Have a randomized meal sign-up for one or more meals, where people get randomly assigned to a small group of 3-4 people outside their usual fannish affinity group.
Have an officially organized newbie dinner the night before the con or breakfast the first day of the con.
Those sound like great ideas to me. I think a big part of the challenge is just connecting people to one another so that nobody feels like they're stuck on the periphery all alone if they don't already have a big group of friends at the con - a lot of people do seem to be happy to mingle and meet new folks, so I don't think that part of it's a problem. The proposed online message board (in whatever form it might take) also sounded like it could be really helpful with that - I've found that if you're out of the loop, your only option is to sort of park yourself in a public place and hope people wander by. An easier way to make impromptu plans would be awesome.
Decide whether the Vidding Town Hall is going to be the state of vidding discussion or a progress report from the OTW.
It was billed as "vidding and visibility" both this year and last year, so those were mostly the topics I was expecting. Maybe in the future people might like to do an hour on legal/technical/visibility issues and an hour on social/community issues?
no subject
Have an officially organized newbie dinner the night before the con or breakfast the first day of the con.
Those sound like great ideas to me. I think a big part of the challenge is just connecting people to one another so that nobody feels like they're stuck on the periphery all alone if they don't already have a big group of friends at the con - a lot of people do seem to be happy to mingle and meet new folks, so I don't think that part of it's a problem. The proposed online message board (in whatever form it might take) also sounded like it could be really helpful with that - I've found that if you're out of the loop, your only option is to sort of park yourself in a public place and hope people wander by. An easier way to make impromptu plans would be awesome.
Decide whether the Vidding Town Hall is going to be the state of vidding discussion or a progress report from the OTW.
It was billed as "vidding and visibility" both this year and last year, so those were mostly the topics I was expecting. Maybe in the future people might like to do an hour on legal/technical/visibility issues and an hour on social/community issues?