Chairperson

Basic Department Description

• You and your executive team are in charge. Team work! (Final say does come down to you and many staffers will require your approval for things like their dept budget, projects, etc.)
• You must make sure your staff are happy and that any conflicts are handled by the right person or yourself. (Privately works better than calling someone out in front of the rest of staff!)
• Your focus is to involve the community/staff in discussions and decisions if at all possible. The convention is an extension of the community and the point was to have input from the community. (Ex: Having open suggestions for Guests, Charities, and general feedback etc to see what the community is interested in.)

Yearly Responsibilities

• Resolve cross department Conflicts/Mediate
• Run/Host Meetings
• Pay attention to Chair email and respond in a timely manner
• Enforce rules as needed
• Ensure staff are okay and not burning out
• At con you continue what you managed pre-con
• You will *mainly* be working with Operations at Con
• Manage the Chair Twitter
• Be attentive to your attendees as well!
• UTILIZE YOUR EXECUTIVE TEAM BEFORE MAKING DECISIONS (and don’t respond to drama until a discussion on how to handle it has been had!)

Your Department on the Website/in the Conbook

• You must write a Chair/Vice Chair welcome/intro for the conbook
• Make sure to have someone proofread it
• Make sure to test the contact page (website) that the form sends an email to you when the chair email is chosen.
• Make sure that your email is listed on the contact page (website) outside of the form.
• If you spot any mistakes in your blurb for the conbook, make sure to contact them ASAP about it!

Beginning of the planning year, what do you need start on?

• Open surveys for the GOH and Charity Suggestions
• Take the results and do preliminary research on them. The aim is to have guests that haven't been a guest elsewhere in the last 3 years, people who give back to their community, etc.
• Take the results after removing those who have been guests in the last 3 years, put some notes on each guests potentia and then propose it to the staff for discussion and voting. (If you want to narrow the list down to approx 3 per guest spot and propose that, sometimes that is also helpful.)
• Make sure to do the same for the Charity suggestions. We usually avoid human charities as they are much more controversial. Aim for something interesting and a place that could benefit from less than $5000 (some charities woudn't bat an eye at a small sum but other small charities, it will help them immensely!)
• Make sure your general idea for the theme is given to the theming and art lead teams so they can start crafting an art guide. This needs to be done as soon as possible, otherwise art cannot be started. (Or it will be started but it won’t be in theme/right colours, etc. which will cause issues down the road. Website also needs this ASAP!)
• Don’t loose the hype! The best time to announce dates/locations is at the end of the previous years’ event. If that is not possible, get it figured out and announced as soon after as you can to keep people interested! (But don’t post dates or location until the contract is confirmed! The last thing we want is to have word go out and then have to change something. It looks bad and we look unorganized!)
• Open up a volunteer form and get your current staff to advertise about it so we can bring in some new faces for the next year.
• Open up a feedback survey to expand upon the hiss’n’scritch from the event to make sure you are addressing all that needs addressing from the previous year.

• Make sure it asks about as many areas of the convention as possible so that it makes people think about specifics.
• Put all these incoming feedback notes in each department folder so that each department can see their department specific feedback so they can improve.

Volunteer/Staff Signup Sheet Example

• Real first and last name
• Furry name/alias
• Their primary email
• A secondary email if applicable
• Account name for any of the chat services that the convention uses for staff chats.
• What they want to do primarily
• What are some secondary positions they would be interested in
• Weather they want to work before or during the event (This is important!)
• What skills they have (you are basically asking for a short n sweet resume to be able to place them. For example, if someone wants to work in constore, it’s good to know if they have actual cashier experience.)

6 Months before con, what do you need to have done?

• All departments should have met their respective 6 month deadlines. If they have not, you need to find out why and work on a solution respectfully.
• You can find all the guides in one place at [[1]] to confirm what should be done if you do not have your own timeline setup. (Make sure the guides are on point if you create a new timeline!)

3 Months before con, what do you need to have done?

• All departments should have met their respective 3 month deadlines. If they have not, you need to find out why and work on a solution respectfully.

1 Month before con, what do you need to have done?

• All departments should have met their respective 1 month deadlines. If they have not, you need to find out why and work on a solution respectfully.
• Send in any needed information to the Conbook for print.

After the Convention/Before the Firing Party

• Make sure all your volunteers (and yourself) got inputted into the system for their hours.
• Update your guide with any new/relevant information/changes.
• Make a staff feedback survey so that you can get feedback for yourself if you are chair again, or for the next years chair, so they can see what we did well, what we didn’t, and any constructive suggestions to make things better!
• Make any staffing suggestions to the next years’ chair. (If you want to work again, staff who excelled and where, etc.)
• Make sure that your staff are sending in their receipts to either a budget submission form or sending them in to [email protected] / [email protected] - depending on who is doing what.

Break down of contacts

• You should be in contact with each executive to know how they are doing and what they need help with. Executives should inform you of any ‘fires’ happening in their branches.

Department Inventory and Ordering Resources

• Make sure everyone else has ordered what they need and send general reminders during the year for this!

Do's and Don'ts of the Department

• Listen to Staff and Attendees; Compassion + Caring is key
• Remember to take time for yourself, don’t stress, allow people to help you (You have an executive team for a reason! Make decisions with them. Help each other. etc!)
• Continue the implementation of guides
• Always encourage your team to bookmark the relevant documents (their guides, the volunteer contact sheet, etc.)
• Encourage your team to use alternative contacts if their emails are not reaching their targets. We have telegram/or whatever chats for a reason!
• Take time off and for yourself so you do not burn out
• See the good in all people, everyone has something, find it, and use it.

PLEASE REMEMBER

• Always respond to emails/contacts, even if it is just to say “I recieved your email and will get back to you soon!” / “I don't know the answer but I am looking into it for you!”
• Be sure to contact the IT/Domain support people to make sure you have access to the materials you will need for the year like your Staff Email, Access to any folders/sites with materials, etc. (Be on the lookout for invites or emails to these things and check your junk mail too!)
• Make sure you TEST your new staff email (if any) and report problems immediately to the IT/Domain support people! (if you haven't gotten any emails in a while, do another test!)
• Make sure you keep all of your information up to date with the convention staff! Contact the volunteers lead to update your information if the volunteers spreadsheet is not available for direct editing!
• Do not WAIT for someone to contact you. If you have a moment to reach out, do so! Depending on who you are working with, the communication road may not be a 2 way street and you will have to do a lot of poking. Please be proactive! You are the chair, if someone’s communication is crap, talk to them and find alternative ways to work with them where they are active. (And encourage other staff to do the same!)
• Do not edit any staff members’ documentation without permission! (Even as the chair, it is good to comment instead of directly edit. You dont want to mess up your teams flow.)
• Keep all VancouFur related documents INSIDE the VancouFur Materials folders. Keeping things on your own gdocs and not inside the VancouFur specific folders makes it incredibly difficult to find needed information for all parties without hassling a lot of staff.
• If you need to make something private in the materials folder (Googledocs or wherever it moves to in the future) Make sure that the Chairs, Admin and Executives CAN STILL SEE IT. We need to know where you are and if your files are all hidden we cannot proactively offer help, guidance, or corrections. Otherwise, just keep things public/view only to prevent people from messing with your info.
• Make sure you know who your Executive team is and have their contacts on hand! They are your support!