 I'm rim producer and host of the Geek Nights podcast along with the gentleman by the name of Scott Rubin and I'm here today to talk a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes at conventions now Not really sure what all of you expect from a panel like this Mostly because nerd conventions are a little bit different from normal conventions or so-called professional conventions in a lot of ways If any of you have ever been to a non nerdy convention, you know exactly what I'm talking about But I'm curious what you all expect to learn from a panel like this you're all obviously at a convention either remotely or in person and There's definitely that desire that feeling to look behind that curtain like you go to conventions long enough You kind of want to know what goes on back there a lot of people want to join the staff or help run conventions for a Bunch of reasons so if you get behind that curtain, I'm curious. What do you think you're gonna find a lot of people? Think that there's some sort of career or money or fame or something behind the scenes back there A lot of people who go to conventions realize they like conventions and as a result They think that they could have a career running conventions full-time and while that is technically true There is not a lot of fame or a lot of fortune behind the scenes actually running conventions a Lot of you are probably here because you've heard about the drama that happens at cons Everybody hears about it. It is constantly whispered about in the edges Anyone who's worked a con anyone who's been staff at any level has a bunch of hot guys And they just love to share it with each other And I'm sure some of you are here to hear some of that drama I myself in an in an aficionado of convention drama So totally aside at the end we'll have some contact info if you have any con drama You would like to share especially if you want to share it anonymously. I just want to hear it I'm not saying I'll even do a panel about it. I just love hearing about that stuff But I will say there is a lot of drama behind the scenes at fan conventions about as much as you expect But probably not from the sources you might think it's coming from but we'll get into that in a little bit. I Wonder if you think that there's actually just a lot of boring Monday nonsense going on because you know you've been to a lot of conventions You know that a lot of the staff are watching lines hand-in-out badges standing around looking around and Especially if you've worked conventions at a lower level. You've been volunteers so-called gophers You've been adjacent to convention staff a lot of them just seem to come back from their shifts often myself included Tired annoyed going straight to bed. They roll in and they're and you ask him Hey, how'd it go staff and what's it come out and you're like I need a drink and you don't actually tell any stories There are boring parts. I'm not gonna pretend there aren't but I would say on the level It is more fun than boring with a few caveats But the most important thing and this is something that is very unique and special about nerdy conventions like Zank icon that you're all at right now nerd conventions have a sort of different evolution of the people who attend them in that a lot of people who go to anime conventions and gaming conventions and sci-fi conventions for a bunch of reasons end up wanting to help run them and Whether they expect it to or not do end up helping run them over time so There is a sort of Standard progression almost of the kinds of people who end up on the other side of those velvet ropes up on the stages Standing outside the lines doing all the things that made conventions happen And I would bet that a high percentage of you will eventually be helping out at Conventions in some capacity. It just sort of happens whether you expect it or not So to start this panel, I would like to walk you through My evolution as a congoer Becoming eventually fairly senior staff at conventions and helping run conventions Not so much because I'm saying that I'm some sort of expert I mean, I'm just some guy with a podcast who's on a screen like you can just submit to panels to Zank icon a Lot of conventions take panels from people just in general who may not necessarily be experts The only difference between me and you is that I'm on the screen and next year. Maybe you'll be on the screen But I want to share this partly because it's an avenue to tell some anecdotes and share some of those inside details The statute of limitations has definitely run out on a lot of the things I have experienced behind the scenes at cons over the years, but to I want to share this partly because Conventions are so different not just all across America or across like anime cons versus gaming cons versus Star Trek cons versus suspender cons where old guys and beards play train games and Grognard war games But I want to make it clear what my perspective is because a lot of what I'm about to say is Following from my experience in this industry my experience in conventions and other people will have often radically different experiences So think of this more as a framing of where I'm coming from because someone else who looks and sounds and interacts and has a Life differently for me might have a very different experience But also at the end of this we're hoping that some of you have evolved in this way some of you in this panel have probably staffed cons probably have your own stories and I might have a little bit of a call to action for you at the end of this panel so I'm already dating myself up pretty pretty direly at this point But I started going to cons just as an attendee all the way back in 1994 I was going to gaming cons and other types of nerdy conventions and I Got to make it clear. This is sort of an open secret in the fan convention world But when I was young in the 90s, you know, there wasn't guidebook or smartphones or even really the internet So you'd have to just go to a convention having some sort of knowledge about that convention and know what to expect Not conventions weren't that common like they are now They've kind of converged and I kind of all operate at least for attendees largely the same way within their domains But when you first attend cons, you don't know any of that You just kind of show up and