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Well, it's over. I've had my 16-hour post-convention sleep and a shower. I'm still exhausted, probably as much because I need to be fed as for any other reason at this point.
Pros:
We broke the three-digit badge barrier (not including staff) Friday Night! We broke 200 by sunset Saturday. These based on the periodic updates I was getting throughout the convention; I haven't seen a final tally. Friday Night events were well-attended as best I could see, and the con didn't appear to have the usual giant sucking sound when a large LARP started on Friday. The Tabletop room was pretty packed throughout the run of Shattered Dimensions, and I'm pretty sure the game itself filled as well. Late-late-night gaming count was a little lower than last year, but the room pretty constantly had a solid number of games going other than that.
The convention didn't get off to as late a start as usual. We had a wonderful turnout of redshirts to help with setup, and most of the ongoing convention stuff was operational, if not in full form, by 5pm. Since people were showing up that early (see above), this was great; the convention got off on a good foot.
The Eye of Argon! We're definitely repeating this event, and we've had some ideas about how we can refine it to make it even more fun.
Operation: Red Door. "Aliens: They're just like us, only different!"
Getting a couple hours of filking in. Maybe a couple filkers will take this as encouragement to come up next year. *grin*
Breakdown went really smoothly. Again, the redshirts were amazing, by the time we got out of the bitch session (which ran later than it should have), they'd gotten almost everything packed up, there were just a couple trips of carrying stuff to the NSO room and some final cleanup left to do. Thank you so much!
Everybody I talked to, be they demonstrator, vendor, attendee, staff, or what, really enjoyed the weekend!
Good alum attendance. I think we hit or broke 10. I'm tempted to try to sneak an NSO reunion dinner into the schedule next year.
For some reason, I feel like we've crossed some invisible threshold. Last year I felt as though we'd crossed some invisible line into the zone where we were going to start some serious growth unless we totally messed things up. This year, I feel the convention has truly arrived, and I can remove that bit of hesitation from my voice when I try to encourage people to come, because I know they'll have a good time.
Got home to an email from one of "my" Guests thanking me for the good time.
Cons:
Didn't get as much sleep as I'd hoped to. We've already talked about how ops can be planned slightly better so people don't lose as much sleep.
The coffee problem from last year wasn't solved, although we were at least able to provide overnight tea (and hot cocoa Friday).
A couple of rooms were locked on us. This was annoying, but not catastrophic.
We had to cancel more events than I would have liked (I would have liked zero, so that's not surprising), including one of my pet projects. Again, not catastrophic, as we still had a pretty solid schedule of events, many of which were well-attended.
My pet project panel derailed off-topic, and didn't go as well as I might have hoped. I still hope to have it repeated next year, but I don't think I got the excitement from the participants for it that I'd hoped for.
A number of people complained about the date being inconvenient. There still really isn't anything we can do about it.
A number of people I'd been really hoping to see didn't make it.
Pros:
We broke the three-digit badge barrier (not including staff) Friday Night! We broke 200 by sunset Saturday. These based on the periodic updates I was getting throughout the convention; I haven't seen a final tally. Friday Night events were well-attended as best I could see, and the con didn't appear to have the usual giant sucking sound when a large LARP started on Friday. The Tabletop room was pretty packed throughout the run of Shattered Dimensions, and I'm pretty sure the game itself filled as well. Late-late-night gaming count was a little lower than last year, but the room pretty constantly had a solid number of games going other than that.
The convention didn't get off to as late a start as usual. We had a wonderful turnout of redshirts to help with setup, and most of the ongoing convention stuff was operational, if not in full form, by 5pm. Since people were showing up that early (see above), this was great; the convention got off on a good foot.
The Eye of Argon! We're definitely repeating this event, and we've had some ideas about how we can refine it to make it even more fun.
Operation: Red Door. "Aliens: They're just like us, only different!"
Getting a couple hours of filking in. Maybe a couple filkers will take this as encouragement to come up next year. *grin*
Breakdown went really smoothly. Again, the redshirts were amazing, by the time we got out of the bitch session (which ran later than it should have), they'd gotten almost everything packed up, there were just a couple trips of carrying stuff to the NSO room and some final cleanup left to do. Thank you so much!
Everybody I talked to, be they demonstrator, vendor, attendee, staff, or what, really enjoyed the weekend!
Good alum attendance. I think we hit or broke 10. I'm tempted to try to sneak an NSO reunion dinner into the schedule next year.
For some reason, I feel like we've crossed some invisible threshold. Last year I felt as though we'd crossed some invisible line into the zone where we were going to start some serious growth unless we totally messed things up. This year, I feel the convention has truly arrived, and I can remove that bit of hesitation from my voice when I try to encourage people to come, because I know they'll have a good time.
Got home to an email from one of "my" Guests thanking me for the good time.
Cons:
Didn't get as much sleep as I'd hoped to. We've already talked about how ops can be planned slightly better so people don't lose as much sleep.
The coffee problem from last year wasn't solved, although we were at least able to provide overnight tea (and hot cocoa Friday).
A couple of rooms were locked on us. This was annoying, but not catastrophic.
We had to cancel more events than I would have liked (I would have liked zero, so that's not surprising), including one of my pet projects. Again, not catastrophic, as we still had a pretty solid schedule of events, many of which were well-attended.
My pet project panel derailed off-topic, and didn't go as well as I might have hoped. I still hope to have it repeated next year, but I don't think I got the excitement from the participants for it that I'd hoped for.
A number of people complained about the date being inconvenient. There still really isn't anything we can do about it.
A number of people I'd been really hoping to see didn't make it.
no subject
Re: Operation: Red Door – "The message is – Americans are better than aliens!" Also, Person 1: "Sir, are you an alien?" Person 2 (who has been speaking in a British accent since about a half hour ago, and is totally from America) : "Of course. I immigrated from Britain years ago. Everybody knows that!"
Comment the second: An NSO reunion dinner would be totally awesome. It would involve scheduling around it, though, so that people didn't have other things they really wanted to attend, which is a big potential problem for such a thing.
no subject
Maybe slot it starting at 1700, to allow for travel time. A 3-hour block would give half an hour for travel and error on either end, and still two hours for a leisurely dinner.
Or this might get too big really quickly, and alums should schedule their own. But I think it would be nice.
no subject