WinSFA received a letter from an anonymous commentator following last year’s (2024) Keycon. Though we cannot respond to the commentator directly, we did feel that we should respond to the community generally on the issues raised by the commentator.
Role of WinSFA
It was suggested that WinSFA has to take a more active role in long-term forms and structure of the convention.
WinSFA is already responsible for the hotel contracts, as well as various administrative maintenance roles. We have prepared guides for the Con-chairs and Con-committee laying out the normal expected events for the Convention and providing some suggestions for options for each part of those events. Those guides are currently being reviewed following the last convention.
The commentator went on to suggest that WinSFA should be more responsible for the long-term marketing of the Convention. This is a suggestion that WinSFA is taking seriously and has been working on. We hope to have a more complete plan for long-term involvement in marketing in the near future.
There is also a lot of discussion of gathering of data regarding the Convention. We did conduct a survey of attendees in the last couple of years, and look to continue doing that in the future.
Hospitality
The commentator was concerned about the level of contact we had with other people staying at the hotel who weren’t part of the Convention. Last year (2024) was unique in that it was the first year at a new hotel. As such, the control of our space was much different than what we had enjoyed the last several years. Having said that, it was certainly not ideal that we had Hospitality suites next to non-attendees. That led to conflicts that were not necessary. The Hotel Liason worked with the Hotel to minimize those conflicts this year. The Convention that just happened had no conflicts that we are aware of with non-attendees.
The commentator also wrote about the nature of the hospitality suites we had. Balance in the hospitality suites in theme and intention are good things to pay attention to, but the Convention is limited by who is prepared to have a Hospitality suite in a given year. The last few years we have been very fortunate to have the excellent suites we have had, but we have not had to turn very many away. There is a regular discussion each year about the suites being presented, and concerns from year to year are dealt with by the Con-chairs and the Hospitality department heads.
The commentator put a lot of work into their letter, and had a lot of valuable suggestions to make. If people do want to provide more feedback on the convention and WinSFA’s role, they can contact us through our website, www.winsfa.org or through executive@winsfa.org
Thank you so much!
WinSFA