I just kind of showed up at cons and I continue to go to cons because I have a good time at them but even then Even in the 90s when I first got to this con not knowing what to expect and not really caring much about the staff and Purely I'm just there to have fun. I remember there was a moment when I was sitting in an event It was this long Dungeons and Dragons competitive event. If that sounds strange. Well, yeah, it was strange It was a strange con that I was that but I saw outside the room three older extremely Nerd convention staff looking people standing around and they kind of came up to each other in a huff And they're having a very quiet conversation They're all pointing and then conversing and pointing and conversing and clearly some sort of drama or something It happened at the convention that they had to deal with and my 1994 brain looked at that and for at least a few minutes was more interested in that than the somewhat tedious Dungeons and Dragons Competition that I had come to this convention to sign up for but the secret From the behind-the-scenes perspective is that even now in the year 2023 when the internet exists websites exist every one of these conventions has tons of documentation and information and schedules online The majority of the attendees at cons have no idea what's going on They have never seen a schedule They have no idea when the con starts and when it ends they will never look at a map They will ask your staff the same questions over and over and over again any of you who think well That's not me. You're the extreme minority So when you're at conventions, I encourage you to walk around to hang around by the info desk a little bit and listen To the questions people are asking I can share an anecdote and won't share any names But I was at along with some other staffers a pretty large convention Some years ago that had a pretty large guest like this guest was gonna draw a lot of people to this convention This guest only had panels and signings and events at this convention on Friday So of course on Saturday a family some distraught kids some parents they show up to this convention and They come complaining to the staff Because this big guest that they came here all the way from like Michigan or something to see Wasn't there and they wanted to know where they could see him and they demanded to know where to see him And if they couldn't see him they wanted a refund. So the convention staff had to Politely inform them that that guest was indeed at the convention Yesterday has since left. This was in the schedule. This was common knowledge. This was announced repeatedly This situation had no possible resolution I'm pretty sure that entire family just walked out of the con and didn't even do anything else there but uh This is Shockingly common at nerd conventions. Somehow people will find out that a convention exists They will find out where it is. They'll find out what weekend it's happening They will know the names of specific guests they want to see or specific panels They want to go to yet. They will miss basic things like how to get a hotel or What days those panels are on they'll kind of like they'll learn Just enough to have somehow booked travel and a hotel and ordered a badge online And yet we'll get to the convention and somehow fail at literally everything else So uh As an attendee just don't do that. Just like read the website or something So getting to college I uh helped run the rit anime club Which was at rit the largest club on campus by a wide margin It was at the time the largest anime club in north america any rit anime people in this crowd You must scream right now. I hope you're out there. I know you're out there. I spy on you, but uh running small To mid-size events for mid-sized to large clubs in high schools and in colleges and in communities Like in community centers or libraries It's a lot like running conventions except Conventions have a sort of operational level of how they operate and a strategic level operational is How do you fill this room with people? How do you set up the chairs? How exactly does this panel run? How do we line people up? How do we hand out the 18 plus badges like all the things to do to facilitate the event itself? So running a day-long gaming night for a gaming club at a can at a university Or running a screening for an anime club is a lot like the operational level of a convention just at scale Uh conventions are very big. You have a lot of these things going on simultaneously different departments But the skills and the capabilities and what you sort of need to make it happen are kind of the same But those kinds of events what they lack is the strategic side the long-term planning how to coordinate The meta of all the different departments and threads. Imagine the convention is like running 20 anime club screenings Simultaneously and the other big difference Running these events is that at a large convention. There is the larger and more professional It is the bigger divide there is between the front of the house Meaning the part of the convention you as attendees see and interact with and the back of the house The stuff behind the scenes is making it all work There's not a lot of behind the scenes at small events The behind the scenes tends to also be the scene itself And if I want to share a secret about these kinds of events this level of events is the densest form of human drama you will find on earth Holy crap the amount of drama that goes on at this level of operational planning for a small event If you would like to know more I highly recommend check out this panel that we did at anime boston way back in 2016 About how to run an anime club where we uh kind of go into extreme And specific detail on how to run events in clubs at that sort of small scale Uh If you can manage the drama and handle events at that level Then you can handle the operational level of a big con But to be clear the one thing I want to make sure you absolutely internalize is that Just because you are very good at the operational side of the back end of a convention Does not mean you are going to be able to handle the strategic and governance side That is a whole different set of skills So for a long goddamn time, uh scott and I have been guests and panelists at a terrifying number of conventions Uh And