My first ever trip to WBC is rushing up on me, so I will dispense of a few things quickly.
- Running two simultaneous sessions of the same game is a lot easier if both tables of players are ready on time. Otherwise, you end up having to explain a game twice in a row in a noisy environment and your throat gives up about halfway through the second rules explanation.
- It also helps if you actually remember when the name of your game has changed.
- If you're ever running a demo table at DexCon, the boardgaming schedule is broken up into two-hour chunks. About 5 minutes into such a slot, foot traffic will plummet. It will not pick back up until about half an hour before the end of the slot.
- The vast, vast majority of attendees show up after 8pm on Friday. I felt that since Wednesday was a holiday, more people would be there earlier in the week. I was wrong.
It was not until I had given up on giving demos Friday and was playing Eminent Domain with my assembled volunteers at 9pm did a string of people start coming to the table for demos. I could have arrived Friday instead of Wednesday and only lost a handful of my total demos for the convention. - If you're not subscribed to the VHG Newsletter, then you missed out on the news about the art. You can read the online version to find out.
- The person mentioned in the last item of the newsletter happened to be travelling to NYC. We were able to play City Hall together for the first time. This helped us to hash out some ideas on how to move forward with the project.
DexCon was only the starter's pistol for this endeavor. There's still a marathon ahead of me and the second leg starts Tuesday.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteFrom a purely technical point of view, I do have to disagree with the words "vast, vast"; we had 3/4 of our pre-reg and an additional 200 door people at the convention by Midnight Thursday night.
I can't argue with the flow of the convention for people looking for demos, but that changes for reasons that are not entirely clear.
All I can say is that I'm happy you were there Wednesday night, as your table certainly added to the atmosphere surrounding the board gaming room.
>>>Vinny
Vinny, I was glad I was there Wednesday too. To me, losing any demos would have been bad. And of course you know the actual numbers of when people showed up. Thanks for clearing up my mistaken impression.
ReplyDeleteI guess it was odd that Stephen, myself and my neighbor to the right all remarked on Friday morning/afternoon that there seemed to be surprisingly low foot traffic.
Of course, Saturday was almost too hectic! I was lucky to have volunteers with me, which made managing the heavy traffic possible. It was a great convention.