father bloodlust wrote: kitkumi wrote: gib_rebeg wrote: hahnarama wrote: sepayne7 wrote:
My wife and I are looking forward to going this year. She just saw a True Dungeon volunteer at the supermarket ( he had a TD shirt, my wife was wearing a con shirt) and he was excited about going this year. Masks, gloves, and sanitizers make us feel comfortable enough.
I worry there won’t be as many RPGs and games, but if it goes, it will be great. Has TD re hired all of their staff? Last communication from them was that they were forced to layoff everyone
Staff and volunteers are different.I believe the staff are all still laid off. Only Jeff running it all right now. He ops out of Illinois which has very strict rules right now.
The volunteers as mentioned are those who show to the con, and actually run the rooms.
It is this aspect that concerns me for TD at least, which I think can also span out to the entire con. For many people masks and sanitizer will be enough. But that won't matter if events can't get the needed number of volunteers to run. TD alone needs a lot of volunteers to run, even if they are running at a reduced capacity. One of our friends has been a volunteer for TD before and the rooming situation alone made him decline volunteering this year before he ever decided what he was going to do in regards to con (four people to a hotel room if you stay in one of the TD volunteer rooms, and not necessarily with people you know, though you can make requests. His thing was 'I know where I've been and my level of safety. I don't know where my roommates would be from or their level of safety'.)
That makes me wonder: what percentage of events at Gen Con are run by organized companies like TD, Nascrag, etc.; and what percentage are run by individual GMs whose only employees/volunteers are themselves? Those numbers could provide interesting insight into how the problem quoted above might affect the number of events available at Gen Con.
I would think a fair number of the smaller companies do the volunteer route. Though the term volunteer is misleading and a number of the larger one's use regular paid staff.
Now I say it's misleading in that most people when they hear the term volunteer, think they are unpaid. They are not. By law, any for profit group, organization ect must pay their people. They can't use unpaid volunteer if they are for profit. And Gencon as well as TD must pay income tax.
Now someone will argue that there is no real cash exchange. But that doesn't really matter, it's based on the value exchange of goods, cash or services. For example TD gives $250 stipdend, a hotel room shared with other volunteers, convention badge, limited-edition Participation Tokens, limited-edition volunteer-only tokens as well as other swag. If you figure up the value of what they give, it should be around $500 total, which equates to about $12.00/hour. Might be more but not going into the math.
Now Gencon also uses "Event Team" which replaced their volunteer system 3- 4 years ago, basically the same thing.
Should Gencon or a group fail to get enough people to run the events, they should know in advance, there are still options, inside and out. Put out the word to the fans begging for help, offer better incentives, or ect. Or outside options is hire temp workers from places like the following.
Temp Staffing of Indiana, Express Employment Professionals, Indiana Staffing Services.
These places are not idea, yes,. But in a fix, you could hire some temp workers and give them some real basic training that will allow them to work, and get the events staffed.
