Fan To Pro - The Blog of Professional Geekery

Convention Idea - Student Associations

The round-up of convention ideas can be found here.

When you want guests and events its easy to focus on the professional side of things: professional fans, professional groups, professional lecturers.

Keep in mind that many of your attendees with be students, potential students, or people looking to learn more.

So for potential guests, events, and more start looking at inviting student associations.

Your local colleges will probably have plenty of selections:

1. There are those associated with particular professions or skills - writer's groups, artist's, etc.  They can provide people with information on what it's like to learn a skill or pursue a profession - and find groups they may want to join at a given skill.
2. There are those associated with colleges in general.  They may be able to speak on the virtues of a given college or institution.
3. There may be groups that have general interests (anime, SF) that can provide some broad and interesting insights.

The advantages of inviting student associations?

1. Speaking to the right targets.  Most student associations know exactly who they're for and what they provide.
2. History.  Many student associations have long histories that provide information, context, and connections.
3. Build relations between your convention and colleges.  Good student association relations can forge stronger relationships with educational institutions.
4. They are your audience.  There's a good chance the student association members are interested in or are already attending your convention anyway.

Next time you set up your convention's profan activites, don't forget the students.  You'll be missing out.

- Steven Savage

Convention Idea - Speak to Parents, Teachers, and more

(The rest of the Convention Idea series is here).

I love convention professional events, as you've pretty much guessed.  I've  certainly done enough in the past, and am always looking for new things to do and new ideas.

However I noticed one thing lately - convention events focused on professional issues such as writing careers, artists, etc. focus on the people doing the work and looking for jobs.  They focus in short, on the people who need the advice.

Convention Ideas: Meet the Teacher

The summary of the convention ideas series is here.

So you want to add more professional stuff to your convention or conventions.

Do you have any schools, colleges, educational facilities near you?  Then you've got a ton of potential guests right there.  In short, start inviting teachers, trainers, and so forth to your convention.

First, this is an easy way to get guests - odds are that the people in question will have some interest in your convention subject, if only tangentially.  This also means they may be willing to speak for free memberships, or just out of a chance to network.

Secondly, the teachers and educators may have great ideas.  The convention may give them a chance to make new suggestions, do unusual things they don't often speak on or lecture on, or try out new material.  You're going to the experts - who knows what they're going to come up with.

Third, the teachers and educators you invite may already have fantastic materials to use, hand out, or just plain sell (don't begrudge them a bit of cash here).  They'll likely come well-prepared, and may surprise you and your audience - there's nothing like having people attend a simple lecture on, say, writing, and walk out with handouts or a book.

Finally, the educators you invite may be grateful for the attention and publicity.  It gives  them a chance to be recognized, make connections, and try out some new things.

So next time you're asking how to make your convention more professional, go to one of the sources - teachers, trainers, and educators.

- Steven Savage

Convention Idea - Have Business Owners speak

The roundup of ideas for adding more professional events to conventions is here.

Want someone to speak about careers and opportunities at your convention?  Sure you can hope to get some of the big names to speak, get that oddball guest, arrange seminars . . . but you may be missing a great source of professional panelists.

People who already have fannish businesses.  Take a look at your Dealer's Room or Artists' Alley and youll find there's a huge amount of potential speakers on careers, options, and that often-talked of but hard-to-speak on subject of starting your own business.

Career ambition doesn't have to mean working for someone else.  And, yes, at times I see people with fannish businesses invited to speak on such things at conventions - but I think it could go way farther.

The guy whose been running a comic shop for fifteen years has a lot of insights.  The Artists Alley freelancer who manages to survive on her art is going to have knowledge to share few others will.  The couple who runs an anime memorabilia shop out of a warehouse with a tiny storefront is going to have a lot to speak on.

It doesn't even have to be someone whose living on it full time (though I would certainly make sure to try and get such people).  You may have a lot of budding talent, or people who have managed to mix their fannish and non-fannish work, who can speak and lecture on skills, career issues, experience, etc.  They don't have to have "arrived" at doing full-time fannish work to be people with things to share.

Finally, keep inviting such people back.  As their side businesses and personal businesses evolve, they can share more and more insights.

Your next big career panel may mean raiding your Dealer's room.  Go for it.

- Steven Savage

Kaiju Company Big Battle - The Scope of the Everything Wars

Bonnie and I have talked a lot about the Everything Wars - where companies are battling for share, market, and presence in a variety of markets, some that you wouldn't expect.  We've jokingly compared it to a giant monster movie, which is probably not too bad a metaphor,but I wanted to explore the issue a bit deeper.

The reason I explore it further is this is big for us progeeks, profans, and the rest of us - technology defines a lot of what we do in our lives, careers, and career interest.  Fantasy sports is played online, websites deliver anime, etc.  What happens in the Everything Wars happens to ALL of us.

