Having read the entire topic to ensure that no one else has touched on exactly what I want to touch on, I have decided to go ahead and make this post. Before I begin:
- Please understand that while I was incredibly
frustrated with my experience, I was not
angry. The two are entirely different things.
- I have been attending and working conventions for
twenty four years. That's since I was 16. You can do the math.
- What I am about to write is an attempt to
help and
improve a bad situation that will only get worse if left unchecked.
Please, Fanime Staff, understand that "it's always been done this way" does not mean that it's the
best way. If a method is broken, the proper solution is to mend it, and perhaps even replace it, not let it continue to be broken.
- I mentioned some of these things on Friday after picking up my (replacement) badges to a lady who identified herself as the "person in charge" of the registration team. I did not get her name. I want to say she was polite, courteous, and professional. It was
clear to me that she was stressed and worried about the situation of registration as a whole. It is because of the concern she showed that I am writing this.
I want to help you make next year better. I believe that you can do this, and I wouldn't give your convention my money if I didn't.
Okay. Let's get to it.
Fanime Pre-Registration Is BrokenThere is no simpler way to put it. This is not an accusation. It is a statement of fact. As well as my own experience (which I will discuss shortly), I heard repeatedly, throughout the weekend, that many artists, swap meet sellers, and the like (at least one dealer was saying similar things - I'm not aware of the state of dealer reg), were forced to wait through the pre-reg line. Artists having to go through the pre-reg line? They've got sales to make. They can't afford that wait. Swap meeters? Well, okay, they're technically con-goers, but they're also there to make money. This is a symptom of the sickness, which is:
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The method by which you distribute badges is flawed. Currently, we get into line, wait, get to a small series of booths, and give someone our ID. They then check our ID against the database, find our member number, and tell it to another person, who goes to a series of tables and proceed to hunt and peck through piles of badges to find those numbers. This takes unnecessary time and energy, and is inefficient. It adds time to the process, and requires more resources than it should.
How Do You Fix This?Many suggestions have been made. I'd like to repeat the concept of charging an additional fee (I would suggest no more than $5, or no one will use it) for pre-convention mailing. I have heard the "none of our staff wants to stuff envelopes" counter-argument, and to that I say: Bollocks. Working at a convention means you frequently have to do something you "don't want" to do, but you do anyway because you're there to help. I apologize if I sound brusque, but that answer is simply short-sighted and is not in the best interests of your attendees. I have stuffed envelopes for more conventions than I care to count, and been happy to do it, because it cut down the at-con registration lines, it made our attendees happy, and gave us more cash-flow to work with. But let's for a moment not deal with that, and deal with a method of on-site resolution.
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Assign multiple dedicated booths and sites for pre-registration. Nearly every other convention I have ever worked has had pre-reg broken out into sections, as follows:
*
Dealers - All Dealers confirm registration at the entrance to Dealers Hall.
*
Artists - All Artists confirm registration at the entrance to the Artists Hall.
*
Groups - All Group Registrations queue at the dedicated Group Registration table.
*
Everyone Else - Assign five tables/booths/kiosks/what-have-you, broken out alphabetically (A-E, F-J, K-O, P-T, U-Z)
At ALL tables, provide ALL appropriate badges (so table A-E would have all badges for that grouping), and assign two staff members. One staffer checks registration details, the other sorts and slip-covers the attendee's badge(s), then hands them their packet. If and when one table runs out of badges to hand out, those staffers move to the table with the most registrations remaining to disburse. This method has been implemented at nearly every convention I have worked at, and it has worked marvelously. Dealers get their registrations quickly, Artists get right in to set up their tables, and everyone's happy.
I realize this will require a complete reworking of how you're doing things now. It will require 16 staff members to pull off properly. But it will cut time-in-line, frustration, and your overall pre-reg difficulties in half, if not more.