this is a very interesting space because many of you might be panelists at conventions and Panelists is one side of this but all the way on the other side are guests who are paid to attend Guests who are there because it's their job Panelists who are professionals Panelists who are at a convention because their day job has paid them to be at that convention And the convention just wants them there because they have a relationship with that professional entity This is a really interesting space and uh, I could tell a lot of stories, but I only have time in this event But uh, the one thing I can say is doing this kind of thing as a primary focus Really changes your color of a con Uh, there's a lot of cons I go to and have been to where I'll be honest Not actually really interested in attending most of what the cons got going on. I may respect the con I may like the con. I appreciate what they're doing But personally I am there because they paid me to be there. They invited me to make some content I am there as the talent and you'll find when you talk about how events get run Talent is usually handled differently from staff and there tends to be a sort of weird divide there But in this kind of role, you're gonna see a very different side of the convention So there'll be a giant line of people have to get into the convention But you kind of just skip that line and go to a different line that gets you inside because you need to get to a Green room you need like time in the convention center to prep to meet your panelists to talk to support staff There's a whole Thing that happens in panel rooms, especially at large conventions Before any of you even come into the room where we do sound checks the staff asks us if we need anything we do a dry run on the panel sometimes and You're sort of planning your whole convention around when do I need to be here? I'm doing a panel at one I need to be in the convention center by 11 30 because I want to have time to get to the panel room An hour before so I can hang out in the green room for a half hour and chill Then I can meet the final panelists talk to them sort out the deal everything This is a wide space, but even here doing this makes cons feel very different The secret I can share I highly advise you if you aren't a panelist or doing content at cons This is a better way to get behind the scenes at cons than being staff because you'll get a free badge You'll I haven't paid for a badge to a convention Pretty much since like the mid 2000s like I just get badges everywhere doing panels. You too can get these free badges So here is where I get into a little bit more relevant experience I have been staff at a bunch of conventions in a tons of ton of rolls for a terrifyingly long time and A lot of it is dealing with chairs And clipboards you're gonna have a lot of clipboards and a lot of chairs and a lot of organization And a lot of stuff that honestly is pretty boring But at the same time It's so different And so sort of interesting to see all of that play out that even if the work itself is very trivial Or boring or feels boring like managing a line. I gotta say It is so fun to see the results of that or to see sort of how all the pieces come together from the other side That uh, there are some cons I would consider continuing to staff even if I didn't attend at all Now here's where it gets a little interesting because while Many people who are convention staff are basically doing very specific and simple operational roles There was a brief period where for reasons Scott and I ended up being able to Basically run an entire department area of katsu-kon for a few years katsu-kon had an arcade and a gaming department This was a long long time ago katsu-kon got like completely re-orged since then and everything's different But during this brief era the gaming department was almost like separate from the rest of katsu-kon And they reached out to us and they basically said hey We run the gaming department We run like we get all the arcade machines and we run like the gaming rooms and all this stuff But would you be interested in running the arcade room itself at kahn as in Basically for the entire kahn Running the arcade from the front front of stage or front office or front of house perspective Being the mcs doing the announcements running the tournaments playing the music doing all that stuff in the room and basically being The staff for this tiny part of the kahn but having through them basically unlimited authority and this was Very different from how most of you and most people would interact with kahn staff Because this is at the point most of you've been staff, you know that you're often given a very simple job Like watch this line and there's often a lot of rules about how to do that job This is when you start to get away from the sort of individual contributor role and into the management role or the strategic role at a convention and uh This was a lot of work. This was easily an order of magnitude more work than just being regular old staff We had to plan a lot in advance arrange a lot of equipment Make sure we had enough staff under us and with us to do all the parts that we couldn't do because we had to be in The front of the room yelling into microphones and doing stuff the whole kahn so this was Partly when I realized that running a convention which previously had felt So easy that I just felt like oh, I should just be a senior staff How hard could it be a lot of people who run conventions as staff just feel like they should be promoted up to senior staff No, no, no This took a lot of work This was really hard and doing it at this small scale for a few years was the only way we got good enough to Do it at a bigger scale Now I do have some credentials I do have a little bit of resume in this space so I know at the beginning I said I'm just some guy but I was the head of the entire panels and workshops department at kineticon, which is a pretty big con for a pretty long time I had to run everything. I had to manage all of our staff Scott and I split up the duties and that I did the Precon planning and scott did the at con operational planning Uh, this was end to end. We had a ton of staff. We had like at 1.14 panel rooms to schedule across the entire weekend Uh, there's a lot going on here But uh, the secret I could tell