Originally written by Persis Thorndike

What I did:

• Planned and implemented a 3-4 track schedule of activities and discussions for kids ages 6-12 (plus any interested big kids in the teen and adult categories);
• Put together a Portable Brain document with maps & policies, staffing schedule, activity schedule, masquerade info, pre-reg list of kids, and a place for notes (for Fast Track Staff to read and refer to during the con);
• Scheduled enough volunteers to cover all programmed hours of the area, plus pre-program time on Saturday, Sunday and Monday;
• Scheduled volunteers for the room turn Saturday from FT to Masquerade Green Room (and back, as it turned out);
• Ran another successful Kamikaze Kids entry (17 kids) to the Masquerade;
• Kept my sanity.

What went right:

Attendance: 83 in Fast Track category

at least 8 Kids-in-Tow

at least 20 teenagers/FT age kids with adult badges/over 12

Working with Registration pre-con: Getting FT names and ages as they came in to reg meant that I was prepared for the numbers I ended up with, and was able to take my list of reg'ed and known-suspects-not-yet-on-my-list, and see who was likely to show up.

Amy was able to deal with my last minute OMG these kids have no badges on Saturday (they'd forgotten to print one of the FT reg categories) and other than some people sending babysitting and Kid-in-Tow people upstairs, (including the '07 Dad from %#**), it all worked out well. Having Reg print out Fast Track badges ahead of time was a godsend for us (and probably for reg as they didn't have to deal with kid ribbons and policies and schedules), as it meant that parents could get all Fast Track information at once, and could leave their kids to go finish registering or have time without kids. I need
to double check the badges against the pre-reg list before heading out of the reg area on Thursday, to avoid realizing last minute that some were missing.

There were 3 kids/families who did not attend the con for whatever reason.

Having enough staff to cover the room at all times.

I had a combination of comps and paid membership staff.

• 6 assistants, all repeat staff from '07, most with earned comps from '07
• 20 assorted staff, (some repeat) combination of earned comps and paid memberships
• Plus some quantity of people who came to assist at set-up and tear-down and in between for activities such as Face Painting.

Ribbons: See below for what went wrong on ribbons. Rick K saved the day by giving me the horizontal Gopher ribbons to use up when I ran out of red and green ribbons.

Having 2 copies of the hard key to Empress.

Having security in the space at all open times was great.

Keeping the Quiet Room, for those kids who needed to get away from the general noise and population or take a nap... or for the parents of smalls who were not in babysitting (and had olders in FT) who needed some peace and quiet and legos.

Having a dedicated individual to take charge of the unstructured play before programming opened. Stuart Ferguson opened the space on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, to supervise the well-attended unstructured play every day. Monday needs a second person to be scheduled at 9:30 am, to deal with the onslaught of people arriving from then until 10 am. Monday, all hours were packed until 3 when we had to tell people to go home and come back next year.

My panelists all rocked! Hands-on Science, Ninjas vs Pirates Swordfighting game, Knight Training, Pipecleaner Dragons, Wands, Kamikaze Costuming, Face Painting (thank you Ming!), Knitting, were only a few of the well attended activities. Numbers for '07 and '08 will be entered into Zambia as soon as I can do so - probably next week.

The kids loved seeing the Rebel Legion and 501st Storm Troopers; not all of them made it up to Empress, but C3PO and Han Solo arrived about 1.5 hours late and stayed for a while to talk to the kids and have photos taken. I'd love to hear their feedback on entertaining the kids.

The Fannish Freemasons processed ID materials on 38 kids, roughly 1/3 of the kids there. Next year, better publicity and getting the word out that the masons do not keep anything, everything goes to the parents. We should not waste memberships on the policemen who came to do the fingerprinting. If MYCHIP Masons are not already pre-reg'ed, then they will need day badges.

Space: Empress space worked out very nicely overall; there were tons of compliments from parents and program participants about how much nicer it was than the 2007 space on the 2nd floor, and having bathrooms within was great.

Kamikaze Kids in the Masquerade: 18 signed up, 1 scratched = 17 entries in KK's. Of the 7 kids entered in the young fan division, 5 had their start in Kamikaze Kids, as well as one in the Journeyman category. At least 2 of this years' KK's are planning to enter in the Young Fan division next year. Since the objective of Kamikaze Costuming and Kamikaze Kids is to get them interested in costuming, I think it is working. This does not mean we can stop now.

Tear down went especially smoothly under the direction of Cath Austein who kept the organization process going and gave me a complete list of # of bins and contents made as they went on carts to the ballroom.

What went wrong:
Security telling adults/big kids that they couldn't come into the space, which goes against the whole big kids/adults being allowed to come join us.

Too many adults thinking that they were not welcome into the fast track area to participate in any of the activities, when, in fact, they were.

People not reading Fast Track Policies when they were sent out to the Staff List (my error was in not sending them out to Staff-Announce, which would have gotten them to ALL staff) and giving misinformation.

Ribbon order going awry; instead of ordering enough of each color of ribbons to cover 150, 27 green (the number of green ribbons I had on hand) were ordered, to my knowledge, no red ribbons were ordered either. I ran out, we used the horizontal Gopher ribbons and used sharpies to determine red/green status and all was well.

The Masquerade Green room turn was staffed by FT volunteers entirely, despite my being assured by Dr. Karen that there would be some green room/masquerade staff there to help, fortunately I was able to reach her by cell phone to get her required set-up.

