WindyCon Meeting Tonight

[billroper]

I'm heading off to tonight's WindyCon meeting with a few problems in my hip pocket. I'm running Special Events for the con and am trying to figure out things that I could do to make Opening and Closing Ceremonies more interesting, several of the ideas that I had having fallen through.

We'll have the Guest of Honor speeches, which will take about half an hour. There will be one award presentation for the ISFiC Writers Contest. Those are pretty much set in stone.

There've been complaints about the "interminable introduction of guests, many of whom aren't even at Opening Ceremonies". I sympathize with this, but I'm not sure I can eliminate it, since a number of the guests really enjoy it. I'm thinking about asking them to check in at the door so we can just introduce the folks who are actually there -- I'd just need to pass the list to Christian Ready, our Toastmaster, so he could edit his copy. Of course, if someone comes in late, they might get missed, but that's excusable, to my mind. At least it would make it shorter.

The convention theme is "Innerspace". Robert Sawyer is our Author Guest of Honor. And I have a month and a half to manufacture something entertaining.

Thoughts?

Comments

[alymid.livejournal.com]

Is it possible to list them all, have them stand, we applaud and then keep going? - IIRC each one gets their own stand and applause time they way it was done before.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I almost never go to opening ceremonies unless I've learned in advance that there's something more interesting than normal convention opening ceremonies.

Since Windycon is known for having a lot of guests (I'm assuming this is covering all the people who get listed in the program, not just the main GoHs), letting the guests know in advance that they'll have to check in at the door to be introduced, and if they do check in they have to stand up and wave to acknowledge the introduction when it comes, sounds like a great idea. It wastes time and makes the TM look dumb when he says "Grizelda Glortz... is Grizelda here?". It's almost as bad when he has to coax Grizelda to stand up so the audience can see her.

Good things to avoid are reading a long list of announcements (don't announce it unless it's really important), and having committee members giving bad speeches. In other words, if the chairman, or last year's chairman, or next year's chairman, or various department heads, want to talk, don't let them (or at least try to talk them out of it in the case of the chairman) unless they're actually going to say something that the audience will enjoy hearing.

<tongue-in-cheek>If you have to let people (including the GoHs) give boring speeches, give live mikes to a couple of fast-on-their-feet, funny, snarky folks and let them give the speeches the MST3K treatment in real time. Or consider a Gong-show style gong.</tongue-in-cheek>

Seriously, if you happen to be able to show a kick-ass half-hour multimedia presentation with your opening ceremonies, cool, but if you can keep the normal opening ceremonies stuff short, funny, and running smoothly, you've done you job solidly.

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

I normally never go to opening ceremonies; however, if you're the guest of the con, you're there for the con and the attendees. When I was FGoH at Duckcon, I was horribly embarrassed to realize that I had to make a speech, and it was even worse when I was preceeded by a whole stack of truly funny people!

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

I did do the best I could under the circumstances; for my next gig, I'll be a whole lot better prepared. Let's see - ride in on the back of RJ and Bill Clinton, both dressed in Mink, and then...

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

That is a good point. Make sure that the people who are expected to make speeches understand that well in advance, and also make sure that other guests who aren't supposed to make speeches don't think they are supposed to prepare a speech and then get huffy that they don't get asked to give it. It should be obvious, but it never hurts to spell the obvious things out explicitly!

[jhayman.livejournal.com]

Ask Rob.

As a guest, he's a one man show and will offer any manner of opportunity for interpretation of your theme. He's witty and genuinely funny at need.