you from this type of work actually being a full-on department head with Nearly unlimited authority and uh, you know, all that kind of stuff live in the dream Uh, what I'll tell you is that Most fan cons will promote their staff based on seniority rather than based on skill There's a lot of reasons for that We don't really have time to get into but most fan conventions do it that way Uh kineticon was a little bit different so in 2006 2007 2008 scott and I were attending kineticon and um, you know, we had a podcast and we might have Uh reviewed kineticon on our podcast and we liked it. It was an okay con but we might have spent like 45 minutes pointing out a lot of things that weren't run that well because we felt like From all our other staffing experiences and all this other stuff It just wasn't that well run of a con in a few key areas And what they did was something that I wish more cons would do so few cons will do this But what kineticon did the con chair and people on the board basically the senior people reached out to us and said Basically, yeah, we saw your review and you know what? We're a volunteer run fan convention. So if you have all this negative feedback, uh, put up or shut up You want to join the staff? You want to make it better? You say all these good ideas. So do it Uh, no other con had ever done that to us before except briefly katsu con right before that so Of course, we said yes And there is this one glorious year we re-rolled into kineticon and they let us take over one panel room So scott and I just sat down on our own and scheduled and got panelists for and got staff for our own panel room It was panel room five if any of you were at that convention And uh, you know what if you were at that convention What you would have seen is that the panel schedule across the other like six panel rooms was pretty sparse There were like panel here panel there an hour gap between many of them But panel room five was packed with hour-long panels non-stop from 9 a.m To midnight friday saturday and then sunday until like five when the convention closed uh, it went really well and uh We just stuck around took over the apartment and scheduled everything The other secret I could tell you behind the scenes Uh, actually there's a lot of secrets. I could tell you this would be like a whole panel on its own but uh another secret I can tell you is how we scheduled panels And I'll admit a lot of it is arbitrary a lot of it is based on what we think will fill the room Multiplied by are we aware of and can we find anything about this person who has submitted the panel? Have they done it before is their video online? Do we know them? Have we seen them do good work? We would kind of balance that but uh When it came down to the panels that were like ask a homestuck where there'd be 50 or 60 panels all submitted With mostly the same name cosplay court case kind of drama Kind of just flip a coin. We'd know oh, we need a homestuck panel Let's just pick one of them at random and stick it in this room And we would just keep tabs on whenever we put random panels in rooms to fill out slots We'd remember who did well who did poorly and we kept Extremely detailed attendance numbers and we had our staff actually watch and review these panels And uh, we did keep secret dossiers on who was a good panelist who was a bad panelist And i'll tell you straight up the best panelist would be brought back We would make sure we got reached out to them found them scheduled them first And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the non nerdy world Uh, I did spend and continue to spend in fact right before I recorded this panel Uh, I was in london at one of these conventions and that photograph at the bottom is from a convention I was at with a booth right there. Uh, if any of you know me, you could figure out what booth it is But uh professional conventions Are so much different from nerd conventions That it's almost not relevant because at a nerd convention a lot of people Want to volunteer because they want that free badge. They want to be at the con There's a lot of reasons why they would want to volunteer. They want to be there. They care about it at most professional conventions Some of the attendees want to be there But almost everyone at the con is there because it's their job The exhibitors are there because they were paid to be there Uh, a lot of the attendees were told to go there by their boss. The talent is being paid to be there I was on a panel. I was on a bunch of panels. You know what that was my job I wasn't like invited to be a special guest at this convention. I work at a company Uh, the convention wanted this company to have a presence at the event Bam part of my job is to be at this convention being on this panel It is often not that fun. The fun happens around and outside of the convention But conventions like this tend to not have any volunteer staff Literally everyone is a paid professional there to run the convention. It is just their job and the vibe is so different So who runs conventions? Who are the people who are actually doing this and how does this happen? So for the second half of this panel, I would like to actually walk you through The broad categories of the people and the types of roles that make conventions happen Particularly the ones that you might not not necessarily have ever heard of or net or think about or be aware of So Different conventions call those different things not every convention has this level Otacon very famously called them gophers But a lot of fan conventions have this level of volunteer that's sort of Not quite staff But also not just an attendee they'll call them gophers or heroes or sometimes just volunteers Usually the line is staff Are the same people every year and they tend to be standing staff like a standing army They come back every year to run the convention. They're a member of a department The gophers or the volunteers tend to be people who sign up to be staff at just this convention just this once A lot of conventions use gophers as sort of the trial area to find people who they might invite to be staffed down the road I don't like this practice full disclosure. I think this is often a disrespectful Roll I think a lot of conventions don't give the people who they ask to do this work nearly enough compensation