Public relations at Armageddon

nzLARPS
#1

{edited to be less inflammatory, which admittedly I should have done before posting}

I was somewhat alarmed to hear the way an old friend of mine was treated at the Armageddon stand. When she approached the stand she mentioned how she remembered when LARPers were set up there 5 or so years ago with the Mordavia game. Rather than welcome here and engage with her in conversation, she was first rebuked, and then ignored as the people looking after the stand got into a discussion over whether Mordavia was still around 5 years ago. No-one even said goodbye when she left.

Some facts: I remember Mordavia at Armageddon. I got involved with the game 6 years ago, and I believe she had already been playing it by then. I continued to play the game for several years, as did she, though she eventually lost interest in the hobby. No-one cares if this wasn’t NZLARPs, it’s the same hobby.

Now I understand the armageddon stand was a great recruitment drive. However, as Vanya kindly pointed out in response to my original post, my friend is perceived as not being the “target audience” for the promotion, as she already knows about LARP and has done it before. Furthermore, Vanya was of the opinion that her character had something to do with whether or not she was worth treating with respect.

Here we have some contrasting attitudes: if someone is new to LARP we will welcome them with open arms, but if someone is already seen as “one of us” or worse still that sinful group of “formerly one of us,” and they aren’t one of the “cool kids that LARPers get along with,” they should just toughen up and not expect to be greeted graciously (because the effort is needed elsewhere).

I am not particularly concerned about who it was that had this original conversation with her. Aside from it leaving a bad taste, I can understand that, from the people working on the stands point of view, nothing malicious was consciously intended. Furthermore, you were all working hard promoting the hobby we all love, with little in it for yourselves, and long hours of work. My concern is that it was quite possible it never registered to anyone at the stand what had happened.

Now, as several of you have pointed out, I did not contribute to the volunteer process, and many of our volunteers were quite tired. I personally am unable to assist in the next few stands at Armageddon (being overseas), but perhaps if there is an issue of burnout we could look at other ways to encourage LARPers to help with the task. If we cannot afford free tickets to stand holders, what other carrots can we give?

In future recruitment events we are likely to encounter people who have LARPed before, or heard of LARP, but do not do it at the moment. It is worth keeping in mind that the LARP scene has changed hugely in New Zealand, and there may be new aspects to it that are attractive to these people. Also, these people may have friends who are interested. Lastly, these people may have that most valuable of item: a reason, or reasons, why they no longer (or never did), LARP. Without this sort of feedback we run the risk of continuing to alienate people who have similar issues with the hobby.

#2

Im sorry your friend had that experience. While I was on the stand I did not witness any behaviour even remotely like this. Everyone on the stand was friendly and spoke to anyone willing to listen. I find it hard to believe actually that anybody was like what you described.

#3

I must be honnest - the people manning the stand when I turned up were more concerned with talking about what they were going to do for lunch than talking to the person i brought along who i have been trying to get into larping. I was not going to say anything but Walter raises a good point.
I know this is voluntier work but perhaps only people who are employed in a customer service position should be permitted to work on the stand - or at least have one person like that on the stand at all times.

#4

Hi Walter,

Thank you for your feedback. As one of the two leaders of the Armageddon marketing effort, I am very sorry to hear that your friend had such a negative experience. It was not an event I personally witnessed, so I cannot comment on the specifics of the situation, but I would like to make some comments on my experience at the Armageddon stand as one of the two volunteer coordinators, both for yourself and for the general membership reading this thread.

The nzLARPS stand at Armageddon was entirely manned by volunteers who received no benefit or compensation of any kind - we weren’t even able to offer them free entry to the convention, so they in fact paid to work on the stand. We also had a small number of volunteers, as somewhere between a third and a half of our original volunteers either withdrew last minute or failed to turn up entirely. Most of us that worked on the stand worked more than two plus days, and due to the limited number of people, I wasn’t able to give people breaks as often as I would have liked. Working on the stand is a very draining experience. You are putting yourself out there to strangers, some of whom are friendly and receptive, many of whom aren’t, and some of whom are just downright awful and rude. After each encounter, even the bad ones, our volunteers simply had to shake it off and put a smile right back on and talk to the next person.

