[Asianmedia] Clearin' up some Katsu confusion/FAQ

[Katherine Roman]

Q: Kat why can't we take more people???

A: -Because college policy. If we took all of you (and i'd love to), it'd
be a *disaster*. My first time planning a con, we took like..what, 30ish
people? It was horrific, disorganized, and the school told us "next time do
NO MORE than twenty MAX." People are hard to keep track of, in case you
haven't already noticed. FUnding is an issue, and they will start denying
us if we get 4 rooms with 20 people.
...Which I'm actually trying to get. We currently have 3 rooms reserved,
and I want to push for a 4th. But for this con, everyone is covered for
reg, so our funding is limited. Trip cap is 150 a person, so for like 17
people its 2550 dollars, hotel usually will eat up about 1200 of that and
then we have 45 dollar reg fees for those 17 people. Ya see the issue. We
also can't request shit until we have a finalized list, and then they take
like 2 weeks to get back to us. By then, the hotel might be sold out.

Q: Kat why do you keep fuckin up the list??

A: I've sent out the finalized list about 3 times. It's your responsibility
to check it and contact me with questions. As of now, I can't change
*shit* since
we;re in the reg process and Pam has said list *later* than she wanted it
because I wanted to double check.
Also, as I've said, google threads are hard to keep track of.

Q: What's another reason we can't take as many people?

A: Simple: drivers. Defensive drivers (as I've stated from the AAC days)
are necessary to operate the Hampshire vans for trips. Classes need to be
taken, paperwork filed out, and camp po is currently being a bit of a dick
getting back to us to make sure our defensive drivers who took the course
are in the system. It's. A. Pain and mostly out of my hands. With zipcar,
we just need people with a license for a year and to register through the
CLA and Hamp's group zipcar account.

Q: So why is there a kerfuffle with driving for this con?

A: Simple. Drivers. We can't take the Hampshire vans *or* Zipcar because of
the distance (roughly 800 miles round trip, Hamp vehicles have a cap of
250) so we need to go through an actual car rental company. *The largest
van holds 12 people and the drivers need to be comfortable piloting it.*

Q: What about alternate transport?

A: People are more than welcome to find their way to cons. However, it gets
messy *fast*. We'd have to open up hotel rooms, there'd be SO many keys to
keep track of (and this hotel will probably give four keys per room MAX)
and the signers would have to bounce around constantly to make sure things
run smoothly.

Q: Kat, why.

A: Answer to everything: signers are people too. We cosplay, we meet up
with friends, we want to go to panels and have fun and de-stress, and it is
*hard* to maintain a club and make sure everyone's having fun while
partaking in a con, too. Thankfully, AAC ran great!

Q: Why is Fundcom a dick?

A: It's Fundcom, and they have to work with the school's money, which can
be a dick. So far, I've busted in on them about 4 times just for this con
to demand why our requests have been held, pended, denied. I've had to
resubmit them about 3 times to change hotels, add more people, fix
transport notes, etc.

Q: What are the steps for planning a con that make it so hard?

A: To start, you meet with Marie-god of all gods. You figure out *all* your
logistics, put together an itinerary, get a head count and submit a trip
request. Simple, right? Fundcom will approve you, you set up an appointment
for risk assessment with Pam, and you're good to go. Yay!
Not so much. Fundcom will pend and repend your request, there's paperwork
to be done and registering people plus reserving hotels and making sure you
got everything right literally takes hours in the CLA. For AAC, I clocked
about 3ish hours figuring that shit out alone. For things like AB, we have
to register the con as a vendor, have the business office write a check for
the group registration, hope we have defensive drivers and enough space,
reserve the vans via Carolyn, make ure the paperwork went through defensive
driving, keep you guys updated while we get limited and conflicting info
from the CLA-manage communication between the con and the hotel and Marie,
and have everything on a strict deadline.
AAC was perfect and took like 3 weeks to do.
Anime Boston, we usually start fixing up in *December.* Hotels get sold
out, group discounts go away, people's reg info disappears like a leaf on
the wiiiind. People drop out, people want to come, you don't want to turn
anyone away but you risk (and it'll happen) Pam Tinto threatening to take
away your trip privileges because too many people can get the college in
trouble.
Make sure everyone signs waivers, more CLA visits, finding someone with a
credit card to put down at the front desk, keep track of everyone cry 5ever
aaannd then report back to the CLA with people's badges (which I'm bringing
tonight) and hope the business office doesn't ream you out.Your ETA and
schedule is set by Pam and ESPECIALLY with the vans and zipcar, they have
to be back at a certain times or else you get in trouble with Camp Po and
risk not being able to use the vans anymore. Plus, parking fees. You need
to print out coupons, save receipts, collect itemized hotel reports from
people's rooms and return them to the CLA, and have a limited amount of
parking funding.   The amount of times you have to meet with Fundcom or the
CLA can be anywhere from like three times to..the most I had to do with
Fundcom was like 6. CLA is infinite.
This is why making sure screenings run, doing PO's for weekly meetings on
top of schoolworks. And this is the *basic* rather vague outline.
I hope that gives a good idea of what goes on behind the scenes, and why
planning a con is so stressful.

Q: Kat why do you freak out so much i mean come on

A: 'Cause communication between Tinto-Meister and the CLA is garbled and
she emails me basically saying our entire trip is off and I have to run in
my PJs roaring and half in tears to the CLA to clear it up as soon as
possible *after* she tells me to make sure everything runs smoothly and I
have to rapidly check if our defensive drivers are in the system (which
they're not currently and have to do paperwork that we and Carolyn don't
know how that works. Btw, you're also responsible for finding those
classes, informing your potential drivers, ensuring they go, etc) and now
we're waiting on Camp Po to tell us what they need to do.
Note: pam tinto is tough.

Q: kat why do you hate us

A: because i am a grim reminder to weaboo pain.
Nah,I don't, and I try to make sure everything runs smoothly. it's hard to
pass things off to members of the club because most of it is signer
business. If people want to help organize and make sure getting to the vans
and holding onto coupons or something happens, I can totally pass that shit
off. I constantly am worried that people get agitated with me, but
understand that a] this is hard, and b], I'm doing this for *you* guys to
have a good time *on the school's dime ohohoho*. COns before got so big
that we had to have meetings and I had color coordinated excel
spreadsheets. Even with that, we had some first time con-goers make stupid
decisions, panic and ask me to unlock their hotel room or replace ALL the
keycards at like midnight, etc. Doing all this while trying to appease
everyone and their individual requests and needs is difficult.

ANYWAYS. HOPE THAT CLEARS STUFF UP. SIGNING IS HARD. RECOGNIZE. when you
get to be a signer and do this at some point in your life, *remember my
pain*.