nearly enough credit and frankly I don't think this level should exist at most conventions a lot of the work that gophers and volunteers at this level are asked to do quite frankly At larger conventions should be done by contractors The people who tend to do this role fall into in my experience two categories One it's people who earnestly want to join the staff because they love a convention And that convention doesn't have a way to apply directly to be staff And they try to get people to do this first to put in their hours or to be vetted before they become staff The second class of people and i'm not saying this pejoratively This is a perfectly fine way to get a badge Are people who either can't afford or don't want to spend the money on a badge And a lot of conventions if you put in a requisite number of hours or a certain amount of work in this kind of role They will give you a badge. So the rest of the time you're in town You can just enjoy the convention for free and frankly that is a great way to get a Free badge to a convention if you don't have any other way to get to that convention A lot of times you'll get access to shared hotel rooms all sorts of fun stuff But i gotta say uh harkening back to earlier in the panel If you can do a panel Uh gophers usually have to work between four and 20 hours to get their free badge paid for at a lot of fan conventions And full disclosure most conventions if you do one panel just one panel Uh, you get a free badge to the entire con some cons do it differently But i'll tell you i have never ever paid for a badge at a con where i have done even one panel now staff Staff a lot of people think of as sort of like the core of a con and that's true up to a point The staff are a huge part of how fan conventions work And the difference like i said between staff and the gopher levels is usually that staff come back every year It's the same people But uh staff gets a little bit complicated convention staff I don't want i can't get into org structures because every con is run differently but There are a lot of different types of staff at conventions even here these two individuals. They're clearly this is pax east 2012 But uh, if you know anything about pax's One of them is not even wearing a badge Normally the enforcers, which is what pax calls their staff Wear a normal con badge, but they got some different badges with a different code on them They're also wearing arm bands So i wanted to take a moment not to walk you through the org structure of a particular convention because they're all different And it really matters whether or not a con is a for-profit versus a non-profit versus a public benefit company Whether or not they have a board of directors or a company that runs them Whether or not they separate operations from logistic There's so many different ways con could be structured that all I can really walk you through is the kinds of roles that exist in con staff so one of the first big distinctions and I'm just gonna not gonna Mince any words A lot of roles on the staff at conventions really just need a warm body Some roles are specialized. So an example of this would be Uh, a lot of cons need people to keep lines in order lines exist for all the reasons you know and love You might have stood in a line as hank icon, but uh A lot of those kinds of roles like handout badges Stand in line and make sure that people don't mess up the line hold up a sign outside a door Uh, they really just need a warm body Now ideally fan conventions want someone who is a fan who cares about the con I'm not saying this work is not valuable. It's worked very important But you don't need any particularly important skills to do that job You just need to be organized. You need to be capable of acting in a crisis to a degree But really you just need to be able to stand there and do a very specific job Specialist roles are more like so at one point at a penny arcade expo You know, I'd been an enforcer mostly doing main theater in a couple other areas, but once I decided to take on the role of being a deputy which at that particular convention means that instead of doing the job You are a manager of a department who has a specific skill set So in this case it was the live streaming department So rather than do the actual job of a staffer in the live streaming department I had to sort of set the rules for how to do that job I had to talk to all the people on the staff and make sure they had everything they need to do that job But more importantly in the specialist role I had to know how to set up live streams and this is the era before like obs Really existed that I was doing this live streaming was a lot harder a long time ago And these specialist roles Are the ones that are hard to get on the staff of a convention Sometimes they'll even just hire people to do these jobs But usually you don't get promoted into the specialist roles You are just identified as being someone who has special specific skills You might be a person who could stand there and manage a line Or you might be a person who has some formal training in crowd management Which is actually very difficult and challenging and if you do it wrong, it can be dangerous So crowd management specialists will decide how lines are managed Warm bodies will actually manage the lines. They are equally important, but they are different kinds of roles I kind of touched on this before individual contributor versus manager. That is a very Big distinction in all jobs all roles everywhere Uh, and it's not just a matter of someone's more senior. That isn't really the important part The important part is that individual contributor staffers are doing the actual job directly Whereas managers are deciding what needs to be done in the first place And more importantly They are the ones who help the individual contributors do their jobs The manager is the person who makes the schedule for the staff The manager is the person who makes sure that schedule ensures that the people on the staff Get some sleep and have time to eat and can actually enjoy themselves If you are staff at a con and it sucks, that is your manager's fault That is not your fault. And if the con has bad managers, that is the cons fault Cons like to overwork their staff a lot of fan cons A lot of individual contributors staffers at fan