runacc.costume-con.org

I stand corrected, and y’know, I even saw that on the website.   I guess I thought that was written by someone other than you.   My apologies.

As for the second point, I reread your email, and I can’t corroborate whether the knowledge was available or not, so I bow to your version of the story.   I overlooked your correction while copying and pasting a new document.

Bruce

As Masquerade Director, I must take serious issue with some of the statements in this review, which are based on faulty information that I pointed out and sought to correct when the review was in draft.  For whatever reasons, the writers did not use the information I provided.

I’m not sure how you’re seeing that, but when we received the email from the Yahoo group, I did not see that repetition you cited.   And I just went out to the Yahoo site to look at the email and there is no repetition, there,  either.   Could be a browser thing on your end.   Or some weird coding in the background.   Rather than the usual writing to the list from our PC, I was going directly out to Yahoo from my laptop, creating a new email. and pasting in my text.     Maybe something didn’t get erased after I edited it that was “invisible”   Yahoo can be squirrely.   May not like my pasting from a Word doc.  I have no control over that.

Bruce

This is another review that needed editing.  The material beginning “As for the Social. . .” and ending “. . . not down too low,” appears twice.

Okay, then it’s definitely a coding issue.   No more copying and pasting directly into Yahoo, then.

I’ll work on reposting the entire thing, for readability, plus corrections, as soon as I can.

Bruce

add” had the various! shows been bigger, they could have been disastrous “. after the asterisk.

Guess I wasn’t clear enough.   Wouldn’t be the first time, nor will it be the last.

Bruce

What do the asterisks at the end of those sentences indicate?

This publication, distributed prior to the convention will be recorded as one of the worst in the convention’s history.    As near as we can tell, there must have been a heavy reliance on the convention regulars and tradition to get the word out about it, because the only evidence we can find of promotion was on the website and 1 email back in July.   There may have been promoting  elsewhere on other lists they belong to, but FB and the ICG-D list are the primary forums for reaching a majority of the potential attendees.   The only content found about the rules for the Folio were on the website and PR #2.

This  lack of promotion HAD to have been a factor in the serious lag in submissions, resulting in the submission deadline being pushed back at least once.   Some people didn’t know about the extension because that announcement was not made widely.

While selecting judges from 3 different time zones might be doable these days, thanks to the Internet, there were coordination difficulties.  The Editor insisted on routing only one set of the submissions to one judge at a time, rather than providing  them to all three simultaneously.    Once the judges had all finally made their own reviews, they supposedly Skyped to confer.  This process, and then the time taken for publication, took until late February.

The con chairs should have been monitoring the situation and either replaced the Editor  or advised them to come up with a better solution like finding local judges in their area.  However, because one of the con chairs had their own health issues, thus their co-chair/spouse was distracted.

Finally, the link to the finished Folio was sent out on March 6 – less than 10 weeks from the convention.    There was no announcement on the D list, no announcement on the FB page.   There should have been a greater effort to get the word out about it – people are lazy and won’t seek it out.  And once the link was sent, not everyone could open the PDF file.

As for the content of the Folio, while there was a claim that there were “so many designs”, there were only 5 designers, with only 96 published pages, which included some blanks to assure that it would print out formatted correctly.

The recognition system of “you’re either in the Folio or not” was discarded in favor of 1st, 2nd and 3rd places and people didn’t like it.   Even when the Folio finally came out, most of the designs left people uninspired – we heard this from several people at the con, not just our own people.   (Maybe this is a panel for the next CC – can design be taught?)    Many of the designs were too complicated to be able to be completed in the short amount of time left.

I can’t stand it.   I had two emails open and intended to make sure I stayed in order.   I apparently got confused.   I’ll try that again later.

Bruce

This publication, distributed prior to the convention will be recorded as one of the worst in the convention’s history.    As near as we can tell, they must have been relying on the convention regulars and tradition to get the word out about it, because the only evidence we can find of promotion was on the website and 1 email back in July last year.   They may have been promoting  elsewhere on other lists they belong to, but FB and the ICG-D list are the primary forums for reaching a majority of the potential attendees.   The only content found about the rules for the Folio were on the website and PR #2.

This  lack of promotion HAD to have been a factor in the serious lag in submissions, resulting in the deadline being pushed back at least once.   Some people didn’t know about the extension because that announcement was not made widely.

While selecting judges from 3 different time zones might be doable these days, thanks to the Internet, there were coordination difficulties.  They also insisted on routing only one set of the submissions to one judge at a time, rather than providing  them to all three simultaneously.    Once the judges had all finally made their own reviews, they supposedly Skyped to confer.  This process, and then the time taken for publication, took until late February.

