Volunteer Training

content warning: cartoon violence and blood

bit.ly/magwestportal

About me

• love: boba, writing haiku, existential dread
• coordinated game showcases at White House
• met Biden & anxiety vomited on his lawn
• worked on Injustice, 1v100, Saint’s Row

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At MAGFest…

• Staff Services
• MAGCon
• Pizza Ops

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• professional nag
• Staff Rooms

Natural habitat

natural habitat

launching balloons

Staff Questions?

stops@magwest.org

Volunteer Handbook

bit.ly/magwestportal

Mission

Make the world a better place through video games.

Core Values

Sincerity

Sincerity

• Our events authentically showcase our passions.
• We want to attract people who share our interests.
• Enthusiasm takes precedence over mass appeal.

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Participation

Support

Support

• Demonstrate a genuine desire for the success of everyone around you.
• Actively contribute to the growth you’d like to see in your peers and the organization.
• Exercise candor as a form of respect with empathy.
• Be upfront, be real and authentic with yourself and with others.

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Participation

Participation

• Own your experience: create what you want to see at the event.
• If you’ve got a great idea, we’ll give you the support needed to make it happen.
• Break down barriers between attendees, staff, and guests, allowing everyone to participate in their own way.

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Participation

Experimentation

Experimentation

• Failure is a necessary step in growth and development.
• Don’t be afraid to try to create new things.
• Mistakes made while acting in good faith should not be punished.

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Community

Community

• Everything we create is for our community of players, creatives, and friends.
• We don’t just create events -- we nurture and build communities.
• Sponsorships should be partnerships that benefit the community.

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Participation

Abridged

Guidelines

Communications

Code of Conduct

mods@magfest.org

Trouble?

• Respect Others
• Loving Words
• Consider Perspectives
• PG-15

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- - -

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• Ping @slackmods
• File report.
• Email mods@magfest.org

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Reporting Guidelines

safe@magfest.org

West Staff Job Board

Department Templates

Job Board Form

• Advertise openings
• Recruit staffers

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• Department descriptions
• Staff directory
• Position duties

Volunteer Handbook

bit.ly/magwestportal

FAQs, Policies

Want to get involved?

💌: stops@magwest.org

Newsletter

Stay up to date on the latest!

Registration

We’ll pre-register you ourselves!

Slack

Emerge from the cocoon as a social butterfly!

Department Assignments

We’ll find you a place to call home!

Volunteer Training

Questions? Thoughts?

bit.ly/magwestportal

Volunteer Handbook

bit.ly/magwestportal

Department Training

bit.ly/magwestportal

Head Handbook

Contact List

• List of department heads, mailing lists, and Slack channels

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• Contact List
• STOPs
• Uber Guide
• Policies
• Onboarding Template

Head Handbook

STOP… In The Name of Love

What Can STOPs Do For You Pre-Event?

• Staff and shift imports
• Staff registration
• Hotel room assignments
• Staff job board
• Adding staffers to your department
• Tracking your department head checklist
• Uber training
• Newsletters!

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• Contact List
• STOPs
• Uber Guide
• Policies
• Onboarding Template

Head Handbook

STOP… In The Name of Love

What Can STOPs Do For You At-Event?

• Resolve hotel room issues
• Dispatch Reinforcements (on-call staff)
• Register volunteers for shifts
• Mark + rate completed shifts for staffers
• Distribute emergency crash space

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• Contact List
• STOPs
• Uber Guide
• Policies
• Onboarding Template

Head Handbook

Reggie Tutorials:

• Adding Staffers/Volunteers to Uber
• Department Page Overview
• Creating Staff Shifts
• Marking and Editing Shifts

Learn all this & more!

Master your fate, captain your soul.

• Contact List
• STOPs
• Uber Guide
• Policies
• Onboarding Template

Head Handbook

Policies:

• Room Buyouts
• MAGFest-paid Suites
• Shift Hour Weighting Guidelines
• Out of Event Hours

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• Contact List
• STOPs
• Uber Guide
• Policies
• Onboarding Template

Head Handbook

Onboarding Template:

• Create a one-pager for new volunteers!
• Position descriptions
• Department contact info
• Position guides

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• Contact List
• STOPs
• Uber Guide
• Policies
• Onboarding Template

Department Onboarding Template

bit.ly/westontem

MAGWest Staff

Job Board

bit.ly/westjob

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Recruiting

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Department Checklist

Please fill these out on time!

If you need help, email stops@magwest.org.

The Boring Stuff!

