Arisia 2007 Staff Den Report

Department Head: Crystal Huff (chaiya@chaiyahuff.com)

What did your department do?

We fed the staff! I liked this; I got to see a lot more of my friends this year than I have in the previous 6 or so years.

What went right?

There was food, often it was hot, it often seemed to be the "right" amount of food (not too much extra, usually not too few portions), and it made nobody sick (so far as I know).

The food was labeled with all ingredients on little stand-up plastic photo frames, which I thought was very clever of us. :)

To my knowledge, we have received no complaints from the hotel about damages done. I think this is in part because we covered all hotel furniture with large sheets & tablecloths, which were occasionally changed.

Having a crock pot of hot chai available throughout the con was a huge hit. Huge.

The Indian dinner Thursday night, while much delayed, went off with reasonable success. The food was incredibly popular, and lots more folks showed up than I was expecting, so we did run out of nearly everything (and started out minus a pan of vegetable korma because it got filed with the chicken flats by mistake). But in all, it was my favorite meal, and that made it worth the two days of cooking. :)

Conor Walsh and Julia Suggs serendipitously made us crab rangoons, by hand, for Saturday night. Just because. This was a hit with everyone who heard the tale. Even my mouth watered, despite the fact that they were made with real crab.

We always had a hot soup available, and it was always vegan. This satisfied nearly everyone's needs, other than the odd folks who couldn't eat garlic. (I made 10 gallons of vegan chili, 6 gallons of root soup, 5 gallons of squash soup, and 5 gallons of garlic-tomato soup. I think we could've done with one more flavor of soup, about 5 gallons of it, and it still would've been welcome. There was a single quarter-gallon of garlic-tomato soup left over at the end of the con, and I think the Staff Den will get more traffic next year than we did this year.)

We often had meat available in cold and/or hot forms. This was the single most requested thing, and the single most expensive thing to provide, so I think we did reasonably well with it, especially given budget constraints.

Folks who were in the Staff Den to be fed were often willing to help out while there. In particular, the folks from tech, Crash, and Rachel Darman earned a gold star each for awesomeness.

Lisa Hertel and Merv also made us awesome cakes, which was a great relief for me, because I sometimes tend to have no brain left for desserts.

Pat V, Persis, and others dropped off equipment for us to make food with, since Arisia apparently didn't own any stock pots or little hotplates or sandwich grillers. I've left my cheapo stock pot for next year's staff, should they need it, and I highly recommend acquiring a high-powered hotplate like Pat V's -- that thing was awesome.

The hotel staff was also really sweet about making sure they picked up our trash every three hours, once I got ahold of a manager in the hall and tipped the subsequent trashpickers handsomely. Our trash pickup was damn prompt. :) In the future, that should probably be stated on the hotel resume, as well, which is something I forgot to mention pre-con. But it worked out well.

What went wrong?

The budget was much too small, by around $500, and next year's staff den is only likely to need more food. I ended up going nearly $200 over, and there were three reasons why I didn't blow the budget much more than that. a) I used a lot of organic veggies from my farm share to supplement the budget, which were free to the con because I got them essentially free from the farmer. This made the root soup, squash soup, pickles, and a number of the Indian food dishes. It would've cost us at least $200 to buy those veggies in a normal store. b) The consuite purchased about half of the bread we used, all of the sandwich meats & cheeses, half the eggs, a couple of cantalope, and a couple of plates of cookies that didn't come out of our budget. That was probably another $150 that should have been in/ from our budget. Also, c) the leftover plates/cups/silverware/ napkins from last year's Staff Den basically outfitted us for this year -- we only had to buy a package of plates and forks. Next year's staff will likely have to buy more of each of those, with the possible exception of hot cups.

During con, we were often on the verge of running out of hard-boiled eggs, juice, bread, sandwich meats (which consuite had more of, but we had been told weren't available to us for a while), milk, and oatmeal. This was partly the issue of shared resources with the consuite -- we didn't communicate well enough pre-con, and so during con we weren't able to access fruit, bread, chips, etc. that I thought were ordered in part for us. (This was also a confusion because Tamar never got a couple of my emails.) This was also partly an inability on my part to accurately gauge how many staples we would need. I think we managed, in the end, but it could have gone more smoothly.

The sharing of the convection oven with consuite was a difficult issue. Again, not enough pre-con communication led to misconceptions and assumptions. I was under the impression it was a resource available for all food-related folks, but the oven was overworked as it was by consuite's needs, so we didn't get to use it anymore after Friday afternoon. We ended up resolving this problem by buying a smaller version for the Staff Den alone, but that was a bit too little, a bit too late for that problem. I do appreciate what flexibility Tamar and Rachel were able to give us on this before we were cut off, since they hadn't scheduled time for me to use the oven at all, and it did represent a significant inconvenience for them.

I also had a few planned staffers not able to work the den at the last minute, which left me anxiously begging more friends to help out. I think the staffing mostly worked out in the end, but Thursday was really light, and Sunday/Monday was mostly okay due to the kindness of strangers and the consuite staff. I did request volunteers from the Volunteer Den, but given the situation with the elevators, I assume they didn't make it up to the 10th floor after Thursday -- none of them introduced themselves to me, at any rate.

Runs for food during con were disorganized, at best. Communication between consuite, Staff Den, and green room was somewhat abysmal until the con started (which was partly that Tamar's email didn't always work, partly that Mike T didn't show up to the one meeting I could make pre-con, partly that Steve set the other pre-con meeting for when I was in Seattle, etc. ...)

Not being able to get into the BU room until Friday at noon sucked ass. I was told we would have it by Thursday afternoon, which is why I planned Thursday dinner & Friday breakfast at all. This was some sort of miscommunication between hotel & fixed functions, and it got resolved by using the conchair's personal suite as Staff Den for a while, but that confused some folks seeking food, and it sucked for moving food around, making things foodsafe, etc.