The con chairs should have been monitoring the situation and either replaced the Editor  or advised them to come up with a better solution like finding local judges in their area.  However, because one of the con chairs had their own health issues, thus their co-chair/spouse was distracted.

Finally, the link to the finished Folio was sent out on March 6 – less than 10 weeks from the convention.    There was no announcement on the D list, no announcement on the FB page.   There should have been a greater effort to get the word out about it – people are lazy and won’t seek it out.  And once the link was sent, not everyone could open the PDF.

As for the content of the Folio, while there was a claim that there were “so many designs” – there were only 5 designers, with only 96 published pages.   The published Folio was only 96 pages, which included some blanks to assure that it would print out formatted correctly.

The recognition system of “you’re either in the Folio or not” was discarded in favor of 1st, 2nd and 3rd places and people didn’t like it.   Even when the Folio finally came out, most of the designs left people uninspired – we heard this from several people at the con, not just our own people.   (Maybe this is a panel for the next CC – can design be taught?)    Many of the designs were too complicated to be able to be completed in the short amount of time left.

Many different opinions and experiences with the hotel.  It was certainly convenient to get to.   FREE PARKING(!).   The worst thing we had was Housekeeping was sometimes a little slow delivering supplies.   The elevators were quick.   The staff was all mostly friendly.   We didn’t see the amount of wear others saw.

The hotel food was not bad, the prices typical for the area.   But not everyone had the same experiences.

“I didn’t particularly care for the attitude of the staff in the restaurant.  “We’re usually not open for lunch, we’re just doing this for your group.”  Said with a kind of put-out tone of voice.  That really put me off the place so we never ate there again.” 

Another commenter:

“Restaurant was OK for breakfast. It was nice to be able to pay for the buffet in advance so we could just leave when we were done, rather than waiting forever for the check. We only ate there once for dinner (time crunch) and the buffet fare was definitely not worth the $18 price. Staff was OK for us. We don’t usually eat lunch at a con, so didn’t encounter the lunch problem.”

While there were no restaurants within walking distance, there were several within 5 minutes driving time.   Supposedly, the hotel shuttle would take you anywhere you wanted to go within a 3 mile radius for free.  There was also one that would take you downtown, to the visitor’s bureau.   There was no hot tub, but there was an indoor/outdoor pool.    Perhaps hot tubs are not as big a thing in the South?

At least some registration stuff was there to pick up Thursday evening, but there was apparently some miscommunication about giving out the complete packets, so some of people had to pick up the rest the next day.

This one really confused me. The swag bags were ready. I know. I stuffed them all on Tuesday night. I’m not sure why they weren’t available Thursday night.

There were not enough people to man Registration and we saw one person who appeared to be spending an awful lot of time behind the table.  This seemed to be a recurring indicator that the con was understaffed.

To us the “swag bag” was not much to write home about.  There was no map of the hotel, but the layout was relatively simple and the few meeting rooms used were all together in one place, save for a board room on the third floor (which was hard to find at first until someone posted a handwritten sign).

The program book was minimal at best and had a number of errors, mostly regarding info about the panels (missing descriptions or no description at all in one or two cases). 

The program book broke down as follows:

32 pages including front cover. 

2 blank pages (inside of front cover and front side of back page). 

No back cover. 

Letter from con chairs 1 page. 

Panel descriptions 3 pages, some of which had no description in the program book.

Harassment Policy: 2 pages

Bios – 6 pages

Ads – 3 pages, two half page ads and 2 full page ads

Costume Con Constitution – 9 pages

Other articles – 6 pages (Miss Lizzy’s Travelling Historical Fashion Show, Astronaut Quilt, Richard Man: Transformations: Cosplay, List of past CostumeCons).

The two blank pages were a real waste of space.  The letters from the Co-chairs could have been photocopied onto the back of the front cover and the Rare Recorded Videos ad moved up a page, saving a page.  I find it curious that there was no ad space for any of the upcoming Costume Cons.  I think blank pages would be better used by including some traceable human figures, one male and one female and perhaps some info on the upcoming Future Fashion Folio.

The list of past CostumeCons was nice and would have made the Con Chair’s toast at the dead dog party a lot easier, if there had been a dead dog party.

