BRAINSTORMING for CharCon 2010

[Charlie Davis]

Hi to our regulars and our lurkers,

I started a BRAINSTORMING thread last year ( Brainstorming for CharCon 09 ) and we had lots of ideas so I am doing it again for this year. You should go back and read last year's ideas before posting here because the staff will re-read them also.

This is for any of you non-staffers that have some suggestions for ways to improve CharCon for the future. (Staff members have their own forum and meet regularly to discuss these things.)

Rules
1. Don't be negative, however if you didn't like something, you can tell us.
2. Give suggestions for improvement. These can be things like the layout of the convention, non-game related activities, ideas for guests of honor, suggestions for games, things you have seen at other conventions, etc.
3. There is no need to debate individual ideas in this forum, though contradictory ideas are fine.

Understand that money, time, and labor are all in short supply for CharCon. If you have a good idea, we might recruit you to help us make it work. We want you to have the best gaming experience that we can give you so let's hear what you think.

The CharCon staff will listen to all of the suggestions and then make decisions based on what we think is best for the overall convention.

[Charlie Davis]

Copied from another forum.

Although possibly impossible to shuffle, I'd like to see the flea market not at the same time as some of the finals. I know it's unlikely to get to do everything you want at a con, but outside of a brisk run though a half set up market, I wasn't able to look at all because I was gaming at final tables.

To be honest, I don't know what a good solution to his problem is. You don't want to anger the dealers by trying to run the flea market the entire con, but opening the flea market on Saturday would allow a lot more people to take part. I know I try to buy something from a dealer every year; even when I know the prices are MSRP which is kinda crazy for a con. I have plenty of "stuff" I'd love to spread to others for a small fee, but the current time for the market has me choosing between gaming or selling...

Ok, I'm rambling now. Still, I'd love to see the flea market expand.

[Charlie Davis]

Movie room idea from another forum

Only been to a few small conventions.
Well in particular I like to try new things, and meet fun people. I also like winning prizes. I also like to see a wide variety of differnt things going on at a time as well as something that people can default to like a movie room. sometimes you just need to sit down and relax, but without the hassle of leaving...

[herogamer-parkersburg]

How about a full audience participation showing of the Rocky Horror picture show?
http://www.rockyhorror.com/participation/

[DharmaOne]

Another whiteboard so gamers can list games they are going to play (at a later time) to help drum up other players.

Or where people can list games they'd like to play to see if they can find other players.

-fitz

[artempress]

Another whiteboard so gamers can list games they are going to play (at a later time) to help drum up other players.

Or where people can list games they'd like to play to see if they can find other players.

-fitz

They had something similar this past year with the big screen tv doing a slideshow, but I can see how adding a large white board out in the middle of the floor for folks to add or subtract to would be, while unofficial, helpful for last minute additions.

[Bryan Stewart]

Online information from vendors, and a list of vendors in general. I did alot of my shopping before the con and showed up with the right ammout of cash to buy stuff I wanted, hell ZBP took requests and so I got my manbag (Its not a purse dammit, its a zombie survival kit bag) and a rocking bullet necklace. I checked out Billly Tacketts stuff online and luckly he had the print I wanted. And the year before I got my big set of dice because the dice man was there.

It gives people an Idea of whats going to be there and how much cash to bring. And for us Anal O.C.D. people it helps

[Brent_Doughty]

The Con hall felt very stretched this year. The back section felt needlessly dark (maybe there was a reason) and uninviting. The LARPers have been pushed back to the furtherest corner of the convention now; I mean, I know they're loud, but they felt very hidden. This could have been by their own request, so not a complaint, just an observation.

I'd love to have "more, more, more!" of everything, but knowing that's not realistic, let me hit on the highlights that I feel could benefit the Con with the smallest amount of effort.