The fridge went oh, so wrong. There was no fridge for me when the con started. I distinctly remember being told there was a fridge, and seeing a fridge in storage, but apparently it was re-appropriated by green room or something. Oh. My. God. Ad nauseum. Only by going onto Craigslist and finding someone with a free fridge, and then sending out Logistics, did this get resolved. Thank God for Noel and Sybil, who both saved my ass on this. Let's not have that kind of oversight again. The fridge we got should work reasonably well, but the seal should be looked into before we use it next year -- it had trouble staying shut toward the end of con, which means
that we should proactively make it work before it frustrates the hell out of next year's staff.

There were two weird women and one weird man who came into the staff den. Well, we're all weird, but these folks were particularly special. Luckily, they didn't cause too much trouble.

An underattended child tried to eat ice from the soda bucket, choked on it, and started to throw up all over the soda bin and nearby chair. This sucked for all concerned, but luckily the tech crew was in the house at the time and helped deal with it.

The hotel didn't like the idea of us using hot plates. We cut down on their use after Thursday night and hid them in the back room when we needed them, in order to avoid having further issues.

What should definitely be done differently next year?

Rent a large convection oven for Staff Den and a separate one for consuite if they want it, I think. It was an incredibly useful tool (when not overburdened), but not able to be shared easily, particularly with the multi-floor difference between the two departments.

I also think the two departments should've been closer to each other, the better to share leftover foods and staples like salt and sugar and such. Consuite often came up to use our microwaves, for example, which was complicated to do with the elevator problem.

Staff Den should also be some sort of equitable distance between the lower floor departments and the art show folks. I wouldn't want to leave the art show high and dry for food, but Ops and folks ended up being somewhat screwed this year, again because of the elevator issues.

All food-related department heads should have at least 3 pre-con meetings together, where all of the folks involved get together and talk about what they're making, how to combine food vendor orders, how to combine tool resources, what tools each department has in storage, etc. This really would've been more efficient.

There should be an official quartermaster, and he/she should go around every 12 hours (10 am and 10 pm, in my opinion) to find out who has what extra or needs something, and redistribute what can be shared and go on shopping trips when necessary.

I had about 14 people on my staff, after 3 people flaked and two folks showed up like manna from heaven during con. This was still not enough for most people to have a sane schedule. I would suggest recruiting 20 folks for Staff Den staff, figuring that some might flake and others might join up once the con starts.

Also, if you're not me, you might want to have more pre-con helpers. I had three folks who helped me prep food pre-con, on only a couple of occasions. That was only workable because I did so much of it so gradually, and had an extra freezer to store the food in my basement.

Which experiments should we to try next year?

Maybe departments who aren't located near the Staff Den should call the Staff Den phone for an order of food and then send one person to go get it? That seemed to work a couple of times for the Ops folks.

If possible, try to designate one person per shift as being in charge of cleaning up messes, making sure that the tablecloths get changed if dirty, that sort of thing. This can also be the person in charge of keeping a rough count of folks coming in, if applicable. Keeping count is an inestimable asset to the following year's crew.

I would also suggest making more of the hot food be meat, at least once per day. I had my menu set up such that there was a vegan hot soup/chili available during each meal, but the meat eaters rebelled on me once or twice when their only option was cold cuts. Good thing there were chicken leftovers that could be reheated in a different sauce for a different meal!

If your at-con schedule didn't match the schedule published in the program, why did that happen? (trying to figure out when's a good point to set a deadline for getting information for the printed schedule)

I think the at-con schedule was reasonable, once we were moved into the BU room, other than the chicken dinner (which had heating issues for a while, solved in part by Jweiss and Pup, in part by Quietann and the microwaves). Thursday night's dinner schedule was a mess because a) we arrived to the hotel 3 hours later than I expected, b) the oven wasn't set up for use, which I had planned on using to reheat all of the Indian food, c) we didn't have any ability to have cooked rice for the meal until someone came up with the idea to go out and buy it from an Indian restaurant, and d) I was understaffed that night in a major way. Never mind that e) we got something like 50% more folks than I really expected for dinner.

For the record, the planned schedule was:

The actual schedule was approximately:

Attendance at each meal was approximately:

The menus were:

What "milestones" for your department should be placed on the Arisia timeline? (for example, perhaps a Quartermaster needs to be recruited by December 1, or Dealers' Room registrations need to be closed by December 15)

I cooked all sorts of soups and chili to be frozen in the months previous to the con. This was invaluable. Cooking and freezing the chicken the week ahead was also brilliant, assuming that reheating is done in a smart way (like having another convection oven or using microwaves to better use, on multiple circuits). This doesn't have to be done quite so far in advance as I did -- I started making pickles and soups in August, the summer before the convention. But doing it more than a month in advance, while things are still reasonably calm, is a good plan.

Recruiting staff more than two months in advance is an excellent idea -- I only really got my act together a month prior, which meant that
when people flaked, I was somewhat stuck and had lots else to accomplish. Other pre-con things to do include: walk-throughs of the space (once to get general feel, once to specifically plan where you're putting what), writing your part of the hotel resume, having a couple of food-related meetings with consuite and green room, making sure there's a person devoted to quartermastering, taking a look at what's in storage for equipment and such, and meeting with the conchair at least once to make sure that you're fulfilling expectations in a meaningful way.

Any comments about the rest of the con (other divisions, hotel, ...)?

Heh. Elevators. :P

For extra credit, please answer the following question, drawn from

"Arisia A to Z" in this year's program:

My DivHead was a:

d) My Husband, poor dear. ;) Next year, we work in orthogonal divisions!

Back to the 2007 Fixed Functions Debrief Report