object lessons

[totient]

Two things learned at Lunacon:

If doing something well requires so much staff that there is no one left to appreciate it, it is better to do it poorly.

This is actually something I knew already from putting on TSD rallies, but had not applied to convention running. It is probably especially true of the Masquerade, because the pool you are drawing down is entrants rather than audience members, and there are a lot fewer of those. Lunacon got this one right, though they might not have seen it that way.

Changing hotels doesn't make the convention fresh.

Going to a hotel that you haven't been to before makes a convention fresh. Returning to a previously used hotel after a long absence is worse than staying put; you tend towards the patterns that worked then, losing improvements and adaptations you have made along the way. Lunacon got this one right, too, by dint of the unfinished construction taking away the familiar aspect of the hotel. Though the price paid for it was rather steep.

Comments

[roozle.livejournal.com]

I wasn't there but let me try it:
2) they COULDN'T fall into their old bad habits, they had to improvise their way into improvement, thus they got it right. Though palmwiz clearly implies, not through merit on their part.

1) Doing a less complicated masquerade had fewer costumers (those potential entrants) working the show -- and more entrants entertaining the audience. Where less complicated is "less complicated than Arisia". Again, I wasn't at the con, and there could easily be multiple factors contributing to more entrants in the masquerade.