And, there was no Masquerade staff (who I had been told would be there (pre-con)) so that I would not be inconvenienced by having to share the room) to turn the room back to Fast Track usability after the Green Room closed at 11ish pm on Saturday night. Fortunately, I was able to get a number of my staff to come in at 10 am on Sunday to make the change happen.

Security of the Empress Ballroom is not ideal as the key locks only the main doors, and the back door has a very flaky dead bolt that doesn't work reliably and requires that one leave the room by the main entrance. Fortunately there was a very nice hotel overnight security person on duty Friday who took care of locking up for me when the gamers were using the room late at night.

Some of the program participants did not have ideal space for their discussions, as the room was essentially open space, and noise carried. I am contemplating putting dividers into the triangular corner near the bathrooms and using that as a dedicated discussion space, or requesting a sleeping room with the furniture removed to use as such.

No house phone in Empress.

Masquerade communications could have been better.

1. Some of the signs in the habitrail were removed between the time Dr. Karen put them up and when we went thru. There were no signs from the entrance by the coat check at all. I put one up on my way to photo's and it had been removed by the time we got off stage and discovered that we had to come back thru the lobby to be seated instead of going thru the corridor doors on house left.

2. My understanding of what was going to happen after the KK's came off stage was not what it ended up happening, and I had 17 kids in the dark trying to find their parents, then an additional 7, also in the dark. All KK parents were told that their kids would come into the audience from the corridor doors, and that the house lights were to be up at least half so we could connect kids with parents. Same for the Young Fan category. We were also told that the Young Fan category was going to be judged before the adult entries went on. This is what parents were told, and what we expected, as the Kid Green Room (Crispus Attucks) was only ours til 9 pm. The filkers were very patient with us when the room was not available at 9, and I tried to contain people's belongings in one corner so they could start their circle. Someone decided that the entries were to continue straight thru. Better communications next year.

3. Running the kids back thru the habit trail to the lobby/main entrance to President's took too long to allow them to be seated before the next category starts going on. Hence the seating of parents on the house left side, near the back set of doors from the corridor.

What should be done differently for next year?
Send policies to Staff-Announce list as text rather than an attachment.

Double check FT badges against list before leaving reg area on Thursday. Make sure Reg knows that FT means kids area and that FT only badges are in the FT area (not babysitting or KiT)

Order ribbons early. Double check pre-con that they are indeed ordered and available.

Label them Comets and Satellites this time around.

Get a house phone in Empress.

There are some sound issues that need to be addressed, perhaps with better use of the hotel's dividers. The grey ones did have some sound deadening affects, the translucent plexi-glass ones didn't, but those allowed for blocking off the railing around the lower level while allowing light to get into the darker areas of the room. I would like to have a sleeping room with furniture removed, or some sort of dedicated quiet space available for the discussion panels.

We could use the section I designated as A for these, but discussions are not as well attended as the activity panels, and A is a big area that lends itself well to activities. The area designated D was good for activities that involved moving around, as well as for the Masons and their MYCHIP child ID program.

Run only 3 tracks of panels/activities at one time, leaving the 4th space for kids to run around and be kids when they aren't interested in being quiet or attending panels.

Run some panels geared towards the older kids, 11/12 and up, perhaps in FT , perhaps not, maybe 2 or 3 hours long, but not continuously. There is a large teen population who we want to keep coming to Arisia. A teen lounge would great.

Find some use for the sill along the windows on the atrium side so kids don't climb up on them. Clean up the Fast Track panels/ideas in Zambia to eliminate duplicates. Continue to work closely with Program.

Add Arisia paperwork section to Portable Brain Trust with volunteer

Kamikaze Kids/YF in the Masquerade:
Work more closely with the Masquerade Director pre-con to make sure these same mistakes don't happen. Work with hotel about signage behind scenes.

Make it clear to the judges/tech/all running the Masquerade ahead of time that the Kamikaze Kids need to be allowed to be seated in a lit auditorium before or during the YF presentations. Make it clear to the judges/tech/all running the Masquerade that the YF need to be sat and judged before the adult entries are run, as they lose their green room space at 9 pm.

Try not to change plans right before show time and then not tell everyone involved.

Make sure the hotel doesn't take down any signs in the habitrail. My staff hadn't my experience back there, and it gets confusing, especially with a train of 17 or more kids.

A.A. was seen in the hotel from Friday on, but didn't try to get into Fast Track until Sunday when he wanted to go to the Moon Rocks panel (obviously didn't read the description well enough). Who ever was on Security sent him away; he went as far as the elevator where he hung out until Imp arrived on the scene, whereupon A. couldn't get away fast enough.

What sort of schedule/time line did you use?
I started right after Arisia 07, collecting volunteers, and thinking about panels that worked and didn't. Summer started ramping up with ideas and looking at Zambia, which process continued thru til December, when the précis was supposed to go out to program participants. Planning room divisions and such came when it was determined that Fast Track was going to have the 14th floor, and I worked on them up until the con. Getting into the space to poke around didn't happen til the last con comm meeting. I have a map of outlets, and now (thanks to Lowell Gilbert) have a map of which light switches affect which areas of the room.

Vendors you used?
AC Moore, Staples, Costco

Experiments to try next year?

• Add a teen track to the mix.
• Have a dedicated discussion area.
• Try a dedicated kid LARP.
• Change parent seating section in the Masquerade and try seating thru the corridor doors.