Cometary Tales Blog Lessons Learned as a BayCon Gofer: Seeking the Secret Hideout

Lessons Learned as a BayCon Gofer: Seeking the Secret Hideout

BayCon 2015  looms on the horizon.   The increasing pace of email updates from the registration staff is bringing on flashbacks of the olden days, at BayCon 2014, when I fell deep into a gopher hole and didn’t emerge until the sun was fading on Memorial Day.

That is, last year I was a Gopher/Gofer/Go-fer at my local science-fiction convention. (Spelling must remain inconsistent & unimportant in this instance.) This year, I’m On Staff. It’s remotely possible that the two conditions are related, what the docs call “comorbid conditions”. Perhaps it’s worth revisiting, to give folks a glimpse into the life of a convention Gofer. Or to enable recognition of incipient volunteerism.

It all started on check-in day, the Thursday evening before Opening Day.

ED-209 from Robocop

ED-209 from RoboCop looms menacingly.

Inauspiciously, my badge was not waiting at the check-in table; something had gone wrong with the printing, and it was queued up with several other reprint orders. That meant I had nothing to do for a half-hour or so. Rather than sit patiently, I roamed the halls. The week before, I’d emailed a randomly-named staff address to ask about working as a go-fer, and the reply was fuzzy, but boiled down to stop-in-at-the-gopher-hole.   But where was this secret base?

Welcome to Baycon

Welcome to Baycon, Sponsored by Adipose Industries

Suffice to say, I failed to locate the base, but the search renewed my acquaintance with the layout of the Hyatt Regency & Santa Clara Convention Center. So I collected my program and newly reprinted badge

The Baycon 2014 Member Badge

Proof Of Membership

& went home to rest up for the long weekend.

 

 

Paradoxically, my unfulfilled search actually made me more determined to find the secret lair and get involved…once things were up and running on Friday. The secret? The Gofer Hole owns one of the smaller meeting rooms in a relatively quiet zone (across the hall from the Bayshore Room at the Hyatt) but during the Con, it’s clearly flagged with artistic signage and new Gofers are welcome to stop in and sign up.

HAHAHAHA Got Badge!

HAHAHAHA Got Badge!

Amazingly, Friday morning, they would even let this demented individual sign up:

 

 

 

Gofer Lesson of the Day: Don’t give up, take advantage of “wasted” time to learn something or, heck, catch some z’s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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. . . GO! “All That Was Asked” is out, now!. . . GO! “All That Was Asked” is out, now!

The pre-midnight roll-out

One thing about the global economy…it’s January 31st in some places already. Barnes and Noble has the paper editions as well as the Nook version ready to go.

Meanwhile, Amazon is lagging behind, with just the Kindle version and it still is tagged as “preorder” . . . in the U.S. C’mon Jeff, don’t you want more money for your rocketship project? UPDATE: Amazon is up, in Kindle and Trade Paperback editions.

But you can download it from Amazon’s sites for the UK or India.

And it’s up at Canada’s Biggest Bookstore, !ndigo.

And in Australia at Angus & Robertson.

No problems at Smashwords, either.

And you can use Paper Angel as a home base, plus a place to read the sample or order a signed copy direct from the publisher.

My favorite, though, is the listing on Rakuten-Japan. Though of course it’s on “regular” Rakuten, too (i.e., Kobo).

Lessons of a BayCon Gofer: Ribbons & TagsLessons of a BayCon Gofer: Ribbons & Tags

Sunday was the last full day of BayCon 2014, and it was full indeed. (BayCon 2015‘s will be even more crammed, with no Monday to work with.)

At this particular con, if you put in a certain number of Gofering hours, you’re awarded free membership for the following year. It hadn’t been my original goal, but when I checked in Sunday noonish after Quidditch,

The Quidditch Field

The Quidditch Field, Courtesy of the Silicon Valley Skyfighters

I could see my stats were high enough that the free-membership category was within reach. But it would take some decent planning now, as there were a few Important Items for myself on the program for Sunday.  And not so many demands for Gofers.

But then, late in the afternoon, there was a call for help on badge checking. This is the extremely arduous task of sitting in a folding chair at the entry to the Convention Center hall leading to the art show, vendors, and the big room for boffers & sword-fighting & large-audience programs, and making sure all the people going by have BayCon badges. No worries. These are not teensy “Hello” stickers. It’s not often you have to actually make someone stop so you can see their badge. They’re big enough, color-coded, with an easily-recognized logo-du-con. But wait—there’s more— most folks have badges that you would be hard-pressed to miss. Eh, what? Well, here’s my badge after Friday.

One Day's Worth of Badge Ribbons

One Day’s Worth of Badge Ribbons

And there’s my badge at the end of Saturday.

Two Days Worth of Badge Ribbons

Two Days’ Worth of Badge Ribbons

 

And did I hear “Sunday”?

Three Days Worth of Badge Ribbons

Three Days’ Worth of Badge Ribbons

Yep, it’s the ribbon thing. Collecting badge ribbons is a project of pride for many convention denizens, so even if you have to stop someone to check their badge, you can sideline a prickly reaction with an appeal to check out their ribbons. Or an offer to share one of your own ribbons. You do have ribbons, don’t you? Find me at BayCon 2015 & you can have one of mine. They’re rainbow, and purple, and shiny.

Another bonus to the badge checking job, at least at the convention center hallway spot, is that it’s a super-fine spot to view cosplayers on the move. I had a partner on the job, so I was also able to talk to a few cosplayers and ask for photos. A few were even up for a ribbon swap as well.   My own costuming skills go no further than fun & funky outfits for Halloween, so I’m a huge fan of the skilled costume artists who turn out for these conventions. Here are just a few of the folks I met while badge-checking. (Reminder, ask permission for photos!)

