It's Not That Hard

I've been in science fiction fandom for a long time.  I went to my first convention (Marcon) in 1981 or 1982, and I've worked for ApolloCon for 9 of the 10 years that we've done it.  I even work for other fannish organizations.

More than a year ago, when I was chair of ApolloCon 2012, I went to FenCon and I overheard one of the people in con con suite talk about how impossible it was to run one of those things.  For those of you how don't know what a con suite is, it's a hospitality suite--a place where they serve food and people are supposed to eat and sit and talk.  It's a lot like the convention as a whole, only less structured.  In fact, I have often described my vision of a con suite as "a convention in miniature."

At that time, I had been searching for someone to run the ApolloCon 2012 Con Suite (Kim Zrubek would volunteer to do that roughly three months later) for some time, and I couldn't help but remark that the job was not in any way impossible.

Of course, that set off the person who had made the original comment.  I don't recall many of the details, but the general thrust was that I was wrong and that they had observed the con suite staff slaving away at many, many conventions, and that I shouldn't have any right to comment until I'd actually attempted such a job.  Afterwards, the individual left me there to consider the wrongness of my ways.  At this point, Tim Morgan (chair of the FenCon after that one) leaned over and said quietly, "Didn't you used to run the ApolloCon Con Suite?"  I replied just as quietly: "Yup.  Three years in a row."

To be sure, the con suite is a big job.  The work on the Con Suite would start two days before the convention, and would go into the day following the convention.  During that time, there wasn't all that much time to do much of anything else.  There was a lot of prepping and setting out and picking up and cleaning.  I went shopping a half-dozen times and spent a lot of money.  You don't sign up for con suite and expect that you'll spend much time attending panels.  I still had time to take a few turns through the dealer's room and see the art show, but much of what happened during those three years is just a mystery.

My point is that, as a person who has done several of ApolloCon's big jobs, I think that the attitude that a job is not merely big, but actually impossible without superhuman efforts to be the biggest barrier to running a convention.  I was reminded of this when I was reading an on-line book on learning Morse Code:  If you start a job with the attitude that a job is going to be unpleasant and difficult, you'll wind up with a difficult and unpleasant job.  I expect that attitude is a major part of any significant undertaking.

So, the next time someone offers you the chance to take on a big role, or even a small one, why not take the attitude that you can do it?  It might make all the difference.