Wow! 80% of the ennui and angst and critical assessments regarding our favorite annual event just went POOF! tonight when Joseph (one of the folks mentioned in my last post) alerted everyone to the fact that Troy Bradley, Director of Dragon*Con On Site Preregistration, has made an announcement on the Dragon*Con LiveJournal Community tonight that Dragon*Con will indeed be putting on her Big Girl Panties* and stepping up to a barcode system for next year’s pre-registrations!! This is huge and indicative that that the people behind the convention recognize a need to step it up a notch. These folks love the convention as much as you and really do listen. Echoing some of the suggestions from the incredible wave of comments to my last post, next year’s convention should try to adopt at least 5 Best Practices from the convention industry (not just Comic-Con) to make Dragon*Con 2011 the best one EVER!! A special thanks to Troy for putting it out there!!
Of course, I *am* going to miss this sight next year…..
* a phrase I neglected to mention I’d stolen from writer Tracy Wilson from HowStuffWorks.com
Good news. Shame it took this year’s embarrassing clusterf**k of pre-reg to pull them out of the dark ages, though.
Now maybe they’ll do something about the gawkers and then look to acquire quality Guests and actual Exhibitors in the Exhibit Hall.
LOL!! We need to have another meeting and investigate the Best Practices of other conventions, not just sci-fi!
I agree. And I’ve been to many, many conventions and trade shows. Not just pop culture ones, either. The contrast between the ones that are well-organized and the ones that are not is striking. I honestly think part of the problem is that many Dragon*Con people (including both organizers and attendees) have never been to many other larger conventions that have had their proverbial shit together. Some of these solutions (like moving to barcodes for registrations) are no-brainers that have been around for YEARS.
Mind you, it’s always easier to make suggestions – harder to be the people making it happen! But once all of my September uproar dies down I’d be happy to spend an hour every so often putting together some info about Best Practices for Con. I mean, while I was standing in line to get my badge early Thursday morning the guy standing behind me worked for a company that did ticketing for conventions and he said that they handled Big Name conventions in Vegas all the time and the lines were always manageable due to their technology.
I think one of the things that does get lost in the signal to noise ratio in these sort of things is that the professional conventions which have had a snazzy bar code etc. charge professional Fees. Price out a ticket to E-3 if you haven’t or the ABA convention in New York. Now if you want to pay upwards of 300 for a four day con then all things are possible.
Yes things went wrong with the pre- registration but honestly it goes wrong at some point even for the big boys. The technology needed for barcodes and badges has come down in price range that Dragoncon can afford to offer it without jacking up the fees to a professional convention fee.
So rejoice that next year they will be trying barcodes but also get ready for all the complaints about the bar code system and why it doesn’t work for DragonCon.
I will be sad the day that they stop giving out the badges with the lovely art work for those clinical looking badges that you cab get at SDCC or NYCC
[Kath’s iPad-a-ruptus posts spliced together into one post – drew ;) ]
I have always wondered why Dragoncon has used the badge setup it has. Why not just get a generic badge where no information is required. Just one place to take money and get your badge. I don’t see a need to go to three different places just to get a badge.