More on that con
Apr. 4th, 2013 08:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsAfter the first rush of "OW!" and the flurry to catch up on what was *really* going on at the convention, some welcome news is rattling loose.
1) I have been reassured by the person running the "sold out" event that there will be tickets at the door. What has sold out is apparently not seats themselves, but attendee goodie bags. Which, yeah, I still would have gone for, but there's no longer the jr-high vibe of "We're throwing a party and you're not invited" that I was reacting to.
2) I squeaked in under the wire to register for another event, which is REALLY lucky, considering that the way to get in was to check the con tumblr which sent you to *another* tumblr that had the clock ticking down. (The people running this one have a fair amount of event experience and not only have an announcement but a timeline and a FAQ that covers a lot of territory; the con runners really need to talk to them about thinking things through in my opinion.)
Most importantly,
3) I've figured out a way to frame the feedback in a manner that doesn't boil down to "You hurt my fee-fees!" True, but subjective. On the other hand, it's perfectly objective and legitimate to point out that the convention needs to present a consistent message across public media, and has not, specifically:
- The schedule grid - a pdf downloadable from the web page - mentions event II but does not mention that it requires pre-registration with a third party
- The web page is still telling attendees how to sign up at a hotel that the tumblr says is sold out.
It's not that tumblr was the wrong choice (without being on tumblr myself I can read the convention stream and it turns out that Pulse will read a tumblr feed), it's that the concom assumed that members were reading the tumblr feed and thus did not present a consistent message. And the cure for that is pretty darn simple, actually - next time, have a big banner on the web page saying "for up to the minute information, see our tumblr at (clickable address)."
That strips all emotion out of the feedback, and puts it where it can be handled without me (or them) getting defensive: definition of problem, illustration of issues, no-sweat solution.
I've got some other feedback I want to give them - I think that there are some ideas they might want to steal from other conventions (such as the MediaWest panel suggestion/selection process). But those are "would likes" whereas the inconsistent communication is a MUST FIX.
1) I have been reassured by the person running the "sold out" event that there will be tickets at the door. What has sold out is apparently not seats themselves, but attendee goodie bags. Which, yeah, I still would have gone for, but there's no longer the jr-high vibe of "We're throwing a party and you're not invited" that I was reacting to.
2) I squeaked in under the wire to register for another event, which is REALLY lucky, considering that the way to get in was to check the con tumblr which sent you to *another* tumblr that had the clock ticking down. (The people running this one have a fair amount of event experience and not only have an announcement but a timeline and a FAQ that covers a lot of territory; the con runners really need to talk to them about thinking things through in my opinion.)
Most importantly,
3) I've figured out a way to frame the feedback in a manner that doesn't boil down to "You hurt my fee-fees!" True, but subjective. On the other hand, it's perfectly objective and legitimate to point out that the convention needs to present a consistent message across public media, and has not, specifically:
- The schedule grid - a pdf downloadable from the web page - mentions event II but does not mention that it requires pre-registration with a third party
- The web page is still telling attendees how to sign up at a hotel that the tumblr says is sold out.
It's not that tumblr was the wrong choice (without being on tumblr myself I can read the convention stream and it turns out that Pulse will read a tumblr feed), it's that the concom assumed that members were reading the tumblr feed and thus did not present a consistent message. And the cure for that is pretty darn simple, actually - next time, have a big banner on the web page saying "for up to the minute information, see our tumblr at (clickable address)."
That strips all emotion out of the feedback, and puts it where it can be handled without me (or them) getting defensive: definition of problem, illustration of issues, no-sweat solution.
I've got some other feedback I want to give them - I think that there are some ideas they might want to steal from other conventions (such as the MediaWest panel suggestion/selection process). But those are "would likes" whereas the inconsistent communication is a MUST FIX.
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Date: 2013-04-04 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-04 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-04 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-04 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-04-04 08:21 pm (UTC)And Tumblr? The most useless medium for communicating ANYTHING that I can think of. It's great if you want to look at a single post, but trying to follow one from the "Home" page? Pathetic -- it's a big non-linear ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey "stuff". Facebook I could see. Twitter I could see. Tumblr is just DUMB.
(I actually do have a Tumblr account. It took me three hours to set up, and I had to ask for help at every stage of the process, and I have never yet been able to figure out how to DO anything with it. Tumblr has been described to me as "Twitter for visually-oriented people", but I can figure out what's going on with Twitter, so that description seems at best incomplete.)
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Date: 2013-04-04 09:15 pm (UTC)There is a con Facebook. Which is separate from the Facebook for the sold-out event. The con Facebook is all about raffles and not so much the details.
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Date: 2013-04-06 03:42 pm (UTC)I don't know how tumblr works; am not on tumblr. So am wondering how the committee decided it was a good idea.
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Date: 2013-04-06 10:06 pm (UTC)I think that both tumblr (and the cap) came from their inexperience with both running conventions and, frankly, *going* to conventions. Or they'd know that they'd get slammed with a lot of last-minute membership requests as people realized that time and money were free.
As for tumblr - I'm pretty convinced that they thought it was a good idea because it is the "in" blogging site at the moment and that because they got a lot of feedback there, they didn't realize just how much of the rest of their membership was being cut out. They seem to have simply assumed that everyone was on tumblr - and more than that, reading theirs. (As I have found out that someone who is on tumblr didn't KNOW about theirs, and thus was also cut out of all the info they had there.)
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Date: 2013-04-07 12:30 am (UTC)They will also, supposedly, be holding a few memberships for those people who are coming at the door. Which I find hard to reconcile with the idea that they are capping the attendance.
I'm of the opinion (with nothing concrete to back it up, mind) that they were so enthusiastic about the idea of running this con that they didn't consult anyone who may have already run a convention before. And believe me, there are plenty of those around here.
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Date: 2013-04-07 11:50 am (UTC)Methinks they may not know what the cap is, lest they get caught up in legal issues like not honoring a printed flyer, which would technically be fraud.
And yeah, it's REALLY obvious that they have not talked with experienced conrunners. My guess, at this point, is that they thought Holmes was different than the SF & anime crowds. Not so much when it comes to con running - the mechanics remain the same.
no subject
Date: 2013-04-07 11:52 am (UTC)