looking forward

[totient]

My post-Arisia flurry of email and IRC traffic has finally subsided, and the new website is up. I have a transitional org chart with about two dozen filled positions on it, though there are still some vacancies I need to fill soon. The arrangements for John Howe (or more accurately, for his wife, who is an Iranian citizen) are going to be the long pole in the tent, so it's time for me to confirm my GoH liaison and supply him with a good volunteer to handle the INS. Everything else can wait until the debrief on the 13th.

By the end of the month I'm hoping to have eight of my eventual nine or ten black-ribbon positions filled, so they can participate in budgeting. The other black-ribbon positions will be the A07 con chair (who won't be appointed yet) and my Ops division head (whose budget is fairly uncontroversial). Those might turn out to be the same person, depending on who runs for con chair for '07. I could make do without having my Programming division head participate in budgeting either, except that my choice for Programming will probably affect my choices for other divisions with more complex budgeting issues.

Comments

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

the price is indeed going down for '06.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

Now that's fascinating in light of all the (alledged?) budgetary woes. Arisia is one crazy beast.

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

Background for those who are playing along at home: Arisia had a bad year financially in 2003, and about broke even (after all our continuing expenses) in 2004. This put us in a position where we would not be able to weather another bad year, and preliminary reports are that 2005 made a modest amount of money, but not so much that 2006 can take big risks.

Meanwhile, the convention has been wobbling between 2000 and 2400 members for some years now, pushed to and fro by weather and marketing efforts but not really departing from its fundamental size. Our volunteer base has grown to the point where running a convention of that size is comfortable, and our facilities (now that we have come up with ways to use them well) do not seem crowded. But maintaining that volunteer base requires bringing in new people, particularly students and full-weekend members rather than day members.

Arisia's membership has for some time broken down into four roughly equal categories: full rate paid at-door or late-prereg full weekend members; day members; prereg members before the final deadline; and comps. The number of comps scales less than linearly with the membership of the convention, and the number of day members scales more than linearly. We don't have an real measurement of ghosts, but those also probably scale more than linearly with the size of the con.

My feeling on the rate changes (notice that we're leaving the day rates the same) is that it will probably get us 100 more students, 100 more preregistrants, 200 more full at-doors, and 100 fewer day members. If this is true, the net financial effect on the convention is plus $2,500, which about balances the incremental cost of having 300 more people at the convention. But more importantly we'll get more of the kind of people who are likely to volunteer for the con in future years.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to see the price drop -- $50 is pretty steep for a low-income person. Mostly my concern is with things like the massage den, which seems highly appreciated but terribly underfunded. I suppose it isn't about is there money for it, but rather is it deemed important enough to be funded, which is a different issue.

FYI, I am available to be a staff person of some sort...

[ceo]

Comps are a full quarter of the memberships?! Or am I misreading "roughly equal"?

[palmwiz.livejournal.com]

comps of all kinds are a full quarter of the memberships, yes.