Give us your Vices!
Gaelcon gets most of the attention as we move into late summer, but other things are happening in the IGA.
First, we need more vices.
No, not those vices, thanks.
We need people with a few hours a month to cover small tasks which are piled on too few people
A few people on the Exec have had to step out or limit their contribution, while others have over time taken more work than is reasonable. Several people are also giving time to Gaelcon, and to Worldcon in Glasgow in 2024: indeed volunteering with the IGA seems to lead to running larger events in due course! You too might join the ranks of the SMOF! (Secret Masters of Fandom) We also need to manage some sort of rotation to avoid burnout. So we need some helpers. Anyone is welcome, and i will talk to people about this at Gaelcon but in the meantime fee free to ping me on the IGA community Discord. Specifically we could do with:
A PRO, mainly to deal with Social Media posts and blog posts. We need an actual lead person in the PRO slot, but with the way this works these days, we need few people so this can be broken down into manageable bits. (Copyediting my blog posts would also be helpful, as well as editing so I don’t offend people and softening the tone of my occasional grumpiness!)
A Documentation person because several strands of paperwork have all fallen onto one person. There are meeting documents, policies and the paperwork for Charitable status which all need to be done.
IT because running the tech at the con currently depends on one person, helped by other people who are also doing 5 jobs! Also minding the website backend (WordPress with very few plugins, no frills) could do with another pair of hands. Discord is usually quiet, but again, having backup people there would be good.
A design lead – social media consumes huge amounts of images, especially for Gaelcon. We have an archive of recent materials for this, but it needs to be maintained and grown. At certain times, this work has to happen fast but it can be managed to keep it under control. This over the past few years was handled by the PRO (who was also doing all the PR work, so, not really fair)
Gaelcon Venue person – we decided that we should have a single person willing to deal with the Gaelcon venue, and some major sponsors on a long term basis for maybe 3-5 years. It’s good to have consistency in dealing with a venue (currently a hotel) so they don’t double the price from year to year, keep the bar open when we need it, have enough tables of the right size (What size are official Warhammer tables this week?). Needs to be able to suit up and talk business – and we have a few people whom we can call on occasionally to help.
Redshirts because it would be good to have a couple of people without specific tasks on the Exec to deal with things that come up.
Finally, a Vice-Chair for the Exec, and someone to act as a director for the company. The Vice-Chair just needs to be able to sub for the Chair on occasional Exec meetings, keep the rules lawyers in order and encourage consensus. There is no expectation that the Vice-Chair will eventually become full time chair; I’m not trying to sneakily get someone into that without proper warning! It would also be good to find someone with a bit of worldly experience to serve as one of the 5 directors of the company. Currently I am Chair of both the Board of Directors of the company, and of the Executive and we want to try and separate these, and also start rotating the Directors. Being a director is easy – all the board has to do is meet once a year and supervise the annual accounts and the AGM. The critical skill is being able, if the Exec decides to do something stupid that might bankrupt the IGA, is to say, very loudly., “NO you can’t do that!” Hopefully this will never arise.
Next Month, before we Gaelcon, I’ll share some thoughts on things we might do in 2024 – people have had ideas, and I’d like to share them so we can discuss them at Gaelcon