Hi I’m Debra and now we get to talk about the boring stuff

Here is the stuff I’m going to be talking about

• Feedback from last year & priorities for improvement
• Leadership talks & open roles
• How we’re going to keep in touch
• Venue & date updates
• Budget thoughts
• Timeline for the year
• New initiatives

us vs. our obstacles

Attendees gave us great feedback about our event!

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of respondents answered “yes” to Question 1!

Question 2 had an average response of !

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95%

4.4

Ok, for real, attendee feedback

• “How satisfied were you with your experience” got an average response was 4.18 out of 5, and nobody who responded rated it below 3. Huzzah!
• Also, most people reported that they’d happily attend again! On a 1-5 scale, the average response was 4.42.
• “Was it easy to find everything?” garnered a 3.8 average. Not bad, for the Hyatt, but could use improvement.
• Only 1 person reported having trouble finding a staffer when they needed one.
• “Was your badge worth the price?” Most people said yes! The average was 4.32.
• Many people cited the warm community, but also noted the event felt sparse or was missing aspects they were hoping for.

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Ok, for real, attendee feedback

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• Panels: 62% of respondents said that the ones they attended were great! 35% said there should be more panels. 16% said the content wasn’t interesting to them, and 13% said they didn’t/don’t go to panels at all.
• Concerts: 80% loved the performer lineup. 15% said the content wasn’t interesting to them, and 15% said they’d like to see a more diverse lineup.
• Guests: over half of respondents said “...there were guests?” 18% loved the lineup, and 37% wanted more guests.
• Merch: about a third of people didn’t really love the selection, and ten people specifically requested more merch and/or a dealer hall.

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Way to go, us!

What staff said

Frequent challenges that you listed included:

• Communication from chairs
• Communication between departments
• Not enough promotion & marketing
• Layouts too spread out
• Low attendance
• Late preparation

Joys that you listed included:

• Community and frands!
• Concerts, jamspace, and impromptu music
• Getting to meet cool guests and panelists
• Pool party :)

What staff said

Stuff you felt was missing:

• A viable or well-communicated schedule
• Clear directional signage and maps
• Marketplace/dealer room
• Food availability
• LAN

Other stuff of note:

• Most people (76%) said they liked the Hyatt but wouldn’t mind exploring other venues (phew. more on that in a sec)
• Many people wanted to dive in again as soon as possible this fall. LOOK AT US WE’RE DOING IT

You resoundingly asked for:

More communication

More training & onboarding

More (accessible) documentation

More in-person meetings

More recruitment

Event Leadership & Open Roles

We spent hours talking to the 14 people who filled out the leadership interest form. Most of them were not applying for a co-chair position, but were interested in formalizing a different position or changing departments.

So I’m super excited to introduce the chair team for West 2019!

What a lovely series of humans

Ben Tristan

Techops DH

David Croach (“Dac”)

Comms Director

Scott Montgomery

Logistics DH

Jessica McCormick

Consoles DH

What a lovely series of hu---OH GOD

Ben Tristan

Techops DH

David Croach (“Dac”)

Comms Director

Scott Montgomery

Logistics DH

Jessica McCormick

Consoles DH

What a lovely series of humans

Ben Tristan

Techops DH

David Croach (“Dac”)

Comms Director

Scott Montgomery

Logistics DH

Jessica McCormick

Consoles DH

Oh, and me.

“Not everyone can pull off an awkward haircut like that.” -my Lyft driver

other roles

Wow that is some big text. Thanks, Google Slides!

In 2019 we plan to…

bring back LAN

add a marketplace/dealer hall/artist alley

make Tea Room its own department

formalize coordination between panels, guests, and music

examine music layouts and staffing

strengthen & develop our tabletop offerings

bring Challenges to West

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And don’t forget we’re likely to need some additional support/leadership in techops, consoles, and logistics! ^w^

What’s next?

Formalize roles and responsibilities for the chair team

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Reach out to others who expressed interest in new roles

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Set up regular updates/meetings for and with staff

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Gather departmental and organizational resources

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Square away venue + event dates

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Make budget + theme decisions

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Build a timeline for the year

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Get Uber + website up

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Launch registration

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Promote tf out of it

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???

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Profit

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The Quest for a Venue

Things we like about the Hyatt:

• Central to where we currently operate (e.g. the BAGEL)
• Attendees are familiar with us being there
• Load-in/load-out are mostly not a hassle
• Generally, “better the devil we know than the devil we don’t know” kinda thing
• The pool is really f-ing nice, and they have lasers which we can take advantage of

Things we don’t really like about the Hyatt:

• ‘SPENSIVE
• Quality-of-life stuff like food, parking is bad
• Hotel doesn’t have control over the convention center side of operations
• The layout is weird and spread out
• They gave away our 2019 dates
• They gave away our pool access on the last night of West, those fiends

So now what?