Local Guide – Not quite as helpful as one would have liked.  We actually needed to find the Walmart listed on the guide.  It took a lot of driving around on the other side of the highway.  There are lots of signs there claiming the presence of a Walmart, but none of them point you in the proper direction.  A simple hand drawn map would have cleared all that up.  Another thing lacking on the local guide is some useful info about laws in the area.  It took a wasted trip to the liquor store to discover that liquor stores in SC are not allowed to sell beer.

The programming schedule grid sheet was hard to read correctly, leading people to misread start times by 30 minutes.   There ought to be a better software out there for these kinds of things.  If something exists, it could be shared from year to year.

This suffered from the usual lack of basic knowledge of Excel.  It’s a simple thing to merge cells together vertically and center the time so that you know for sure that this line means 9:00 and that line means 9:30.  There was some real confusion caused by the pocket program about whether certain panels started at 1:00 or 1:30.  Having each day on its own page did make for some simple folding to display at a glance what was coming up on that day.

FRIDAY NIGHT

The pre-judging time for the Single Pattern Contest was posted in the “stealth PR”.   At the con, in at least one case, a contestant was told the rehearsal was 2:00 PM.   As it turned out, there did not appear to be a rehearsal and there was some scrambling to get down to the ballroom for judging.   Bottom line: there should have been more announcements about the first competition of the con.  In any case, the show went off without a hitch, other than the MC mispronouncing  titles of entries.

As for the Social itself, the food spread was better than some past CCs, and it did not run out of protein –always a good thing.  (It would have been nice if arrangements had been made so that the people backstage didn’t miss out on some of that protein, though).

Attendees did play along with the speakeasy theme, costume-wise.    The bar had a selection of bad beer, bad wine and bad soda.   Leftovers from the Social were moved to Hospitality – including the huge amounts of leftover birthday cake for one of the co-chairs.   The spinning light gobos were annoying, but at least seating was adequate and the house lights were not down too low.

FNS –  I liked the free drink ticket.  It would have been nice if there were something worth drinking for free.  Charleston has some fine microbreweries.  I don’t understand not having at least one of them as a choice for a beer.  The food was the same stuff from the con suite.  I have to resurrect a comment from a CC in the past.  “Deja Food”.  Didn’t I just eat this?  Something that was a little amusing was the drawing they kept trying to have, only to have the person giving out the tickets scream that she was still handing them out.  Perhaps these tickets should have gone in the swag bag, like the drink ticket.  Just a thought.

There was also this:

The Friday Night Social was sold as featuring a variety of southern specialties. In reality, there was nothing except cheese trays and peach cobbler..…” (Not strictly true – there were pulled pork sandwiches, and the cobbler, for itself, was excellent)   “…Earlier on Friday, I heard some members suggesting that they could opt to skip dinner; I hope they didn’t do so.

(In refer4ence to Friday Night and food)  “Deja Food”, indeed.   The “egg mcmuffins” the SLCG sponsored Sunday morning in the Suite were appreciated, and several people thanked us later for providing them.   At least, those didn’t run out before most people who got up early enough didn’t miss out on them.   However, had we been reminded that the Brunch was supposed to be at 10:00 AM, we would have probably chosen a different time to sponsor the Suite.

The selection of food in the con suite got really boring.  I’m sure this was written into the hotel contract, but those sorts of things are always negotiable.  No hotel can make that an absolute.  You can always go to another hotel.  Some groups did manage to sneak some extra stuff into the room though.  I noticed the cheese curds from the CC Madison folks and the Mead.  I mentioned before the predilection for putting a little sugar in the unsweet tea.  I did like having tea to drink though.  The space needed to be a little larger and have a few more tables.  There were several mornings where Sue and I were a little stuck for a place to sit and the love seat in the middle of the room caused some traffic problems, some that couldn’t even be solved by leaving one door and coming back in the other.  The room was kept relatively clean by the hotel staff.  Aside from sugar in my unsweet tea, I can’t complain about them much.

The other bright spot in the otherwise repetitive fare in Hospitality was an ice cream social sponsored by Atomacon, a local SF con.    The one glaring item missing all weekend was soda.  All the drinks (tea, juices, etc.) were sweetened to some extent – even the apple juice (?).

The Programming person was noticeably distracted by personal events, leading up to the last few months of the con.

There were misgivings about a peer having their way paid as guest – not sure what precedent that might set in the future.   Opinions were mixed as to the variety of panels and demos, so there was no consensus one way or another.    Most people liked what they saw.

There was a decent variety, just not enough of them.