cons almost relish and get off on being Overworked on working 20 30 hour days on not sleeping I said 30 hour days for a reason because you'll often find people who will literally work from the morning And then overnight into the next day before they sleep at least on purpose at any point At one convention I used to staff at they call that black shifting and you know what that's a terrible idea That is usually the sign that a con does not have enough staff Now operations versus leadership and governance another big area Operations generally another way to break this up would be Are you staff while the con is happening? Possibly a little bit before and a little bit after for setup and tear down or Are you staff all year round? Are you scheduling panels planning making decisions about how many panel rooms we're going to have? What kind of content do we want? These are very different roles Most of the staff at a convention will be operational staff because that is where the bulk of the work is There are generally very few roles that are open in leadership and governance of conventions Those roles are interesting a lot of conventions a lot of fan conventions Really once someone gets into that role they do that role until they retire So you're not going to easily be able to find these roles You can't really even think of it as being promoted into those roles The people who tend to be best at those jobs tend to be sort of the senior hire so Think about in a military the difference between a commissioned officer and a non commissioned officer The operations people at a con tend to be promoted The same way that a non commissioned officer in a military would you end up being a sergeant you end up being the person Who knows exactly how to set up a line? Exactly how to manage a crowd How to get people around set up for a panel before they go the people who are really really really crazy good at their convention staff jobs So as they get promoted they tend to be the people who teach new staff members how to do those jobs Well, you ever go to a con and you see like the three people who somehow Know how to unstack a bunch of chairs in like 30 seconds and fill a room with a thousand chairs Like the people are just crazy good at their job That is a really important role Those people tend not to get promoted quote unquote up into leadership and governance Think of the more as parallel equally important tracks Leadership and governance involves more actual manager with a capital m skills Strategy skills you got to know things about finance things about law things about how to manage conventions They are very different types of roles. There we need you need accountants You need lawyers you need people who know about the legality of copyright and how to work with the venues There's so much there. There are so many different roles You can do a whole panel just on talking about how conventions are structured and who does what jobs There is also a big distinction between volunteers that asterisk is there for a reason and professional staff A lot of cons have a small number of staff who are professionals They are paid real money Sometimes they draw a small salary to be the staff of the convention or a set of conventions Some people are professional staff who work at companies like read to help run conventions And they're at the convention helping run it But they do the same job at five or six different conventions all around the world The volunteers meanwhile are what most of you are thinking about These are the people who sign up to be staff at a con They may be this is a matrix. These are all not mutually exclusive There may be volunteer staff who are managing people who are leading teams who are making strategic decisions for a con these can be all over the place, but Something very important that a lot of cons didn't realize until the last seven or eight years and a lot of cons were doing some shady and illegal things You cannot actually at least in the u.s. Have volunteers working at your convention If you are a for-profit convention some conventions are for-profit some conventions are non-profits if a convention is a non-profit convention well, uh They're paying their volunteers one way or another you can't just take free work if you were a for-profit company There's a lot of nuance there. I'm not a lawyer Uh every convention, uh at least any convention that's going to survive Has a lawyer who sorts us out for them, but a lot of cons even the volunteer staff They are paid at least minimum wage or compensated an amount of money that at least becomes minimum wage So if you work at a con And you don't get any sort of compensation You should look into if that con is actually a non-profit Because if it is you can decide if it is worth it to volunteer your very important time to help that convention run But if uh, that's a for-profit convention and you're volunteering your time to help a for-profit company make money And they're not giving any of that money back to you. Maybe consider your choices But now we're getting into sort of the real point of this panel because For all that I just talked about convention staff They are just the barest tip of the iceberg of who actually runs conventions and how conventions happen So this is the part where we have a call to action. This is the unsung heroes of conventions so Contractors and temps a lot of conventions. They'll be the staff wearing the convention shirt like check-in badges But then there'll be people just wearing like normal uniforms also check-in badges walking around cleaning up messes Setting up the av In the convention center setting up the projectors setting up standees Uh, in many cases setting up chairs There is a lot of work that is not done by convention staff. It is done by contractors It is done by temp workers These are people who are hired to come to the convention to do something like run the audio visual equipment for this particular room Run our registration desk do our health checks all whatever it is that they need to do Uh, I would say more conventions would do better by having fewer so-called Volunteer staff doing that kind of work and just hiring companies and hiring people who are good at this to do it But uh, that really comes down to the size and scale of the convention. There are so Many roles in this space. For