So, let's take a look.

Con Report: Kin-Yoobi Con

I just did my fan-to-pro panel at Kin-Yoobi con, in Hayward, CA.  My second year there - and the last presentation of my current panel structure (a new one is in development for the fall).

THE PANEL:
The panel area was noisy this year due to the architecture of the place.  I had about the same attendance as last year (about ten people), and this time I was armed with increased handouts as well - all put in nice plastic folders (these will be up on the soon-to-be-added site library).  The panel went pretty good - most interesting was the reaction to the advantage of having fans help you move - I guess a lot of people there had thought about or had had to relocate.

Met a lot of good folks there, chatted with one after the panel who displayed his self-created flash games (including a dynamite enhanced Tetris).  He actually had them with him on his laptop - an interest idea that I think could also pay off in an interview.

THE CON:
The con was a bit disorganized to start, but then everything fell in line.  Kin-Yoobi has a good energy to it and it was VERY friendly.  People chatted, hung out with friends, or made new ones.  It skewed to the college age crowd, with some older and younger fans.

A few things stood out:

• The gaming area was in a hall - this made watching games easier
• Since the campus had limited lunch facilities, the membership fees paid for a free pizza lunch that got brought in and everyone just went at it.  THAT was neat and friendly - everyone just hung out eating pizza.  It felt like a big PARTY.
• The dealers had a lot of fan-artists and fandom-merchandise, kind of doubling as an artists alley.  Very nice

So I had fun, met some great folks, enjoyed doing my panel, and plan to go back next year time permitting!  More and more I like how the con's developed an intimate hang-out-with friends atmosphere.

- Steven Savage

Convention Ideas: Roundup

This is a compilation of all the posts done on this blog about adding "fan-to-pro" elements to conventions.  I will be updating this over time.

GENERAL:

• The list of Profan Panel Ideas.

SPECIFIC SUGGESTIONS:
Guests:

• Invite guests that aren't 'typical' - but are of professional interest
• Invite local guests that are relevant to people's career interests
• Invite recruiters
• Invite business owners.
• Invite people from local or local branches of professional associations.
• Invite and involve student associations.
• Invite retirees who can share unique perspectives and experience.

Events:

• Throw a networking event.
• Involve your Attendees.
• Have a career table
• Advanced Portfolio reviews
• Visit a local business
• Do events for parents, teachers and mentors
• Do events on certifications.
• Focus on tools.
• Focus on what NOT to do, or other failures and mistakes.
• Address must-use technology specifically and in general for progeeks!
• Have attendees come together to make actual product.

Organization:

• Adding career tracks
• Specific career tracks

Miscellaneous

• Try a Minicon or a Proto-Minicon.
• Try doing other events year-round.
• Leverage local workshops for help and even entire events.
• Add career-oriented prizes to your various gameshows or and events.
• Explore different kinds of ways to bring people job information - video, webinar, and more.

CONVENTION SPOTLIGHT:

• Ani-Magic, the Autumn Dream - Making a convention an entire professional-skill-building experience.
• Anime Saint George - Finding good trades for guests, diversifying professional guests, and keeping people informed on how to break into industries.
• Anime USA - Leveraging geographic advantages, specific deep focuses, and having a staff with professional ambitions and experiences.
• Daishocon - Getting speakers that wrote "how to" guides and paying special attention to teaching people how to break into careers.
• Erie-Anime-Experience - Tying history, guests, and ideas together.
• Hal-Con - Cultivating diversity on all panels, and working with guests and attendees for unique topics.
• Iowa Icon - Leverages classic ideas, an intimate setting, and specific focus.
• Mobicon - Leverage your guests and keep your staff primed to develop good profan events.
• Odyssey Con - Covers areas of professional writing not everyone thinks of, and "subcontracts" events from other conventions.
  
• Queen City Kamikaze - Calling on local talent, local education, and making career-specific events.
• Tigercon - Making guest-sharing deals and adding academic elements.
• WindyCon - Following in the steps of WorldCon and doing manuscript review for writers.

- Steven Savage

Convention Idea: Career Tracks

My original column on how conventions could invite more "career" guests (legal reps, marketers, special effects teams) along with their "name" guests generated a good deal of feedback from various people.  After some though, I've decided to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and flesh out other ideas on how conventions and similar fan/geek events can encourage professional development as well as fun.  There's no real endpoint to the series - and I'm always looking for new ideas.

For this column, I want to focus on another way to make conventions skill-and-career building as well as social and fun - a career track at a convention.  I've seen a few ideas like this implemented from con to con, and wanted to discuss my ideal version of how they could be done.