It’s hard to strike that right balance of enough and not enough.   Not enough, people get bored.   Too many, then they complain about having to choose between panels.   One possibility might be to have more panels, but repeat some of them.

Also, the staggered start and end times were confusing and usually meant I either had to miss the last part of one, or the first part of another.

And:

My biggest issue was there was nowhere that said who was on what panels – so if you were on a panel and didn’t know what name it was in the program, you couldn’t find it. Also, if you were looking for someone in particular, no way to find what panel they might be on so you could find them.

The fact that this was not a very big con probably explains why the Friday and Saturday “My First Costume-Con” panels never had more than 5 people in them.  We believe they’re still an important panel to have, and provide an important service to newcomers – especially to let them know about Hospitality.   One of the newbies came all the way from North Dakota, and we suspect we have a new convert.

Very few panels had less than three attendees: apparently, the panel on how the Library of Congress is now archiving masquerade video was surprisingly well attended(!).

It will be a recurring theme that, had the various shows been bigger, they could have been disastrous.   (Keep that in mind where you see the *)

For whatever reasons, all the normal tech crews were unavailable for CC33.  Probably , just a case of bad timing.    It was fortunate that Eric and Sue were able to bring at least a barebones tech set up along with their video equipment.    The PR#3 said people could submit their presentation music on either CDs or USB drives.  It turned out, though, there was limited tech – the amount of tech the Cannons could bring was limited by  the space in their car.   Because of that, all MP3 files had to be burned to CDs before they could be played.   They HAD suggested people bring more than one copy on more than one medium, but people may have not have done that, and it was not mentioned again during registration, starting while the ICG meeting was going on Friday.   (We have since learned that the MD was unaware of this issue) .   Tech COULD have run WAY behind while the files were burned late in the day Saturday.*

Contestants were told to arrive at the Green Room at 6:00 PM – the GR was not prepared.   It seems they must have started getting organized, because it was 20-30 minutes before they allowed people in.  Not sure why people were only allowed into the somewhat cramped space in running order, and then assigned their den.

F/SF was the worst for space. I can’t say for the FFS/Curtains, because I wasn’t back there. Historical was tight, but not as much as F/SF…… The person arriving to do check-in was unpleasant and we had a bit of a snip-fest at the beginning. I was trying to be efficient, and she wanted things HER way.

Another quote:

….We didn’t get a running order and # of people per entry until at least 6:30, so we couldn’t set up the dens till then. It helped that the last entry was the 12 body entry, so they got the hall kind of by default. There was no way to put them in the room.

This made for a longer delay.   That’s really inefficient, especially when they were already running late.*    The contestants had to repeat their info to different people, even though they were right next to each other – probably a noise AND organization issue.

The dens were poorly set up with chairs in an oval, with no tables  – there was no space.   The contestants were told they could not use more than one seat, so where were they supposed to put the stuff they brought down?  Guess no one had thought of that.   One den wound up having to be set up out in the hall *.

Some entries wouldn’t have fit into the quilt room.  We were already having issues with exit doors – apparently the fire marshal was there and was being picky about stuff blocking the doors.

And:

…we were having to steal chairs from the audience because there weren’t enough in the green room for everyone.

As well as:

In hindsight, for F/SF, we really needed to swap the spaces of two of the dens (and put Santa into the corner). That giant costume kept sticking out into the only path for movement we had and catching every dangly bit that went by.

The den moms were given hats to wear to identify them, but apparently, no one actually mentioned that.   Guess it was supposed to be assumed.   The den moms were not informed to make sure people got to the official photographer – at least not initially.    The GR ran out of water at some point.   It DID have a repair kit, and it was used.

Recommendations: aprons instead of hats, and hand fans.

Official Photography took up about ¼ of the space that could have been used for Green Room, but there was no where else to really put it.

One person said: I don’t think there was really anyplace else for the photographers to go other than in that room – the partitions were kind of arbitrary, so yes, it was 1/3 of the space.

The judges were not photographed as part of the official record – not sure who would have been responsible for making sure that happened.

Workmanship judges were placed at the end of the main hall where the audience could potentially see them before the show – no attempt to curtain that area off was made (probably because it wasn’t really thought about until the last minute).

It was obvious that the con had some staffing issues, since the GR Director was also shooting the reference photos, as well as having been working Registration each day.  Unfortunately, her assistant was apparently not very experienced at the GR check in process.    There was also a shortage of backstage crew, with only 3 ninjas ( I stepped in to help).

