Minutes from the Intercon Con Com meeting, May 10, 2008 May 12, 2008

Concom Minutes
10 May 2008

Hotel Liason
- Check arrived
Bid Chair
- Not here, sent a report:
- "One game added, More games needed, Woot"
- Talk about results of Bidcom Open Meeting
  - Went through all text shown to bidders and cleaned it up for accuracy and clarity
  - Bidcom promises to give a decision on games in no more than a month after submission
  - Laid out guidelines for use of fast-track option:
    - Only to be used in cases where there is time pressure and the bid committee can't reasonably be contacted in the necessary time
  - Laid out guidelines for use of bidcom decision override by con chair:
    - Should be used as sparingly as possible, if at all
    - Con chair will give bid commitee an explanation of why it was deemed necessary to override decision
Information
- Not here, attending memorial
Con Suite
- Not here, attending memorial and taking certification exam
GM Coordinator
- Hi!
- Nothing to report; GMs relatively quiet.
- Suggestion: Poke early-bid GMs later in the year (before signups) and make sure their blurbs still fit.
Treasurer
- Check from hotel arrived: $1090
- H final total: profit of $302.69!
- I total: $1862.83
- NEIL total: $5460.60
- State paperwork taken care of
Ops
- Sam's investigation of dates from last year:
  - Buttons were Sept last year, maybe should be earlier this year
  - Shirts and program booklets not till February last year
- Andrew went through surveys:
  - Con suite
  - - Everyone loves con suite
    - 1 or 2 people wanted larger dinner period
    - 1 or 2 wanted kosher options (probably impossible)
    - More drink options?
    - Some complaints about Saturday, nothing we don't already know
    - Suggestion: hand sanitizer out near con suite
  - Hotel
    - Key card system malfunctioning for some folks
    - Some complaints about the state of the hotel
    - No bacon at hotel breakfast
    - Hot water system malfunctioned
  - Vendors
    - People liked the vendors
    - Many people are too poor/don't have time to see vendors
    - Everyone loves Rising Phoenix
  - Advertising
    - We should advertise at Mythical Journeys
  - Intercon has gotten big in general
  - People liked Randy Milholland's tabletop game
  - One person worried that theming is getting too strong... but we got the opposite feedback from Intercon G, so this might be an outlier
- Sam to find out whether StitchAmerica will do 1 design/2 shirt types at same price as 1 shirt type (www.embroiderysuperstore.com)
Pubs / Art
- Probably not here, sent art collateral schedule with request for dates
- Barry replied to some of these with dates, and added some of his own
- Initial 'I' ad for program book back cover for Intercon H - done.
- Web banner for Intercon I site - done.
- Button art for I - it is the same format as last year, Sam suggests September for buttons.
- Intercon I Flyers - we are updating them monthly as per last meeting Anna has been sending the monthly new game roll ups.
- Intercon I Ads - we need to plan and coordinate dates for the following ads: Origins, Mid Atlantic, Arisia. Also, are we going to place ads in other events? Please advise dates and formats and or contact person.
  - We probably aren't going to be able to do an ad for Origins based on last year's experience (they forgot about our ad exchange).
  - Mid Atlantic may or may not be doing ads in their booklet this year - will have to ask Gordon about that
  - Arisia - we haven't done an ad for them in the past as far as we recall
  - So probably only need to worry about Mid Atlantic, if they're doing ads.
- Intercon I Shirt Design - we will be going with StitchAmerica again. Instead of 2 designs, we're considering offering polos and babydolls assuming price works.
- Intercon I badge design - yes, same as last year's format. Nat will look at changing the badge format back to large nickname, small real name.
- Intercon I program book cover design - "As late as 14 Feb but would like it in Dec if possible"
- Intercon I program content dates - 25 Dec will be ad and bio deadline; 2 Feb will be schedule changes deadline if possible
- Booklet draft available - January NEIL meeting (Arisia?)
- Final booklet editing pass begins - 2 Feb
- Booklet complete and ready for Ops to print - 16 Feb
Registrar
- 93 attendees so far for Intercon I
  - This is inbetween G and H numbers
  - At this point it doesn't look like we're breaking records this year (whew)
- Everything running OK with PayPal except one person tried to use PayPal Mobile which didn't automatically pingback to us
Vendor
- Positive comments coming back from vendors
- Some vendors want to change spaces
- 8 space allocation was right; squeezing in a 9th, although it worked out, probably wouldn't have been OK for a different vendor
- Rising Phoenix has been promised a party at I and wants to throw one
- We need to find out whether Randy Milholland will come back or not
  - He said he'd love to but he's moving out of the area
  - If he comes back, he might be a GM instead of a vendor
- R. Craig Enslin
  - We've had complaints about him in the past, both business-related and behavior-related
  - He's applied to be a vendor at I
  - Further discussion needed
Web
- Not here
- Jen is going to contact Barry to see about getting a vendors page on the site
- Site still says Angel/Devil shirt - probably should fix?
  - Someone ordered one, so shirts are $20 this year
Con chair
- Contacted LARPA folks about pencils recently; haven't heard back yet
- Talk about Thursday
  - Went over already-discussed tentative plans for a separate event on Thursday night-Friday afternoon
  - Still looking for someone to head up efforts
Schedule
- Next concom meeting: June 22, 2:00 PM - place TBD