| Criteria for the approval and management of Panels and Activities
1) Time. In order for your application for a panel or activity to be evaluated and approved, you’ll have to submit it to the Staff according to the instructions and deadlines that are communicated each year in the relative forum thread, avoiding to submit the required material in the last few days available, so that you will have the time to apply any possible correction or modification requested by the Staff.
2) Materials. In order for your application for a panel or activity to be approved, it has to be supplied with all the required material, which is stated in the relative thread (slideshow presentation, table of contents or program). Any material which is incomplete or not working cannot be approved. Furthermore, the guests that will be allowed to manage an activity will also have the responsibility to gather and bring to the convention any material which could be needed to carry it out. It is at our discretion whether or not to contribute economically to the purchase of said materials.
3) Feasibility. In order for your application for a panel or activity to be approved, it has to be considered feasible by the Staff, taking into account the hotel’s features and spaces, the duration, the required materials and their cost and the amount of work that it would take.
4) Interest. In order for your application for a panel or activity to be approved, it has to be considered interesting by the Staff, meaning that the project has a chance to arouse people’s curiosity, be original, entertain, be fun, inform and be directed to a wide enough potential audience or target. Panels and activities that are too niche or exclusive, excessively in-depth, repetitive, boring, empty, targeted at a small number of people or having little or no general interest could thus be rejected. Panels and activities that are linked to the current year’s theme, but have no relevant reference to the furry theme, will have to be especially fun, simple, interactive and stimulating, since they’ll have to make up for lacking the sole element of interest that all guests have in common. The maximum duration of the panel or activity and the chance that it might be presented or carried out during an alternative activity is at the Staff’s discretion, based on the aforementioned criteria.
5) Contents. In order for your application for a panel or activity to be approved, it must be free of any content that has a chance to be offensive, inappropriate, misinformative, counter educational or otherwise against the principles of our convention. Presenting explicit themes is allowed as long as the audience is warned about said contents at the beginning of the panel or activity so that we can ensure that no one’s feelings will be offended. It is otherwise prohibited to use pornographic images or photographs with the purpose of “decorating” your presentation.
6) Quality. In order for your application for a panel or activity to be approved, the work has to maintain a minimum standard of quality (a neat slide show presentation, the ability of the panel holder to speak in public and capture the attention and so on), enough to make it a comprehensible, pleasant and enjoyable by the majority of the audience. Zampacon feels that panels and activities are a major part of the event and we’d like to guarantee every guest a positive experience, also thanks to your effort in carrying out high-level projects.
7) Collaboration. In order for your application for a panel or activity to be approved it is needed that you collaborate with the Staff, maintaining a certain degree of flexibility about your initial idea and all the details. The Staff will do its best to help you realizing and improving your project and has a chance to request modifications, corrections and variations in length to stay within the schedule, respect the diverse audience’s feelings and widen the number of participants or target, also providing (discretionary) suggestions to expand it or improve it, with the aim of allowing everyone to present their work in the most consistent and interesting way possible. Your application will be considered as not approved until the required modifications are implemented. The panelists that did a good job and presented a successful project will be less supported than those who are at their first experience and will benefit from a greater autonomy for their further projects. On the other side, any lack of respect, effective communication and cooperation with the Staff during the approval and development phases of the project, as well as any poor quality performance, will influence our willingness to accept your work or any possible future applications. For all of these reasons, it will not be possible to add any more people working on the project after the deadline for its approval.
8) Responsibility. In order for your application for a panel or activity to be approved it is required that you take the responsibility for any material that you may display or any activity that you may encourage, by signing a special liability waiver upon arriving at the hotel. Given that we cannot guarantee that the material that we received and approved will be the same that will be effectively displayed at the convention, the Staff relieves itself from any legal or moral responsibility for any opinion, behavior or content of an offensive, unfair, damaging or illegal nature that may be displayed in that context. If something like that should happen we will intervene to cease the panel or activity and ban the responsible people from the event, if the circumstances requires it. The Staff will take for granted that the panelist is in possession of the legal rights for the projection in a public place of the material that he intends to display and relieves itself from any liability for any possible case of infringement of the Italian law.
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