example, you may have seen at zenkaikan that particular escalator likes to break down Uh, it's not going to be someone wearing a zenkaikan shirt who digs into that escalator to fix it It's going to be someone who is hired by the venue usually a company that specializes in repairing escalators And they're going to fix it. I'll bet it might be the same people this year if this happens again We shall see but these people Also see the convention and you know, they have got a lot of stories About what it's like to fix an escalator at a nerdy convention like this. They've seen some stuff The venues the convention centers the hotels they have their own staff Uh, every venue is different. Every con is different. But like in this picture here on stage. We've got the talent They're doing their show we'll get to them in a minute And then we've got the venue staff in many cases The person operating a camera at a convention center is not a staffer at the convention Nor is it a contractor that convention is hired oftentimes It is someone who is working in union is a staff of the venue itself And either because they're obligated to or because they are the best for the job They are the ones who are paid to do work like operating a camera in an event at the convention These are the janitors. These are the security people These are the facilities management or the physical plan the hVAC technicians But this is also event managers There are people who work at convention venues who are the liaisons to the convention staff who are planning the event Those jobs are super important and almost nobody knows about them except the people doing these jobs Where remember for every nerd convention they do this job for there are a hundred weddings and bachelorette parties And extremely boring financial conventions that are happening that they're also doing this for Government employees. There's a lot of this going on. There's a lot of cops. There's a lot of fire marshals EMTs government officials government outreach That is a booth from uh packs australia or the australian government Exhibited at the con because that's just a thing they like to do A lot of conventions have a relationship with the local city county or state government often because the convention Uh is very important to the local economy nerd conventions tend to bring in a lot of money for A lot of reasons so a lot of times the convention will have someone in like the office of the mayor Or some other government entity that wants the convention to succeed And will work and coordinate with the convention in some uh facility in some capacity We also have of course the exhibitors the professionals the people who are there Either because it's their job because they're hucking something because they're selling something These are the people who have to set up and tear down a booth and there are Way more roles here than you might think there are a lot of companies have a professional staff of their own Who's sold job is to travel from convention to convention to convention almost like rhodes Setting up the giant booth running it tearing it down and running to the next next convention in my day job For a time. I did that myself. I would fly into a convention with a booth in my checked bags I would literally just set it up myself over the course of like a thursday Run it for three days at a con and then tear it down and head back home There are tons of professionals doing a lot of actual day job work at conventions that you might not even notice So think about it the next time you're at a con you go to a booth And there's a bunch of people like running demos of a game or something at that booth Most of them are being paid or if they're volunteers They're volunteering or being compensated in some way not from the convention, but from the company that bought that booth You've also got the talent now talent is an industry term all over I don't want to say that talent is special or different from all the other important work that happens in a convention, but Generally, these are the people making the direct content That is a primary driver for a lot of people who want to come to conventions These are the guests. These are the musical acts. These are the celebrities. These are all the people who are there to put on a show so On one end these are the fan panelists many of you might be fan panelists who submit panels to present at conventions But there are people whose job it is to go to conventions and put on content There are people who are in bands who a convention will reach out to and pay them to come and perform There are people who come and do live shows stand-up comedy Professional panels. There's such a wide range ranging from I am happy to be here. Just give me a free badge And I'm good to go all the way up to I have been paid $10,000. I'm going to come to your convention I'm going to perform for 45 minutes. There is a green room waiting for me with brown m&m's And as soon as my panel is done, I'm going to leave through a secret tunnel And I do not want to interact with the fans in any way Uh And my favorite stories that come from this type of work at conventions Are the people who might be performing or presenting at a nerdy convention But who have no idea what they're in for imagine the kind of person who's like I don't know works for the government and has a talk they give on some grant money or on some video games And they've been presenting this at like Grant and industry conventions and then some convention like the penny arcade expo says hey Why don't you come present this to all these gamers and they show up to a con filled with furries and cosplayers and nerds And they're used to presenting to room of a hundred people and there's 5000 people in that main theater You've also got the media and the press and the secret I will tell you is that big cons Absolutely in the year 2023 know the difference between big journalists and small journalists So, uh, there was a brief period a long long long time ago where if you Had it together enough to have a website and have a business card Conventions would give you badges that gave you access to terrifying amounts of stuff That's really not true anymore. So generally a lot of cons will only give media or press access to people Who are doing specific editorial coverage of an event? They'll