In Praise of Con Organizers

            I'm just back from a fantastic weekend at ConBravo! where there were loads of friendly people. Lots of them liked chainmaille, too, which was a plus for me.

            I could spout about how wonderful the convention experience is, but you've heard it all before – at least if you've read my previous blog posts about them. Instead, today I’ll tell you about the people who run them.

            Fan-run conventions vary in size, but the popular ones inevitably grow. The amount of work that has to go into one is monstrous – panels, guests/celebrities, artists, vendors and volunteers all need to be organized and coordinated. The location has to be secured and paid for, contracts written and signed. Security must be arranged, marketing needs to be done, and far more that I either can’t think of right now or don’t know about.

            All of this is done by a handful of people and they usually don’t even get paid for it – more often than not, they’re spending money to make the convention happen. Whenever something goes wrong, no matter how big or small, these are the people who get harried about it until it’s fixed. They’re on their feet, running around, making sure everything runs smoothly for the entire convention, not even able to enjoy the product of their hard work (I had one of them visit me on the only break they could steal and tell me that if anyone asked, she wasn't there).

            Yet, these same people do this again and again, year after year – sometimes even multiple shows every year! The ones I've talked to say they’d like to eventually make their living at it, but until that’s possible it’s just a lot of hard work for other people to have all the fun.

            So here’s a shout-out to all those con organizers out there. You people are extraordinary and, I must say, more than a little crazy. Keep up the great work – I hope you get all the appreciation you deserve.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.