actual time-wise, she also keeps things moving along by being personable and entertaining. I felt the expanded time far less when she was at the mic. IMO that's simply a talent that not every person has, making her the perfect choice as emcee.

[TGP]

2 hours ago, Guindyloo said:

As it was the ceremony was over 2 hours long. What about when it expands to 3 hours? Or 4?

So two hours with an intermission halfway is ideal?

 

(This year it ran 8-11 or almost 11?)

[Sylverthorne]

3 hours ago, Heisler said:

Well the alphabetizing should be something we can easily rectify the rest of it is up in the air. While it is easy to say just move up the time slot, judges and other volunteers are doing things that take up that hour when they should be able to eat. While everyone else is taking classes or gaming or relaxing or eating. The MSP Open volunteers are doing all kinds of last minute things that have to be done to pull the awards ceremony off. That can cut heavily into that hour and asking them to figure out food for themselves when giving up their time is not an easy thing to do.

 

Sounds to me like a go-fer for each group of.. what, three? four? judges/volunteers for the purpose of fetching food or what you have.

If that's feasible, granted, but I would be surprised to find out there weren't some of us hitting the food truck or whatever who wouldn't be willing to bring back extras so that no one goes hungry.

 

 

[Mnemonic]

I felt bad about using the VIP line for dropping off our entries. I didn't know that early on it basically cut in front of the non-VIP folks. I'd suggest have two completely separate lines that can work autonomously from each other. Maybe the camera light box is where they come together. 

 

I'd love to see more things moved to the Reapercon website. I've been pushing RCon to all my gaming groups and FLGS but the lack of information on the main website was a challenge. It was harder to convince folks to buy an entry ticket to attend classes that won't be visible for several weeks.  Same for games. Also announcements made in the forums only help the initiated, but harder for newbies to find and keep on top of (I.E. The announcement for when classes ticket sales were released). Come to the forums to discuss and have Q&A, but Reapercon.com should be the main provisioning point for Reapercon info in my opinion.

Similar to the "best of show" award, maybe have an award for all con attendees to vote/give kudos to their favorite instructor. This is just to recognize someone who really knocked it out of the park.

 

[SamuraiJack]

14 hours ago, Heisler said:

One thing that is probably not going to happen though is timing. We cannot tear down on Monday, it all has to go out on Sunday night. The extra expense of staying an extra day on site is prohibitive.

 

I know that feeling.  I'm just speculating that at some point the number of attendees will reach the break even point on keeping the ballroom until Monday and adding 2 more slots of classes on Sunday, just for load out.  Based on what my conventions paid for space on Memorial Day it's not going to be next year.  But I also don't know how much of the convention space Reaper still hasnt gotten their hands on yet.