In the time I was on the stand (two and a half days out of four), the behaviour I saw from our volunteers was fantastic. They were friendly, engaging, interested, and spirited. I did not see, in two and a half days, one instance of one of our volunteers being rude. Sometimes, however, when it had been particularly long between breaks or it was very late in the day, the volunteers were tired and were more easily distracted into talking amongst themselves rather than the more draining activity of engaging the passing public. This wasn’t ideal, and we will naturally be looking into raising our service levels in future years if the project is undertaken again, but due to lack of volunteers there was only so much we could do to mitigate the exhaustion (and thus distraction factor that crept in). What is also worth bearing in mind that sometimes larpers who were not volunteers on the stand would gather around the display - it is possible they instigated or continued the discussion your friend mentions. Our team did their best to ask non-volunteer larpers to move on from the stand to clear space and avoid distraction. Sometimes this worked better than other times.

As I said before, I am sorry to hear about your friend’s negative experience. From what I personally witnessed at Armageddon that weekend, I think our volunteers, or by-standing larpers, were moved to distraction by exhaustion, rather than intending to be malicious to a former larper expressing interest. It is not, however, in any way an anecdote that is representative of our volunteers’ behaviour that weekend. I am very proud of the effort each and every member of the volunteer team put in, and stand by their performance one hundred percent. We were not perfect, we were all volunteers and amateurs, but I witnessed our team be friendly and engaging to hundreds and hundreds of people over the weekend - your friend’s experience is a regretable anomaly.

If any member of the community has concerns about our society and hobby’s conduct at future events, I encourage you to volunteer to assist. The more volunteers we have, the better service we are able to provide and you may assure yourself of the quality of our behaviour.

Lastly, while I always value feedback in the spirit of continual improvement, the tone of your post feels very much to me to attempt to shame the entire Armageddon volunteer team, in the way in which it condemns every volunteer. Your final paragraph in particular, where you blanket-indicte every person involved with the stand as not being “a decent person” is particularly hurtful, and uncalled for.

Kind regards,
Anna

#5

Are you sure that it was the NZLARPS stand? Because that certainly doesn’t sound like it. Now, I don’t want to discredit your friend’s feelings, but I think we were exceptionally good at dealing with the public at Armageddon. Many people came and listened, and a large part of that was due to the initiative that those manning the stand took to engage people. I can only comment on the parts of the convention that I was there for (I was at the stand all day Friday and Sunday), but I certainly can’t recall any incident that did not show NZLARPS in a good light.

But clearly, there is something wrong if your friend feels so negative about the experience (disregarding the hundreds of other people who were all smiles). So I can appreciate your concern because you, like me, only want the best for this society. But I have to say, I don’t appreciate the tone of how you’re addressing the issue. Perhaps I’m not reading it how you intend it to be read, but it kind of feels like you’ve attacked my very personality at the end there. I may not be trained for this sort of stuff, but I paid to be there, and spent most of my day in that one corner of the convention. I’ll admit that I was drained by the end, but I was doing my best to promote NZLARPS and larping itself. So I don’t appreciate the ‘anger’ in your post. C’mon, man, you’re a part of this community. We can be more positive and productive than that :slight_smile:

#6

In all fairness to Walter - neither of you were on the stand at all during the single day I attended - so chances are good you did not see anything negative. Also - why did the staff on the stall have to pay. I nearly got in for free because I was wearing a staff shirt. It was only after I informed them that I was not working on a stand that they asked me to purchase a ticket. It may be worth doing some investiation on this one because the EB staff for example did not have to pay to enter neither did any of the TK or the star trek stands staff…

#7

We got the stand for alot cheaper than those other parties…but part of the condition was that we only got a limited number of passes (2). But thats besides the main point here.

It’s sad that Walter’s friend felt that way (Noted) and this was our first year, so the feed back is important and we’ll just up our game next year.

#8

Neither of us denying that the incident took place. We are only saying that it is not representative of the behaviour during the weekend.

The society was given a very kind price for the stand, and part of the concessions we made was that we were not given free entrance for our staff.

#9

How many people worked on the stall over the weekend?

#10

Hi Walter,

Regardless of who was involved and why that happened to your friend, I’m sorry that it did. It’s a sucky feeling being shut out of a group like that.

Steph

#11

Thanks for your feedback. I have edited the original post to be less inflammatory. Seems impulsiveness is still not my strong suit.