often have two tiers of media and press access They'll have a tier where yes, you're a journalist. You get a little bit extra access But whatever but then they'll have a tier of people who will get direct access to the guests And if you're in tier one, you may not even know tier two exists And if you want to be in tier two You kind of have to have a full-time job or a professional reason to be in tier two Generally those are the people where they get access to often A list of guests they can apply to get interview slots with guests There are rooms in the back of the convention that are just quiet rooms that are set up to interview guests uh The biggest most useful thing that media and press people get that you don't have access to as a regular attendee Is a little room, you know, you see all these signs for the press room and they always say like no attendees You know what's in there a whole bunch of cages or lockers for people to Sit and leave their cameras and recording equipment and all the stuff they need to do their journalism And just have a quiet space to have a coffee and type up their notes from some panel they covered There is also the hospitality staff Uh hospitality is an industry this there's a huge variety of jobs There are people who are staff at the hotels There are people who are at the hotels just cleaning up the rooms Imagine what the person cleaning up a hotel room at like a financial markets convention Well, well they even noticed there's a convention going on now think about the state You might have left your hotel room in at the last con you went to and the person who has to clean up that room And they see your first suit or whatever your 10 first suits or your cosplay or whatever it is You got going on in your hotel room They see all of that but they probably didn't know there was a weird nerd convention happening until they showed up in your room Maybe they caught wind of it when they saw people checking into the hotel the night before But this is also the food service workers the event management people the event planning people The people who are working for the hotel keeping an eye on how the convention works the people who manage the room blocks There are so many roles here. I could not catalog them These people definitely has stories. I will tell you one of them briefly long ago at a katsukan I'll just say it was the statute of limitations Um, I was at this convention And one of the things I was doing was going around interviewing all the people who were not at the convention We're not associated with the convention in any way But were working the convention mostly in the hotel And I interviewed just casually and I was recording all these audio only but I interviewed a guy Who was basically on the maintenance staff for the hotel that the convention was in And our toilet got clogged. So, you know, we called the hotel and they send this guy and he knows what he's doing So while he's like dealing with that, he seems cool. So I asked him some questions and I offhandedly am just like I'll bet us nerds make a lot of messes I'll bet you have a lot of crap to deal with and he just he stops plunging And he kind of sighs and laughs and he says You know what actually you guys are great You've got nothing on the people who were here last week And of course immediately I'm like who was here last week and he says those young republicans Holy hell. Did they destroy every single room in this hotel? And he told a whole bunch of stories. So Two years later. I'm back at katsukan Uh, we called the hotel staff because there was something going on And uh, this same individual comes to deal with the problem and I don't think he recognized me right away But I was pretty sure of him. So I was like, hey didn't you Plunge the toilet in our hotel room like a couple years ago and he's like, yeah Yeah, you were asking the nerd questions and before he says anything He was before I say anything or he says anything all he says is yeah, the young republicans are still the worst ones We've ever seen you guys are great so now I want to jump to a call to action because Um, I have not done all these roles. I have not done even a tiny fraction of these roles I don't even know all the roles that are out there And I don't know what it's really like to do all these roles out there So what I'm asking you if you or anyone you know Works in any capacity around conventions Especially if you have one of these jobs that you don't think people know about and you've got stories We want to hear from you. We want to know what it's really like to be the hospitality manager for a nerd convention We want to know what it's really like to be the janitor dealing with a nerd convention the professional staff The av professional the guy doing the chalk art on the floor in the expo hall Tell us your stories follow that qr code. It'll take you to a simple form We want to hear your stories because they're not our stories to tell and we kind of have an idea to either Eventually put this all together into a big documentary on what it's really like behind the scenes at conventions Or if nothing else, I just want to hear your stories. I want to know what it's like So if you are interested at all follow that qr code find that url and tell us your story We would be more than happy to talk to you and if you're at the con and You know sort of a moral to end this panel And uh, you're just doing your thing enjoying your nerd stuff I highly encourage you even if you have no desire to step behind that veil To become bilbo baggins and see what it's really like and it kind of never be able to appreciate conventions the same way Even if you have no interest in any of that. I encourage you just to for a moment Look around occasionally when you're at a convention and think about what all of this looks like From the perspective of someone who has no idea what the hell's going on And if you see someone doing a job Who isn't just like convention staff Just take a moment to appreciate the fact that they are just as important to you having fun at this convention Then the con staff and the people doing panels and everything else because if those toilets overflow Everybody's having a bad time. I'm rim. I host geek nights. I hope you enjoyed this I hope you will follow this qr code and I think we're out of time