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

[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!