Joshua Kronengold

Indeed. If we had an experienced hotel person who wanted the job, I'd send it to them and well sent -- as it was, we had the hotel person for a friendly gaming con who already had a relationship with the hotel (Hello, Dexcon!) negotiate the initial contract for us, but when he had an attack of life he passed the contact on to me, and since the bits we needed were "nail down the contract" and "know what we needed and thus what needed to be confirmed/changed from the hotel", it didn't make any sense for me to pass the contact on at that point. (I'd already been sending the contract out for review, but then I'd also helped review the contract for the last hotel we worked with; more eyes make for fewer errors.

The guest matter is trickier -- since you really do want program to be able to talk directly to guests to discuss programming, the con chair to be able to talk directly to guests to reassure them and make sure everyone's on the same page, etc (particularly for a small con where the chair is making a lot of the decisions); if you -do- have a liason, it should really be someone who views the job as "my job is to make sure the guests get what they need and are represented appropriately in convention decisions", rather than "my job is to be The person who talks to the guests."