more data

[totient]

Arisia registration figures are pointing to a con of around 2900 or perhaps 3000 people. This is squarely in the middle of a strange no-man's land: there's very little data about how conventions of this size work. Boskone went directly from a 2700 person con in the Park Plaza in 1984 -- something the dynamics of which Arisia understands intimately -- to the largest SF convention in the world, and already too big for its new and bigger hotel, in a single year (1985). Minicon likewise skipped over 3000 as an attendance figure, and found (as Boskone did) that a 3300 person con is very different to run from a 2000-2500 person one.

I'm sure everyone will fit in our enormous new hotel, but I'm really quite curious to find out which things will be the same and which will be different at that number, because almost no one has done it before.

And I'm glad that we still have a membership cap, even if it's higher than it was before.

Comments

Scale

[zzbottom.livejournal.com]

Just to have an appreciation, because I haven't attended any other con besides Arisia, what were the registration numbers for the Hyatt and Park Plaza?

Re: Scale

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Oh, right! We've been in the 2000-2500 range for almost a decade now. The last few years this has been constrained by the capacity of the Hyatt -- not so much that we've turned people away, though we've done a little of that and a lot of threatening to, so much as that they have fled. There's quite a population of people who've been waiting for an Arisia they can attend without feeling quite so crowded.

Re: Scale

[shayde.livejournal.com]

It depends on what year you're looking at - but it generally hovered around 2300.

Re: Scale

[londo.livejournal.com]

I thought our record for attendance was set in the Hyatt regardless of it being tiny?

Re: Scale

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed, though there was a con nearly as big in the PP, and it wasn't nearly so crowded.

[londo.livejournal.com]

I've heard you make this argument before, and I think that this has less to do with attendee numbers than it does with staff numbers.

The attendees don't magically change quantity such that social pressures drastically change as a factor, but the core staff maybe exceeds our monkeyspheres.

[mangosteen]

That's an interesting proposition.... how have staff numbers changed relative to the Dunbar number (i.e. 150), over time?

[londo.livejournal.com]

We've been hovering at 300 for a while, but we're now getting to the point where social cohesion amongst Div Heads/Area Heads is a little loose. Feels like we're in that rule-by-social-pressure-to-rule-by-law transition, almost.

[shayde.livejournal.com]

I think that there's always wobbly interactions among staff and div heads going into a con - some years are more stable than others. I don't think the increase by 20% in the attendance numbers are really going to make that much of a difference (although, this year against last, we're talking < 10%)

Should Arisia go to 3500 or 4000, I think there will likely need to be some organizational changes, as I don't feel those numbers will work well with the current structure.

Having said that, I've also worked events that have something like 5x the attendance, with a total staff of only 40 or so, with almost all operational duties centered on 5-8 people. I think that Arisia would never go this route - it has a far more diverse offering, but it does underline that attendance numbers are not 100% linked to staff numbers as far as judging the smoothness of an operation.

[londo.livejournal.com]

attendance numbers are not 100% linked to staff numbers as far as judging the smoothness of an operation.

I concur, which is why I split the hair I did above.

And, yeah, this con could have a much smaller staff ratio, but... I think Arisians tend to do a lot more work than is really necessary in most departments, and that by and large we do it 'cause we like doing it. If the various professionals who make Arisia happen billed out at their usual hourly rates (i.e, the money we could be making if we didn't spend all our time on this) it'd be well over a million dollars.

We overwork ourselves because we like it.

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

I think Arisians tend to do a lot more work than is really necessary in most departments

Srsly

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Yes, this.

It's not that getting bigger requires more complexity and thus more staff and budget. It's that it *enables* more complexity, through additional staff and budget. And we are organizationally incapable of resisting.

:p

[londo.livejournal.com]

In my mind, if anyone has helped prove that Arisia can become more complex, it's the guy who led the charge for 4-day.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

it'd be well over a million dollars.

I worked out how many hours it was a while ago (when the con was somewhat smaller than it is now) and came up with 10,000 hours (that was one person at 2000, a dozen at 250, fifty at 50, and two hundred at 12). These days being con chair takes only 1000 hours, but Programming now takes 2000 (usually split between two people) and Ben Levy puts in 2000 on whatever jobs he takes as well. The core group is a little bigger and maybe works a little harder. The next tiers are quite a bit bigger, probably by 50%. And we've got enough 4-8 hour volunteers now that it makes a difference to count them correctly. We're probably up over 15,000 hours, maybe 20,000. Certainly plenty of folks on staff bill at $65 (let alone $50) an hour, but I have a hard time believing the average is anywhere near that.

[londo.livejournal.com]

I feel like I've put in well over 250 for several years running (last year I put in over a hundred onsite) and that there are significantly more than a dozen people who also do that.

On the other hand, maybe I'm just crazy and/or have terrible productivity.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

100 hours onsite definitely makes you an outlier.

[londo.livejournal.com]

Hm.

I guess I need to get better at delegating.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

I have not seen any evidence that Dunbar's number is relevant to organizations, possibly excepting high schools. People put most of their socializing energy outside the organization. In companies I've worked for, 50 is much closer to the number at which the social group decoheres.

[londo.livejournal.com]

Are you suggesting that the core of Arisia is fifty people, or that Arisia has decohered?

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

I wasn't saying, but in fact I think that right now the set of people who come to concom meetings ever (which is a reasonable definition of "core") is probably around 75, and that it's not particularly coherent socially.

[londo.livejournal.com]

Chunks of it have certainly felt coherent in the past, perhaps excessively so. On the other hand, this year it's seemed much less so, and I don't *think* that's just because I'm remote. (OTOH that would be an excellent way to give a person that impression.)

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think this year is less coherent than usual.

I realize that in this comment thread I am using "core" to mean ~75 people who all come to concom meetings, and in a previous comment thread I was using it to mean what this year is ~15 people who (mostly) all report to Crystal. Neither term is particularly crisp.

I refer you to http://palmwiz.livejournal.com/77072.html ...

[londo.livejournal.com]

Seen it, though I didn't remember all of the details. See my first comment in this post. :)

I disagree with the general assertion "a convention has a run-time volunteer need of a little less than two hours per attendee," but can't bring myself to disprove it in the case of Arisia.

Do you have a plan for getting a quarter of Arisia to put in 8h each, average? Does that account for the number of comps that come from 3h of panels?

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

I wasn't including the program participants, no.

It helps that the standard deviation is large; we don't have many people putting in 100 hours at con but we do have quite a few putting in a lot more than 8. If we could get a quarter of Arisia to put in even two hours, plus the ten percent who put in 12+ and the few who put in 50+, we'd probably be in great shape.