Originally written by Jill Eastlake

What you did?
Acted as a super-division-head for all things public and entertaining at the convention. Also, as the designated con chair for 2009, set about learning.

What went right?
Lots of things. This turned out to be a bigger job than I had envisioned when I accepted the post as specified in Arisia's rules. Since I have experience in Events and many other places on both the regional and Worldcon levels, this job was a fit.

I was able to consult on my appointments with the Con Chair and otherAssistant Con Chairs.

I appointed a lot of new people to positions and took many of the sub-departments that usually report to some of my divisions directly to help make all the jobs more manageable. This also exposed me to more learning opportunities.

Because the whole convention was run as well as it was (thanks to lots of people, particularly September) I was able to dip my nose into many areas outside my responsibility this year and prepare even better for next year. At con I spent most of my time walking around, looking at how things were going, and was able to have many profitable conversations with lots of folks. I also ran around a little and helped where I could to resolve some things that were going on at con, and was able to be helpful.

What went wrong?
Because so many of the people running various areas and divisions had less than ideal training or backgrounds, there were places that could have been run better. There were some bad feelings throughout the autumn that have pretty much been alleviated. There were some tasks within the divisions or areas which normally would have been easily done, that were poorly done or not done at all.

In general those things had little impact on the average convention-goer and will be fixed next year.

New problems only, please.

What should be done differently next year?
I will be appointing people with more experience to lead most of the convention areas and definitely divisions. That said, some of this year's new appointments are also next year's experienced people. There is nothing like living the thing to allow you to fully understand it.

As many of you have personally experienced, you are purposely being led to mind-bending experiences so that we can all exercise more creativity. This convention looked stable and well done by the average attendee. The internal problems stayed internal and will be addressed if necessary over the next few weeks. For next year I will be breaking some of the old molds and introducing new ideas (not all of them mine I hope!) while continuing to hold a convention where the basics are all well done and stable.

What sort of schedule/timeline did you use?
I worked all year from the time I decided to run for 2009 chair through today. There were few days all year when I didn't do something for the convention. Some days starting in about August I worked on A'08 and A'09 as well.

That said, I pretty much allowed the people on my teams determine and follow their own timelines. There were some who I called to task for not communicating enough with me or the general population. Next year I will have a timeline person whose sole job it is to confer with me and help me keep everyone on track, at least with their own espoused timeline.

Are the any changes you'd make to the schedule for next year?
I have already for pre-con stuff. You've all seen the meeting schedule. There will be some, but not many Division Heads' meetings, as yet
undetermined.

For the convention, now that we know we can do 4 days, we'll step fully into doing 4 days. What does that mean? You're all going to help me figure that out over the next few months.

Vendors you used?
The hotel. My laptop. A lot of miles on my car.

Experiments to try next year?
Doing more interactive things with the normal convention-goer. A more dramatic website. The financial books are closer to me and I will be able to review them before jumping into using the rates for things now defined in the rules. Should there be a need I will be making motions to change the rules.

While we're at it ­ a comment on my personality since I will be running the convention next year. These statements are in neutral tones. There should be no evil associated with them (there may or may not be an evil glint in my eye, I'm contemplating a new costume).

I am a control freak. I like to know what¹s going on.

I am a high communicator and I use email a LOT. It's easier to talk to more than one person at a time with email and so that is generally my default communication method. Use the "09chair at" address so that our conversations will be archived.

Yes, we're going to archive through Google everything that goes through our email lists. Copy your department list for EVERY convention-related conversation. (This is an order.)

I won't tell you what to do or how to do it. That seems in conflict with the control freak thing, but it's not. I will want to know what your intentions are and how things are going. I will make suggestions and give few orders (see above, I am amusing myself).

It's ok to disagree with me, but its better to do that in private. I will be open to discussions. When a decision is made I will stick to it. But, since they are my rules,
sometimes, and rules are made to be bent or changed, I will do so for a good cause.

I am very goal oriented. When I doubt I will pull back to the goal and make judgments based on their application to the goal.

When I get really quiet, watch out. I am either thinking up something new that may be a lot of work, planning to bend some minds (might be mine), or I'm mad and going to speak up when I find the words. You will get to see those behaviors as we go on.

I will be watching you. I will only interfere if there¹s something really big to be gained from the interference. I won't always try to fix your mistakes (they may not really be mistakes, they may just not be what I would have done) unless it will impact the average convention-goer.

Do you see a theme here? We¹re putting on a convention together to entertain and to share and learn with the average convention-goer. We're going to do it this year by working toward giving opportunity for everyone in the hotel to participate (not just be entertained) in something of interest. What does that look like? We'll see about this time next year.

Any comments about the rest of the con (other divisions, hotel, ...)?
I am so very thankful to Tem and all the people on the staff who ran this past Arisia so well that I got the opportunity to learn, work with you, and to make plans for next time. There are many fewer problem areas to fix than there were when we started at the Hyatt. We have the leisure of experience to call on to make good decisions. And, we ran a really good convention ­from the view of the average con-goer ­ which we can build upon for the future.