First off, let me thank the staff and volunteers for their time and hard work. Without you, there would be no Fanime.
Second, please keep the conversation civil and productive.
That said, I think Fanime needs major improvements in the way pre-registration badges are distributed. It took me nearly 6 hours to get my badge on Thursday night. I have some suggestions for improvements.
1. Optionally allow people to have their badges sent via mail, UPS, or FedEx, for an extra fee.
2. More people processing the people in line. I counted 10 people Thursday night. For the amount of people in line, you probably needed around 50 people doing the processing. Have multiple different pickup locations available if you can't fit all of the processors in one location. For example, maybe the South Hall, Civic Auditorium, or space at the Doubletree could have been used as additional processing locations Thursday night.
3. Spread the pre-registration pickup out over more time. If Thursday pickup were open 9 AM to 9 PM, wait time would be shorter because people would be more spread out over the day. Consider having pre-convention badge pickup over several days, such as Wednesday-Thursday, or even Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday.
4. If getting enough volunteers to hand out badges is a problem, consider hiring professional staff to handle badge distribution, at least for Thursday night.
5. Learn how other large conventions and trade shows handle badge distribution. Cons like Anime Expo and trade shows like Oracle World handle much bigger crowds than Fanime. They may have better ways of handling getting this many people registered.
6. The way the individual processing stations were working wasted a lot of time. Once someone was finished, the staff member would wave their sign and the person at the head of the line would walk over. Sometimes it took a while to notice that there was an empty station. If it takes 30 seconds to process someone and 10 seconds for the person at the line to walk over, you're wasting a quarter of your time doing nothing. This is the difference between a 4.5 hour line and a 6 hour line. This could have been vastly improved by having people waiting 2-3 deep in front of each processing station once they got to the head of the line. You would save all of the wasted time waiting for people to walk from the head of the line to the individual processing booth.
Second, please keep the conversation civil and productive.
That said, I think Fanime needs major improvements in the way pre-registration badges are distributed. It took me nearly 6 hours to get my badge on Thursday night. I have some suggestions for improvements.
1. Optionally allow people to have their badges sent via mail, UPS, or FedEx, for an extra fee.
2. More people processing the people in line. I counted 10 people Thursday night. For the amount of people in line, you probably needed around 50 people doing the processing. Have multiple different pickup locations available if you can't fit all of the processors in one location. For example, maybe the South Hall, Civic Auditorium, or space at the Doubletree could have been used as additional processing locations Thursday night.
3. Spread the pre-registration pickup out over more time. If Thursday pickup were open 9 AM to 9 PM, wait time would be shorter because people would be more spread out over the day. Consider having pre-convention badge pickup over several days, such as Wednesday-Thursday, or even Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday.
4. If getting enough volunteers to hand out badges is a problem, consider hiring professional staff to handle badge distribution, at least for Thursday night.
5. Learn how other large conventions and trade shows handle badge distribution. Cons like Anime Expo and trade shows like Oracle World handle much bigger crowds than Fanime. They may have better ways of handling getting this many people registered.
6. The way the individual processing stations were working wasted a lot of time. Once someone was finished, the staff member would wave their sign and the person at the head of the line would walk over. Sometimes it took a while to notice that there was an empty station. If it takes 30 seconds to process someone and 10 seconds for the person at the line to walk over, you're wasting a quarter of your time doing nothing. This is the difference between a 4.5 hour line and a 6 hour line. This could have been vastly improved by having people waiting 2-3 deep in front of each processing station once they got to the head of the line. You would save all of the wasted time waiting for people to walk from the head of the line to the individual processing booth.