Further registration thoughts: *Confusion on where badges were to be picked up* - When I finally got to the head of the line, I found out that my badges had been shipped to
Clockwork Alchemy. This was especially confusing because my registration confirmation e-mail (received on
May 22) instructed me to pick up my badges at Fanime itself. When I got to the head of the Fanime pre-reg line, I was met with confusion by the staff and roughly ten minutes of waiting while the issue was sorted out. The
official Fanime communication told me to pick my badges up at Fanime, and apparently my badges were shipped to the sister-convention, and no one could explain why. I would later find out from the various con-goers I spoke to throughout the weekend that this was more common than I'd like to have thought. I was able to hop a shuttle bus and grab my real badges (And thank you to the reg staff for getting me some replacements - I dutifully left those at the
CA reg desk, so as not to abuse the system) in roughly 20 minutes once the issue was discovered, but it shouldn't have happened in the first place.
*On-Site registration is unnecessarily complex and tedious* - People registering on-site should have the option of getting a single-day wristband for a single-day price. Simple, quick, painless. Use a different color for different days to avoid people gaming the system. Attendees wishing to attend for more than one day can therefore be funneled into a separate line in which they can provide further personal details (name, fan-name, etc). One-day attendees should be able to sign up for convention-related communications at their discretion. It should not be mandatory. Provide the one-day con-goers with a simple pay-and-play solution, and you'll make many people very happy.
*Minors need to be clearly marked as such* - I realize that Fanime is a dry convention, but frankly, I have seen more intoxicated minors in the past two years than I care to think about. I have attended and worked several conventions where "Minor Markers" were placed onto badges or wristbands so as to be clearly visible and unable to be removed without destroying or damaging the badge. These markers assist staff in keeping an eye on attendees and helping keep the convention out of any legal entanglements. There are other advantages to these markers, which should be clear to anyone with a few moments of thought.
Non-Registration thoughts: *Please send out progress reports* - The only reason I knew about Clockwork Alchemy was because I followed a link on your home page. The only reason I knew about
any of the events I attended was because of those same links. If Fanime had a regular progress report sent out via e-mail (Again, I do not know why you buck the trend that so many other conventions follow), containing information on events, guests, schedule changes, and the like, you'd see event attendance go up, you'd have happier attendees and a greater participation rate.
*Please Patrol the floors more frequently, and do something about traffic blockages* - More than once, the upper concourse between the Artists Alley, Dealers Entrance, and Gaming/Maid Cafe areas was blocked off by people having impromptu dance-battles, DJ sessions, or other general tomfoolery. These create fire hazards and safety code violations, and can get Fanime some serious guff from the authorities. Put simply, they need to be stopped - or at least corralled into their own, more open and accessible, areas. I'm not against people having fun - I go to conventions to have fun! - but when people are unable to safely and freely move between function rooms because the only space to do so is a ten-foot wide partition of the concourse, because the other thirty feet are blocked off by a throng of people watching a dance battle... something is very wrong.
*Open both doors for Dealers and Gaming to all traffic* - The excuse I hear every Fanime as to why the doors are single-direction traffic only is that it's a "Fire Code" issue. This is simply not true. If it is, then the San Jose Fire Code has changed since the last convention I worked in the McEnery Convention Center - and further, it changes depending on whether or not Fanime is at the site. Honestly, the only reason to have the one-way doors is traffic control, and we all can see this. Traffic control is fine, but please, call it what it is, and don't blame the civic codes. However, having both doors to the Artists Alley bidirectional this year not only reduced congestion, but it enabled people with large or difficult costumes to more easily get in to the function room without added walking distance (as has been mentioned before).
*Hire security staff that are actually security trained* - I don't know if you do currently, but please hire people for security that actually have their valid, current guard cards. You will be happy you did, and you will have far fewer "communication issues" with your security staff.
The Good StuffI'm not all gloom and doom (although I hope my criticism is seen as constructive!). I particularly enjoyed the panels I got to (the cosplay armor panel especially), and I was glad to see the roving info desk out and about. Artists Alley was pretty fabulous, and although Dealers was exceptionally muggy and humid (what was up with that?), it was full of awesome. I'm especially grateful for the snack bar being open in Dealers, as it kept me on my feet for quite some time when I needed it.
The staff at Info Desk, and the staffers in the Dealers and Artists were very courteous and polite, and pretty much every time I needed help, there was someone nearby to point me in the right direction.
Clockwork Alchemy needed more promotion, but was fun and I was quite pleased with it as a freshman effort. I'd like to see it return.
That's about all I have to say. I hope it's been useful.
Thank you.
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Topic: FanimeCon 2012 Feedback (Read 104760 times)