Okay, I’ll give my thoughts on the Comiccon compared to the other conventions I’ve been to – Gencon, Keycon, and Valleycon. There was a good crowd – it seemed like several hundred people in the main room. I have tremendous trouble believing the 11,000 attendees that they have reported but could easily believe 1100 over the weekend. That would make it bigger than Keycon and Valleycon but tiny compared to Gencon. I’ll rant later about the way conventions count attendees.
The dealer's room was easily as big as Valleycon but nowhere near the Gencons that I recall. There was a good mix of comics, games, collectibles, and a few clothing dealers. There was a good mix of prices from crazy expensive to super reasonable.
They had an Anime room that was always dark and seemed busy; a programming room that was decently attended; a gaming room that was quite busy with a good mix of card gamers, miniature tables, and open tables.
As mentioned earlier, I didn’t get to much of the programs. I did attend the costume contest. This could have been handled much better. There was a delay in starting as they hadn’t thought to get proper information when signing up the costumers. The prizes were also the minimal, near-insulting prizes that we who do costumes have come to expect from most conventions. There were quite a few costumers about in the dealer hall both on the Saturday and the Sunday and many of the costumes were of respectable quality with a few stunning costumes - like the guy who made Halo armor.
The guests were very visible and easy to get to. They charged for autographs, which is pretty standard, but were pretty good about posing for pictures. There were a lot of comic book artists in attendance as well who were also good about chatting with the fans.
Originally, there was some talk of them losing the contract for the hotel for next year, but it sounds like they are fine after all. It was a good time and, with the low cost, we were able to bring the entire family and stay in the convention hotel. There were none of the party rooms that Keycon or Valleycon have, but since the cost was only a fraction of Keycon’s admission, they weren’t missed all that much.
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2 comments:
Hey Dave,
As con organizer, a lot of work goes into the show. Glad to see you enjoyed the event, but people counting within 30,000 sq. ft. is hard, not to mention people who come and go throughout the weekend.
The other perk of being the con organizer is that yes, I'm the one that had to count the heads, and the cash, and to be bluntly honest, if we got 1100 attendees, I think we would have crashed and burned if you consider the costs just to the put on the show.
Last year, we did not crash and burn, we actually outdid ourselves on the numbers, we were looking at 8-9,000 attendees and 11,000 was amazing!
This is a non profit show, with monies going to local and international charities, we do our advertising part to bring in the people and in return, we give the money away to people who need it more than we do. So, 11,000 people helping us make that happen is a good thing in my books.
Anything you'd like to suggest for next year, is fine with me, we've moved it to the third floor of the convention center, we have 90,000 sq. ft. of space now, some great guests, and yes, we actually have hospitality suites this year! Admission has gone up to $12 for the weekend, and $7.50 for the day, but it's 3 times the size and we plan to bring you another great show, and another great year!
For more info you can visit www.manitobacomiccon.com or e-mail mbcc@mts.net if you have suggestions.
Thanks,
Your friendly neighborhoood con promoter!
As a con organizer, I can fully appreciate what goes into these shows.
Actually, counting people in a confined space, even one as big as 90,000 square feet is pretty simple, if you control the entrances or have competent registration people. I’ll post a new blog as to how this can be done. I’ll also post about the whole non-profit pros and cons.
It’s simply a matter of the numbers. Even granting as much as 1000 people for dealers and guests, that still leaves 10,000 people claimed. With registration open about 12 each day that means you had 24 hours to process these people. You may have more or less hours than 24, you’ll soon see it doesn’t affect the math that all that much.
In order to process 10,000 people in 24 hours, you would need to process over 400 people each and every hour that registration was open. That would mean putting through close to 7 people every single minute that the registration desk was open.
Granted, there was a bit of a line on Saturday morning, but there wasn’t even 5 people lined up constantly. Often, there was no-one in line at registration.
That said, I am glad that you didn’t crash and burn. We did have fun and look forward to the new one. Truly, with the number of dealers that you had, if you were charging even a decent amount for a dealer’s table, they should have easily covered the costs of the rooms. The memberships should have helped to supplement defraying the costs of the guests. Even with 1100 people, this should come close.
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