What it means to be a staff member at Baku
Staff members perform important duties at Bakuretsu Con. They check badges to ensure attendees have paid, they help with registration, they put up signs, they take down signs, and they do other kind of boring tasks.
Why would somebody want to do boring tasks? To have a convention, silly! It takes a lot of work for something like Bakuretsu Con to happen. We appreciate our staff members who make it possible.
What you get for volunteering
- Discounted badge
- Possibly a t-shirt
- Food, sometimes
- Friendship, always
Route A: Casual Volunteer
A casual volunteer buys their badge and pays full price. Then, based on the number of hours you work during the entire weekend, they earn a reimbursement. It pays, like, way less than minimum wage, but you’re doing a good thing to help our nonprofit event spread awareness about anime and video games and provide social and cultural opportunities for the people of Vermont and northeastern New York, so you should feel pretty good about that.
Hours Worked Rewards
@ 4 hours – $10 badge reimbursement
@ 8 hours – $20 badge reimbursement
@ 12 hours – $25 badge reimbursement
@ 16 hours – $30 badge reimbursement
@ 24 hours – Badge refunded + T-Shirt
You must be registered for the weekend to do this route.
Route B: Committed to the Bit
A fully-fledged staff member does not need to buy a badge. But they do need to commit to at least 24 hours of work over the weekend in their department or area. To do this route, you’ll need to sign up in advance and attend at least one in-person or virtual staff meeting before Bakuretsu Con 2023.
Requirements for all staff, regardless of how they become staff:
- 18 years or older as of Bakuretsu Con 2023
- Able to work a minimum of 4 hours (casual) or 24 hours (full) over the weekend
- Politeness in the face of rudeness
- An ability to uphold the rules
- Dedication to being helpful and useful to humankind
- Deodorant
Departments, and what they do
- Badges: Badges does all the badge stuff. This includes registering attendees, checking badges outside panel and event spaces, providing information to attendees, and safety checks for props.
- Green Room: The Green Room is the place where staff go during downtime or when they get hungry. If you work this department, you keep that room rolling for the rest of us, and we appreciate you for it.
- Guests & Industry: This highly competitive team handles special guests and industry folks who come to Bakuretsu Con (you cannot apply for this department in your first year with Baku).
- Programming/Originals/Cosplay: Do you like to run panels? Do you like to cosplay – like, do you really like to cosplay? Are you a theater kid? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, this is your department. I don’t make the rules.
- Tabletop Gaming: Are you a theater kid but you like to sit down a lot?
- Technical Operations: Are you a theater kid but backstage?
- Video Gaming: Video game staff keep the video game room and video tournaments going. It’s grueling work – we run our video game room, more or less, from con open to close. But you do get to play video games a lot.