Thank you for your service, Redshirt

Thank you for your service, Redshirt, but where’s your BayCon Badge?

 

Star Trek Steampunk

Star Trek Steampunk

 

 

Madame Vastra

Madame Vastra

 

 

 

 

 

Cool, huh?

At the next shift change, I swapped with a Gofer who was working the Art Show.  And that’s when I became a Dedicated Gofer.  Sounds impressive, but it’s an unofficial label indicating that a department head wanted dibs on my time.  Think of it as a mezzanine-level status just below Staff Member.

How does such a thing happen? Five easy steps:

A. Begin with a gap in programs & activities that the Gofer is interested in over a several-hour period.  Check. (I arrived late afternoon with a snack in my bag and nothing on my wish-list but a determination to get to Regency Dancing around 9pm. I made it there at 9:20.)

Star Wars! (Carrender Robotics)

Star Wars at the Art Show! (Carrender Robotics)

B. Stir in an attraction within the venue that the Gofer is interested in. Check. (Bidding was due to close & I had a bid on one item and a friend with a wish for someone to “guard” her bid on another.)

Disco LEGO (Zonker Harris)

Disco LEGO (Zonker Harris)

C. Add a liberal quantity of responsibility for real stuff.  Check. (A key job was organizing the sold works into neat collections, by bidder number, ready for pick-up on Monday.  The staff gave us Gofers instructions, but pretty much let us take care of the job.)

LEGO Collection at the Art Show (Carrender Robotics, Zonker Harris)

LEGO Collection at the Art Show (Carrender Robotics, Zonker Harris)

D. Allow the gofer to see that dedication is actually helping out somebody.  Check. (My fellow Gofer left for dinner shortly after the 7pm closing time and never returned;  I bought a soda & enjoyed a granola bar in between jobs. But the staffers were so on task they were ignoring food they’d brought and having to nag each other to take restroom breaks.  There was clearly too much work for the main staffers to do on their own & they were struggling with a computer issue as well.  By the time my partner Gofer went off-shift, the staff members were trusting me to just take care of other ancillary jobs like running through checklists and sorting out unsold items and items going to the auction.)

 

LEGO at the Art Show (Bricks By the Bay)

LEGO at the Art Show (Bricks By the Bay)

 

E.  Tell ’em.  Check.  (As I was leaving to get my fix of Regency Dancing, the Art Show director directly thanked me for helping and staying late and told me she’d request my help the next day.)

Regency Dancers Take the Floor

Regency Dancers Take the Floor

 

Gofer Lesson of the Day:  Find yourself a good spot to collect ribbons–having some to trade makes it easier–and if you are nice to the folks who put in the effort to turn up in those excellent costumes you may get to take photos or even selfies with them!

Bonus Lesson, this one for Staffers Who Rely on Gofers:  Give your Gofers real jobs, let them take ownership of tasks, and remember to tell them you appreciate their help.  And that will keep them coming back for more.

Avoiding HyperboleAvoiding Hyperbole

OK, right, it’s been so long since the last post that even my backup program is writing me off as too far gone. Too bad, Updraft, back to work, you lazy batch of code.

True, some comets hare off to interstellar space on hyperbolic orbits. However, two or three things:
1) There’s much to be said for the sweet homey stability of an elliptical orbit.
2) On a hyperbola, there are two arms, and who’s to say if you’re on the right one?
3) My top speed is less than 2 m/sec whereas an escape trajectory on Earth demands moving at about 11,500 m/sec.
4) I’m not actually a comet, I’m a human being who is interested in comets both as astronomical objects and as metaphorical images.
5) That’s four or five things.

Aiee Hyperbola Wiki

Redlining on a hyperbola. Aieeee!

Stuff happens, and it’s not exactly a huge crime to neglect a blog that no-one is reading. Last year, I whined about the inconveniences of having a broken arm. Well, there’s worse stuff than a broken arm. Besides, I needed time to read other people’s websites. Like catching up on the doings at Gunnerkrig Court. Like reading anything about robots that turns up on IEEE Spectrum. Or reliving grad school days on Jorge Chan’s Ph.D. comic. Or vacillating between reading Allie Brosh’s hardcopy book or her online stories at Hyperbole-and-a-Half.

In the meantime, I’ve managed to keep up a little better on the easier-to-maintain Facebook & twitter side of things, under the Pixel Gravity moniker.

But it’s time to dump more stuff out on the world and see if anyone who isn’t a spammer notices.

Here’s the deal:  I’ve got a year’s worth of science projects for kids that I want to share.  Maybe they’ll be a book too, some day.  (Insert self-knowing laugh here.)  I’m a year behind on delivering my Grand Canyon stories & pictures, which I promised my fellow-travellers would be “up” by the end of last summer.   But there’s other stuff I want to address as well.  So there will be a little discipline applied, in a way that would help any of my imaginary readers look ahead for the next entry in a category of interest.

First week of the month:  One “Messy Monday” project

Second week:  One “Grand Canyon” entry–either a half-day of storytelling or a photo album.

Third week:  Science & fiction stuff–the science fairly topical, the fiction

Fourth week:  An extra week to play catch up, first on the Grand Canyon, and later on Messy Monday, but also a piece of flexible time for interesting stuff of the moment.  For instance, Memorial Day Weekend will yield four days of BayCon 2014.

Next up:  Comets in orbit…

 

 

 

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