Talk:Convention committee

Board of directors?

See, here's the problem with trying to get a set of standard definitions for convention positions - every convention is different :-) Midwest FurFest inherited its structure from Duckon, which pretty much mimics every other SF convention in Chicago (Windycon, Capricon, etc.): The convention is a production of its corporate parent, Midwest Furry Fandom, Inc., a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. While some members of the corporate board of directors serve on the concom, it is not a requirement. The chairman is selected by the board, and the rest of the concom is selected by the chairman and answers to him/her directly. Functionally, the concom don't change much from year to year, but it is the chairman's right to remove/replace members of the concom at their discretion.

On the other hand, Anthrocon's board of directors IS its concom (is this structure inherited from any other organization, like maybe Philcon?). I'd be curious to know what the most common structures are, and how other furry cons structure their boards/concoms.

All of this is a long way of saying I'm not sure I agree that Board of Directors is synonymous with concom, but I don't have enough evidence to know if either AC is the exception or the rule. --Duncan da Husky 17:20, 7 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Well, I can give you more details about Anthrocon's structure. The main governing body is the Board of Directors. The Chairman is the public face of the organization who is also "in charge", but he ultimately answers to the Board. The Chairman can appoint Directors (but he runs it by the rest of the Board first), and the Board can oust the Chairman if he's not doing his job.

Each Board member is a department head who has ongoing involvement with the organization throughout the year and puts in a fair amount of work outside the con. This helps make the organization a meritocracy and ensures that the people who are on the Board are actually the ones who are doing the work and not just sitting around issuing platitudes. :-)

On the subject of running conventions (heh, maybe we should have a seperate article on this), it is very important that people who are on ConComs/BoDs are all able to Play Well With Others. All it takes is one person with an attitude or an agenda to cause infighting, bad feelings, and an overall lack of communication. Speaking of which, communication skills are the next most important thing, since there is quite a bit of work that is done over email and IM.

I'll shut up for now. :-) --Dmuth 18:10, 7 Nov 2005 (UTC)