1) Live Auction - When I went to GenCon, I spent at least three hours at a live auction (from 11pm to 2am-ish) and loved it. Allow dealers and flea market participants to submit items up to Saturday that go on a display table with that items number. Sunday evening, run the auction. Bidders pay $1 for a number that registers them to bid. You would need three people running the auction: An auctioneer, a "runner" moving items from the display table, up to auction, and finally to the sold area (the runner also tags sold items with the amount due and the bid number of the winner), and a checkout person to register new bidders and finalize all the purchases. Three ways to charge: As an added bonus to dealers and flea market dealers allow them X amount of auction items, a percentage of the final bid price per item, or a flat fee per item (sold or not sold to reduce worthless auction items).

This could help CharCon a couple ways... If you can get some rarer items up for auction, the community will see those items and want to be around for the auction. Bargain hunters will come back in hopes of a good deal. Auctions, overall, interest some people. All this equals more foot traffic on Sunday, which equates to more three-day passes. The upfront cost to CharCon is almost nothing.

2) Con-Wide Hunt Event - This one is a bit more restricted due to CharCon's size, but I still think there's enough going on to make it work. This event would cost $1 (or other reasonable amount) and the participant gets a card and a list of clues. Each clue leads to either an event, a person, or station. All the answers to the clues should be based on landmarks of the area the person is in (AKA a clue leading to a giant foam 20 sided die) or from hand outs given at the con. After the person goes around and collects each stamp (an actual ink stamp on the card would be the cheapest solution) from all the locations, they would return to the main desk to turn the card back in for a reward -- I'd suggest something with the CharCon name exclusive to the event and some raffle tickets.

Again, this is a cheap event that dealers seem to love at GenCon. It brought people to their booth that wouldn't normally come around. It also points out long running events and games that gets the Hunt participant excited for next year to take part in. Like I stated before, I never ventured back into the dark part of the hall last year because I never felt compelled to do so. What if there was something back there I could have told my friend about that would have gotten him excited to come next year? It's cheap, it's easy, and it makes a couple of bucks to boot.

3) On-line Cams - This one is all about publicity. I saw plenty of laptops at CharCon this year, but no one broadcasting anything to the web. I'm not saying put on a big production, but if you have even basic web access and a $20 webcam, you point it to a busy part of the con floor and slap the URL into some gaming forums. With websites like justin.tv and ustream.tv, streaming could not be easier.

So there ya go. Three quick suggestions I think would cause an impact with minimum effort. Hope this, if nothing else, gets the creative wheels moving!

[Brent_Doughty]

Something else to consider, maybe as something less formally attached to Charcon, but still enough to mention in this thread, is a Thursday night semi-formal dinner at one of the local restaurants.

A "pay-for-yourself" gathering to talk about the upcoming con and generate a buzz for the weekend ahead. Not to continually bring up on GenCon, but Mayfair Games gathered us all for a nice sit down dinner the night before the tournament as part of the festivities. Some key figure heads gave little speeches about the event and we all just socialized with each other for a couple hours. If I had to pick a highlight of the entire trip, this dinner would be it. I met interesting people, had a good meal, and got in the mood for gaming. It made me want to be more apart of the moment.

Maybe an open invitation to everyone would be a bit much and hand written invitations to a select few might be a bit too elite, but what about making the invitation part of pre-registration? A set amount of time before the event, send an e-mail out to everyone who has pre-registered with a time, date, and location of the CharCon Semi-Formal dinner. No need to bring anything except yourself and money for the meal. Pick a restaurant that will allow you to occupy a room for free and offers a buffet-style service (Golden Corral for example). This way, everyone pays when they come in and you should have an area large enough to hold any number of people who show up.

The only part CharCon would be out is making sure enough "heads" of CharCon showed up and was willing to say a few words. They don't have to be huge speeches, just something about the history, the upcoming event, and how happy you are to see everyone. This is also free PR for everyone within ear shot and with the event taking place the next day, it might generate some foot traffic.

[Travis Reynolds]

There are certainly a lot of good suggestions here. I will try to comment on all of them. If I miss one, just poke me and say so.