The photo run ran without a problem, and the judges returned shortly after the video halftime. (The Workmanship judging panel had taken a little longer to complete deliberations).   Overall, less time might have been taken had the printing of awards started immediately after the Presentation judges had finished, rather than waiting for the Workmanship results.   It was apparently a bit of a “duh’ moment.   Regardless, awards were fair, there were enough people recognized for their efforts, and there were no controversies.

There was more than one lack of communication in regards to the Future Fashion Show .

There had been an announcement sometime late in 2014 on the FB page and (stealth) PR #3 about a Sunday Brunch and Cotillion “in conjunction” with the Future Fashion Show  at 10:00 AM  – this was the first the FFS Director learned of it, rather than via the Staff Yahoo group.   That was supposed to be the time when rehearsals would have been called.  The “brunch” was served – an hour late – in the main traffic hall outside the ballroom.   A sign was posted on the door of the Ballroom, stating that the FFS would start at 11:30 AM – again, the Director was not personally informed.   The brunch fare was slightly different (sandwiches and deep fried mac & cheese accompanied by the déjà food, but the protein ran out early) and the “cotillion” mostly consisted of some ladies standing around in their hoopskirts because there was no seating and they were not allowed to enter the ballroom while tech was going on.    Overall, it was poorly organized and poorly executed.

There were two factors that led to this year’s Future Fashion Show being the smallest in the con’s history.  The first factor was the Folio Editor’s mismanagement of the Folio, leaving little time for anyone to consider making an outfit for the show.  And so, there were only 2 children’s entries and one adult – all three were designed by the same person (the adult – who was not related to the children in any way).  The Folio Show Director made token efforts to promote the show, but it was deemed mostly of no use, given the lateness of the Folio.

The second major factor that affected the Folio show was the “Miss Ellen’s Portieres” competition.  This challenge apparently captured the imaginations of a lot of people – the show had more entries than the SF & F masquerade.   As a result, the people who had intended to enter both competitions had to choose between this or the Folio Show.    (Side note: People in the Portiere show as contestants, staff, and crew, were not accommodated by the committee to get brunch food to them).

Given the poor quality of the Future Fashion Folio, it’s not surprising that there were only three entries in the Future Fashion Show.  I think a contributing factor was scheduling the curtain contest immediately after.  Given that the Future Fashion Show is expressly called for in the Constitution, I think it’s time to stop scheduling things so that a person has to choose do I do the Future Fashion Show or do I do this other thing.  Either move those things to the Friday Night Social, as has been done in the past, or here’s a thought.  How about a contest for Monday afternoon.  No one seems to schedule any programming for that time.  Why not give us a contest?

Another:

Any extra stuff needs to either go with the Single Pattern on Friday, or be a display-only competition like shoes or ties. I think the tote-bag one that CC34 is doing is in that category, but I may be wrong

And finally:

You would think that, by now, we would have learned that putting anything in proximity to the FFS is detrimental to the Future Fashion Show.  It’s happened time and again.  This is something we really need to emphasize…

Prejudging took place in the Green Room again, with the distractions of Tech Rehearsals.  There were only 10 entries in the show, so again – good thing it was a small con.*(Could have been a disaster if the con had been bigger)

An opportunity was missed to keep the judges corralled and also allow them additional time for discussion by arranging for them to have dinner together.   This worked at CC31.

Another recommendation –  Make sure to allow time for judges to change to costumes before the show – your costumes are the creds on your back.

The Green Room was the same size, but the contestants took up just about as much room because of 9 people with wings, among other things.  There was only one noticeable tech snag.  Again, the feeling by people was the awards were in adequate numbers, fair and again, no controversies.   Some of the contestants were surprised and pleased to be recognized.   At halftime, the quilt and doll awards announcements could have been done before the judges got back.

The Monday tour of Charleston was… a bit disorganized.   Originally, we had to sign up ahead of time before the con and send in a down payment for it.   Then, we found out a couple of weeks before we left that the tour time would slightly overlap the Road Show time slot.   We managed to arrange it so that we’d have 30 minutes to get stuff in the room and meet for pick up.   Then, we were told the tour was cancelled. During the weekend, we were told the tour was back ON again, but even earlier than we had been told.   Fortunately, Pierre and Sandy weren’t going on the tour, so they covered for us, and apparently had a pretty good turnout.

Upon our return from the Charleston tour, we learned there would be no Dead Dog Party.   Supposedly, it would take place the following night.    What in the world were they thinking?

The big problem with the con suite was that it disappeared Monday afternoon, leaving no space for the dead dog party.  Some real lack of planning there.