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EF18 Feedback
silverfoxwolf:
--- Quote ---What you're not taking into account is the room capacity. We need to thin the crowd out by running more events in parallel, otherwise rooms will overcrowd more than they already do.
Funny thing is that later in your posting you apply exactly the opposite reasoning to the restaurants:
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Actually the reasoning behind the point is to spread events out over a wider space of time. The point with restaurants is the same, narrow bands of time.
--- Quote ---Where else would you have put it, with the entire afternoon being taken by the fursuit parade and concert setup going on at the same time?
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I would have swapped the concert and fursuit games, since concerts generally run later then other events at shows in general.
--- Quote ---Does it occur to you that sometimes shit juts happens? In this case, dance contest overran 35 minutes because of technical failures, and then during concert rehearsals, a member of the camera crew slipped and fell off his platform, needing attention by our paramedics. I hope you do not mind that we put the well-being of our volunteers above our scheduling.
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I am well aware of unexpected events causing a problem, I was not raising reasons behind it, just highlighting that a delay happened that was longer then desirable by anyone and no I was not aware of an accident taking place.
--- Quote ---I wouldn't mind. Find my volunteers who want to run stuff competing with the pawpetshow, and I'll give them timeslots. In the last 10 years, there weren't many. Maybe YOU want to run an event?
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For once I was not working at a convention, next year I would indeed be interested in running something.
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Before finding him though I naturally went to conops to tell them it was locked, only to find conops left unstaffed. With the amount of staff EF has I found this very surprising.
--- Quote ---Con ops is still looking for volunteers to man their office. Would you be up for it? All it takes is missing 100% of the convention, not getting any sleep, working hard all day, and putting up with criticisms like this. But as I can see you are very motivated to improve the situation, I am looking forward to receiving your application for next year's convention!
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I have worked within conops at other events, run medical cover by remote radio control and spent a lot of time in other roles at conventions and events so I am well aware of the work involved. I don't see how noting an absense of staff is a critisism, it is an observation of something that happened.
SouthPaw:
--- Quote from: Fafnir Kristensen on 08.09.2012, 00:13:19 ---maybe just a comment about this:
the storyteller part was awfully long and very very difficult to understand.
I know it is not easy to clearly speak from inside a fursuite head, but wouldnt there be some better way to hear the commentator voice? like a compact mic inside the fursuite head?
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The host did have a headset mike initially, as in previous years, but it fell off/out early in the show so he had to resort to a handheld mike for most of the event.
BigBlueFox:
--- Quote from: silverfoxwolf on 08.09.2012, 00:57:02 ---I would have swapped the concert and fursuit games, since concerts generally run later then other events at shows in general.
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Because we tried not to have two fursuit related events clashing. That's all there is to it. The Fursuit Parade would've started together with the Fursuit Games.
And there was no way of pushing it a bit further back, because we needed the main stage for the final rehearsals of the concert.
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We appreciate your comments and pointers, really. I think the reason why some people are responding a little bit allergic is this: We are a big con that has been going on for 18 years. Most staffers and events have grown from more than 10 years of experience. Every decision, every plan, every event is well-considered and talked through with staffers, organisers, panelists.
We are, at the same time, facing challenges and limits, be it with staff, facilities, equipment, everything comes to an end at some point and we need to find the right way inbetween many options to please as many people as possible. One example is the video team, we put in two new team members this year and had more than ever, we had more cameras than ever before, and still missed two events because we suddenly found a situation in which we were understaffed.
For example, the fact that two security staffers just stand around NOW doing nothing doesn't mean they can man a table at the art show during the art show opening times. We have peak hours, and those two very officers may be on duty somewhere completely else the next moment. And as someone else already mentioned, having a luggage / camera check-in like that does cause even more logistical problems, as well as staff related requirements we can't always meet.
When you say that your expectations weren't quite met, I have to say I'm sorry, but we're all just human, we err, we try to respond to an ever-changing situation by adapting as well as we can, but it's not always possible to see every little thing. And issues like the technical and medical delays do happen, and sometimes they are so massive that they even eat up the safety-buffer we put into our timeslots. Sometimes, all we can do is to hold the strings together before something falls apart.
At the same time, I found it quite impressive how the Pawpet Show almost started on time this year, and there was absolutely no positive mention of this so far.
And this wasn't ironic or cynical, if you want to help us running EF, consider yourself welcome! But please understand that half the staff has fallen into a coma and will take a well-needed break at the moment. :)
silverfoxwolf:
BBF I have to say that nothing I have commented on has been intended as any kind of personal critisism to anyone. People will pick up on negative things that happen at events more then the positives. As I said to you at the convention itself, for the most part it was a good time.
From my perspective, I've been working with event planning and emergency management for six years so I'm not just throwing things out for the pure sake of it.
Cheetah:
--- Quote from: silverfoxwolf on 08.09.2012, 00:57:02 ---Actually the reasoning behind the point is to spread events out over a wider space of time.
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Our problem is the quotient Q=(furries/room). We need Q<=1. There's only two ways to get there: Reduce the number of furries or spread them out over more rooms. Since shooting people to free space is not an option, we have to run concurrent events in many rooms. Makes sense now?
--- Quote ---
--- Quote ---Where else would you have put it, with the entire afternoon being taken by the fursuit parade and concert setup going on at the same time?
--- End quote ---
I would have swapped the concert and fursuit games, since concerts generally run later then other events at shows in general.
--- End quote ---
Completely reconfiguring the sound setup of the stage, changing backdrops, setting up the lighting, soundcheck and rehearsal for the concert took 3 hours. Instrument and stage platform setup began even earlier, behind the closed curtains WHILE the dance contest was running. So, with that huge setup effort in mind, swapping the concert and the gameshow would have resulted in a concert that could theoratically start at 3 in the morning after a 5 hour gap. If that's your idea of great scheduling, I'm glad you're not in charge of scheduling anything at EF :)
--- Quote ---I am well aware of unexpected events causing a problem, I was not raising reasons behind it
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Yeah, except for putting it under the heading "Events were very poorly scheduled". No, in reality, running complex events with amateurs can sometimes get pretty unpredictable. I'm sorry for every minute of delay, but you'd be surprised how unforseen chalenges can blow even the most paranoid schedule to smithereens. The reason why I'm reacting so aggressively is the way you convey your "observations" here, as if the solutions to the problems are totally simple, and we're all just too idiotic to see them. Why don't we just swap events around? Why don't we just put two tables in?
BECAUSE ITS NOT THAT SIMPLE. If it were that simple, we'd done it already. We're not doing this for the first time, you know?
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