More con thoughts

[emmzzi]

One of the things I sometimes do at work is train up "listeners", a safe, non-management neutral ear, who people can talk to if they are stressed about things. These people are not the "people who have to do things" in an official way, but can support conversations with people who do things to fix things. Not counselling, just a talk-it-through person who can make useful referals if the individual wishes.

Good or bad idea for cons? We could describe them at opening, and why they are there, and they can have the DCM hotline number for emergencies...?

Comments

[tonyn.livejournal.com]

I agree with Gaspodia that your "widened role" pretty accurately covers what Ops do.

Whenever I have worked for Ops (I think including 2 EasterCons & 2 WorldCons) I have spent periods roving around looking for waifs & strays, lost property, damaged/missing signage, acting as an interactive ReadMe indeed ... Also behind the Ops desk ensuring all problems are logged, and either flagged immediately to Con Committee or reviewed with the shift manager. (Some things like lost programmes / badges can often be resolved immediately.)

Maybe the Ops people could be made more visible, (hi-viz vests?), mainly they can be spotted wandering around through being wired with a walky-talky & ear-piece. (And dressed a lot more casually than any similarly equipped convention centre staff!)

Ops is about keeping the convention running as smoothly as possible, and protecting ConCom from the relative trivia of non-urgent or easily fixable requests.

I would hope the listening service would be separate.