Originally written by Buzz Harris, possibly with some help from Noel Rosenberg

What worked:
Info Desk ran very smoothly this year. The location near registration and the hotel entrance worked well. We were easy to find, and people just entering the con had an obvious place to stop and ask their questions. The same was true for fen leaving the hotel who had questions about the shuttle, restaurants, etc. Thanksto Rick and Susan for passing on such well-organized and clear materials for the desk. (It would have been a good idea, btw, for the Info Desk Area Haed(s) to look through the boxes of materials for our area pre-con! That was our bad.)

We decided to consolidate the lost and found and newsletter content drop off boxes in Ops this year. We accepted items for both at the desk, but we then took them to Ops at the end of each three-hour shift.

Ops was very helpful in providing additional copies of the map of dealers row, the shuttle route, and other popular handouts.

Kudos to Sign Shop. They were very helpful both pre-con and at-con. Kudos to Ops as well. They were very responsive to our calls for information when con goers asked questions that we could not answer or assist with directly. The hotel liaison staff was also very responsive when we contacted them on behalf of attendees. Thank you.

Thanks as well to the Info Desk volunteers. You were uniformly patient, cheerful, and helpful even in the face of fen who occasionally were not. :-)

Challenges:
We had a little bit of trouble finding volunteers to cover the 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm shifts each day, but this was not a major problem. I would suggest that the Area Head and her/his deputy (if any) not be from the same household, as this makes dinner coverage rather more challenging.

The lack of staff cards made our job a lot more difficult. We really needed contact and location information for a number of parts of the con, which we lacked on Friday and early Saturday. We ended up simply running around to find this information out for ourselves, which was a drag. I know that a staff info sheet did appear at some point on Saturday, but we were not aware of its existence until Sunday. I would like to suggest that Publications, Operations, or some other appropriate organ of the con be formally charged with creating staff cards each year, as this task has been done by Merv or other staffers who simply took it upon themselves to he helpful. The staff cards have proven themselves to be very valuable, and we should institutionalize their creation.

It would be really nice to have a house phone at Info Desk, though I imagine that this would be difficult. Cell phone numbers for major departments, the main hotel number plus local extensions, or perhaps a radio would do. These are, one imagines, more realistic solutions for communication. The second alternative, above, served us pretty well this year.

If the Program Nexus does not need their table adjacent to Info Desk after Friday night/Saturday morning, it would be nice for Info Desk to take over that space since we have so much info to pass out. More horizontal (and vertical) real estate would be good. Keeping some copies of the Pocket Program at Info Desk on Friday night would be a good idea for next year even if it makes things more crowded. It was hard for people looking for PP's on Friday to eel their way through the registration crowds to get them if they came to us looking for them.

It was, at times, bloody cold near the hotel doors. Space heaters and coats made this tolerable.

We were not clear on the sign-in procedures for dealers, and we had a hard time getting in touch with the dealers liaison. Staff cards would have improved this, but I would suggest next year that dealer sign-in procedures be sent in writing to the info desk area head(s) as well as to the dealers. Arriving dealers who were unclear tended to come to us first since we were right in front of them as they walked in.

Ditto for artist sign-in and party hosts. It was fairly easy to simply direct artists to the Art Show since we knew where it was. The lack of a Party Czar was quite noticeable to us on Friday, as party hosts approached us and we found no one to pass them on to. Ops and Innkeeper filled the gap, once we realized the lack.

We figured out what to do with all of these fairly quickly, but, again, it would have been very helpful to have the info up front.

I will end with one overall request. If there are fen arriving at the con who will be looking for you (Masquerade, Art Show, Babysitting, Dealers, Parties, etc.) please be so kind as to cc: the Info Desk with your check-in procedures when you send them out. We are often the first or second face of the con that fen see when they arrive, and we would like to be helpful to them on your behalf.

Thanks,

Buzz & Noel