Redemption - con report part 1

[watervole]

I think I'm just awake enough now to start trying to write it down before it all fades from mind...

I was tired before the con started. Henry (youngest son) had an interview at Cardiff university on the Wednesday and this meant waveney had to get him to the station at an ungodly hour of the morning, which in turn meant that we all woke around 5am.

Still, we managed to get everything packed and sorted. Masses of stuff for the charity book stall, the auction, the raffle, fancy-dress costumes, stuff for the door-decorating workshop, cards for the Tarot workshop, filk books, belly-dancing costume, script for the cabaret and loads more besides. We hired a van trailer to put it all in - we used to hire a simple truck-style trailer until the year it rained really badly and got through all the bin bags we'd wrapped stuff in ...

Thursday, we left at a reasonably socialble hour and drove with eldest son and daughter-outlaw to HInckley. (Henry would be following with a friend on Friday as he had school.)

Kelvin, eldest son, was in charge of the tech set-up. He's been helping out for the last few conventions (and other places like Discworld) and has become invalauble.

The job of a con chair on the Thursday preceding a convention is hard to describe, especially when blended with being hotel liaison. It's hard to say exactly where the two jobs separate.

What I remember of Thursday is already fading, but it was a miscellany of making sure we had enough places in the evening meal as extra people signed up for it (I think we fed around 47 people in the end), trying to track down more fire extinguishers that were safe to use on an electical fire as tech were not happy with the water extinguisher at one end of the main hall (all praise to Kelvin for spotting that one), talking with steverogerson to check final layout of function space, tracking down flip charts, booking out keys to function space, collecting parcels that had been mailed to the hotel, sorting all donated items (many thanks to many generous people) into separate piles for the auction, the raffle and the tombola. Rule of thumb, try and find six really nice items for the raffle that will appeal to different groups of people and at least one item that a child might enjoy. (We had too many items in the raffle at Redemption '03, so I was determined to save time in the closing ceremony, but to have some prizes that people would really want to win)

Anything that wasn't in the raffle, but that I mentally valued at a fiver or more, went into the auction pile. Experience has taught me a lot about running auctions. One rule is that if you don't put tat in the auction, people respect that by opening the bidding at sensible prices.

WEnt to bed at a sensible hour, but was bedevilled by the heating. The room was too hot and I kept waking up to throw off blankets. Eventually, about four in the morning, Richard got up and disconnected the radiator (the off switch hadn't had any effect). This had the sad effect (especially when combined with the early start on Wednesday) of leaving me feeling sleepy for most of Friday.

(Editing this entry later, I have to mention that the tech set-up was actually Friday...)

Comments

[grumpoldusenaut.livejournal.com]

We hired a van trailer to put it all in - we used to hire a simple truck-style trailer until the year it rained really badly and got through all the bin bags we'd wrapped stuff in ...

Ah yes, I remember the year that kerravonsen and I were staying with you after the con, and we spent a couple of cheerful afternoons sorting through the piles of wet zines to see what was salvageable and getting them dried out, me with the pile of slash zines and kerravonsen with the pile of genzines. :-)

[scarlatti.livejournal.com]

From a non-committee-person's perspective, the weekend seemed to run very smoothly. If I forgot to say at the time, many thanks to you and the other committee members for an excellent convention!