I took feedback from staff on venue possibilities, looked at our usage over the past two years, and put together an RFP which I sent to three additional venues.

Here is the RFP!

What dates should we absolutely, definitely avoid?

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The list right now:

• Hyatt Santa Clara
• Hyatt SFO
• Doubletree San Jose
• Fairmont San Jose

We’ll be visiting these places tomorrow for anyone who wants to check them out, and I’ll be meeting with sales reps from each of them on Monday and Tuesday.

Numbers!

The long and the short of it: MAGWest 2018 spent about $60,000 more than it made.

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This was not totally unanticipated, but it lost more money than we hoped, generally

due to low attendance, hotel attrition, and some other high costs (e.g. power).

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The BoD framed acceptable loss as “a big problem getting smaller, rather than a

small problem getting bigger.” If we hemorrhage money this year, or if attendance

numbers decline despite our concerted efforts, we may need to reconsider, but for

right now, West appears to be a big problem getting smaller, so we are still in pretty

good shape.

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More numbers

Steph is still working on a financial analysis for us. I’m not going to share the full doc quite yet, because a lot of the sections haven’t been updated, so it’s still a bit confusing. But we should have more detailed breakdowns soon for our venue costs, departmental spending, etc.

Here is a thing I made to play around with badge costs and attendance goals. This is something we’ll need to figure out soon, before we can give departments their budgets or launch registration.

I’m so sorry there are no hilarious money-related pictures in this. I put some borders in instead.

Oh wait here is one

Random stuff that I don’t want to forget to say

Timeline over the next few months

• November: solidify venue and dates; touch base with DHs; update mailing lists, Drive, and calendar
• December: solidify theming, merch, and departmental budgets
• January: get Uber rolling
• February: launch registration??
• Throw out some ideas!

Events we definitely want to promo at:

• BABSCon, April 19-22, 2019
• Fanime, May 24-27, 2019
• We have a big list of events actually! Dac’s gonna take it from here to talk promo though

Soon™

• Building partnerships with like-minded orgs/events
• Formulating a “Super exchange program” for staffers, especially DHs, who wouldn’t otherwise be able to go

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MAGWest Core Values Brainstorm

Programming/Content Brainstorm

Questions????

(follow #magwest for information on tomorrow’s grand tour!)

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Theming Ideas

Dac will put in three mockups!

Theming Ideas

Dac will put in three mockups!

YOU CANT TELL ME WHAT TO DO

First, a close runner-up

Drum roll, please

And the MAGWest 2019 theme is....

Whew.�Whew.�Whew.�[Chat disabled for 4 seconds.]

The real choices are...

What makes for a good theme?

Click to add subtitle

Themes influence… And it should...

• Signage
• Merch
• Promotion
• Events/Activities
• Memories

• Franchise
• Historical Importance
• Impact on VGM
• Easily Recognizable
• Widely Beloved

lol look at all this blank space

Promo Plans

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Let’s talk about some quick promo stuff.

Promo Plans

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Let’s talk about some quick promo stuff.

Online ideas

• Updated website
• Social media team
• Scheduled regular posts, big announcements, and community interaction
• Newsletters
• One every few months, or during significant events
• Cross promotion with people/orgs who love MAG <3
• Paid ads? (Google Grants, pls)
• o r i g i n a l c o n t e n t
• Videos, Twitch streams, community works, etc.
• Community promo codes�

Onffline ideas

• Promo event table swaps (or table/ad buys)
• Anime conventions
• Gaming conventions
• Industry Events
• Concerts ♪♫♬
• Community events
• Gaming tournaments, MAG meetups, Meetup™, [insert more ideas here]
• Flyers, promo items
• MAG @ showcases
• Hosting Jamspaces, tournaments, arcades & consoles, unique MAG experiences
• Local business outreach
• Game/comic/nerd shops & businesses, offering badges, customized promo codes, tournament prizes, customized flyers/posters, potential at-event benefits

MAGWest Promo Team

MAGWest Promo Team

what crazy shit can you come up with??

MAGWest Promo Team

what crazy shit can you come up with??

Questions and Answers

Thank you for your attention, we will now open the floor for Q&A and brainstorming.

Questions and Answers

Thank you for your attention, we will now open the floor for Q&A and brainstorming.