-Suggested changes to the Flea Market- Brent made some good suggestions, but as he talked through it, he also found some of the problems. When to have it? How long should it be? No matter when we locate it, it is going to cover up some event. Yes, we can try to avoid it covering some finals and look for a better time, but as mentioned we also try to delay it so as to have minimal impact to our vendors. Making it longer is certainly an option, but making it to long will cause other folks to decide if they want to commit that much time.

I certainly think that the Flea Market was a success and fully expect it to become a regularly annual event. We will continue to fine tune it and try to get it right.

-Movie Room, RHPS Showing, etc.- The idea of a movie room is certainly one we have heard before and one we will entertain again this year. Part of it boils down to this. In order to really have an effective movie room, it needs to be a separate isolated room (movies in the main hall are hard to watch and a distraction to games). So far, every year we have contained all of our events to one main hall, which has served our purposes very well. We are however discussing the idea of moving some things into different rooms for next year, which has pro's & cons. If we do this, then the movie room becomes a possibility. In end, we recognize that this is something we should add and eventually will add, but we can only grow so much at a time and anything we add is going to have a price. As we add costs, we also have to find ways to generate funds to counter those costs (i.e. Paying 'Da Billz), which we of course always hope is from added attendance.

-Online Vendor Information- On our end, we can certainly do a better job of communicating who is going to be attending ahead of time (or at least who has committed to attend) and perhaps include a brief description of what they carry. Anything beyond this is going to be on the vendors themselves, who are of course encouraged to be part of our forums. We can try to provide contact information for each of them as well, which makes it possible for you to contact them.

-Back of the hall being dark and uninviting- You do know that the RISING event is a zombie thing right? Yes, this was pretty much by design, as it is the only place in that big hall that suits their needs and removes them from the main gaming area. RPG"s were also back there, which works out fairly well, but we still have a lot of noise, which I personally think detracts from RPG's. I mentioned above that we are discussing moving some things out of the main hall and into smaller rooms just for those events. Well, this is the proverbial hitting of the nail on the head. For the investment we make in getting that back hall, we are looking into getting separate rooms that would hold those events and would be more appropriate for them. I would guess that if we do this, the RISING room will be even more dark and uninviting. RPG's however will probably have a quieter environment that will glow the bright colors of Cheetos and Mt Dew.

-Live Auction- I would love to have a Live Auction. I think it adds excitement to the show and is a neat element. Plus it gives me the chance to use my professionally trained auctioneer skillz (this is totally not true). The problem is with scheduling. When we first started up, this was one of our options instead of the Raffle. Now that we have grown some, we might be able to find a good time slot to hold a live auction. We will just have to work through the logistics of accepting items, what to auction and how to go about doing it. We will look into it for this year.

-Scavenger Hunt/Puzzle Event, etc- We actually sort of did this last year or the year before. It was for Sunday Family Day and meant for the kids, but it is something we have thought about. We basically asked the vendors to provide some questions or made some up on our own and the kids had to find all the answers to win a prize. It could be expanded to be open to everyone and would be a fun event I think. We are always looking for people who want to organize stuff like this. We can readily provide support for it, we just don't always have the manpower to do it on our own.

-On-line webcams- We actually discussed this idea before this last show. We think it is a great idea, the problem is in the logistics. We have to have an internet connection in order to broadcast out and the Civic Center wants us to pay them in order to use theirs, which thus far has not been a worthwhile expense for us. If we can find a way to make it happen, I think it is great. There is even a website for broadcasting your own live TV (can't recall what it is at the moment...).

-Pre-Show Dinner- I think this is a fantastic idea. I really like the idea of opening it to anyone who pre-registered. The real trick is going to be planning it so that any of the actual CharCon Staff can attend. Thursday night is so insanely busy for all of us that it would be hard for me to even begin explaining it. Still, a great idea and one that we will definitely follow up on.


I think that covers it. Keep em coming!

TR