Thanks To Concoms

The focus of today's Blathering is on concoms, particularly planning committees for fannish conventions whose goals are mainly to provide a venue for people to have fun rather than a focus on profit. Filk conventions are a good example.

I've been attending filk conventions for a number of years; I was at the first OVFF and the first FilKOntario. I enjoyed some more than others, and some were better organized than others. Overall, however, it became more and more clear to me how much work was put into planning these events.

Concoms (nickname for "convention committees") are a sorely under-appreciated group in general. Sure, they get to make speeches and get attention at the convention itself, but 99% of a concom's work is done before the convention, behind the scenes and out of the limelight. Concoms bear the brunt of the politics in a filk community, have to deal with artist egos, have to learn to be tactful and polite in all kinds of awkward circumstances as well as dealing with high-pressure crises while trying to insulate those attending conventions from internal workings. It takes an enormous amount of time to plan a good convention.

Concoms tend to hear more complaints than praise. People take well-run conventions for granted. And if anything does goes wrong, some people tend to forget to look at things in context. Whenever I start to get my nose out of joint by some quirk in convention programming or concom activity, I remind myself that these people are volunteers, and that I wouldn't have to privilege of being able to attend these venues without them. And I also ask myself: Would I be willing to do what they're doing?

If you feel it important to offer criticism of a particular convention, make sure it's constructive. Most concoms welcome constructive criticism because it will help improve future events. Rather than just bash the convention ("I hated this convention. It sucked."), offer positive solutions to the problems you perceive. Also be sure to mention anything that you -did- like.

A challenge to all of you who attend filk conventions: Sometime during the next year, why not make it a point to *thank* a concom for their efforts? Perhaps in person, by e-mail, a thank you card by snailmail...anything to show these generous folks that we do appreciate what they're doing.