Nine Worlds 2017 is likely to consist of around 250 programme items, including panels, talks, screenings, performances, quizzes, gaming sessions, social meetups, and DJ sets. While we have lots of people willing to run or appear on sessions, we need a small team to oversee things at the highest level.
Your task will be to support and manage content organisers, session runners, and session participants in putting on an awesome weekend for all of our attendees. This entails working primarily with the content organisers, with the event director and alongside staff who manage our other organising areas and supporting functions. These other organisers include people specialising in handling accessibility, child friendliness, tech (AV and staging), ops (stewarding), registration, venue liaison, finance, software and systems, and marketing. In other words, you'll be far from alone, but you will still be responsible for the core thing that people come to Nine Worlds for.
You will need:
- the information handling capability to track hundreds of programme items using a computerised system;
- the interpersonal capability to forge and hold together a team of hundreds of people bringing with them varying interests, identities, backgrounds and personal beliefs;
- the vision and judgment to ensure interesting content across a wide variety of topics and formats.
It's important to note that we're not looking for people to slot into a monolith of existing processes. As part of the recruitment, we'll need to discuss and agree how the heads of content will work together, the wider content organising structure, how the budget will be spent, how comping should work for 2017, how content information will be kept and shared, and what deadlines to operate to. With four previous events behind us, we have lots of thoughts and feedback to guide us, but we're still discovering what works and would very much welcome fresh thinking.
Be warned: this is a high profile and rewarding role with a huge say over what our attendees experience. It can also be demanding and stressful if deadlines are allowed to slide or if organisers drop out. While we believe it can make sense as a volunteer position, this is only the case if it's well managed.
History of the role
The Head of Content was a single role until 2015, taken by one of the event co-founders. During this time, the actual content was put together by a large team of track heads, who worked singly or in small teams to organise and run sessions in their particular subject areas, such as Books, Whedon, Race and Culture, Future Tech, and Star Trek.
Following their departure, we moved to a new model in 2016 to spread the workload, manage risk and reduce the number of disparate organising teams. The intention was for three Heads of Content to manage nine Content Groups. Each Content Group was run by 2 or 3 organisers, who in turn selected Content Creators to run the actual sessions.
This model proved difficult to implement. We did not advertise the content head role externally, and started with only two content heads, who began organising in January. One then stepped back. The Content Groups also suffered similar issues, and keeping the show on the road came at considerable personal cost to those who remained. While the resulting content was still enjoyable for attendees overall, the experience wasn't pleasant for organisers. To prevent these issues from recurring, we're reviewing the organising model, organising earlier, and opening up recruitment.
Necessary
- Information handling - Experience in working with large numbers of records, whether in the form of spreadsheets, or a database of some kind.
- People management - You'll need to direct the efforts of hundreds of volunteer session runners and participants, both individually and through larger scale activities such as call-out processes, mailouts and guidance documents. Experience in doing this previously is essential
- Content curation - The quantity and variety of content at Nine Worlds can feel rather like jumping in at the deep end. Previous experience in putting together slates of content, especially in forms that match to those at Nine Worlds is a prerequisite.
- Availability and commitment - The number of hours will be dependent on the agreed organising model and deadlines, but a reasonable expectation would be a few hours each week, more than that around any content deadlines, and substantially more during next year's event. You will need the capacity and commitment to spend this time on Nine Worlds organising if Nine Worlds is to be successful.
- Openness and resilience to criticism - Given our focus on inclusion, the live nature of the event, the sheer quantity of content, and our limited budget and capacity to vet hundreds of participants, some content will be critiqued and called out. You need to be ready and willing to accept criticism in a constructive fashion, without retreating into denial or losing motivation.
- Decision making - You won't be able to accept all of the offers from everyone who wants to be involved in content at Nine Worlds. You need a well-developed ability to respond constructively to occasionally very forceful requests, without being railroaded into making decisions against the best interests of Nine Worlds and its attendees.
- Understanding of barriers to inclusion faced by marginalised groups - Membership of a marginalised or disadvantaged group counts as lived experience.
Desirable
- Experience with Slack, Trello and Google Apps - Introductory training can be provided if necessary.
- Regular access to an internet-connected computer - All of our organising is carried out on-line, partly from necessity as it's difficult to get everyone in one place. We may be able to loan laptops or Chromebooks to volunteers for the duration of their role in organising the 2017 event.
Reimbursement and justification
We expect this voluntary role to be taken up by people who are not professional event organisers or curators in their day jobs, who would find volunteering for this interesting, personally rewarding and valuable for the Nine Worlds community.
Heads of content will have a large say in budget spend at Nine Worlds, but will need to adhere to the no-reward criterion for volunteers. Reasonably covered items may include entry to the event, accommodation for the duration of Nine Worlds, and potentially transport costs. Not all programme participants are required to be volunteers; professional performers and e.g. swordplay instructors are frequently paid for their involvement as their role in the convention is what they do for a living.
If you'd like to ask about or apply for this role, get in touch at jobs@nineworlds.co.uk. There's more information on applying on the main vacancies page.