Trying to pin down the exact date of when we are going to hold this con is tricky. On one hand, I'm moving the date away from what we had last year for purely selfish reasons. It fall's on my boys birthday. No big deal the past two years as he was to young to care but now he'll be three and birthdays have become serious business. On the other hand, no one date will work for everyone. This con is a largely community based event although we are going to try and get more local people involved this year, more on that later. But it's hard when you say that the con is going to be on X date and a community member from out of town says they can't make that date. I know these people and I really want them, all of them, to be there. Do I reschedule around two or three people? The answer is no, I can't. If I move the dates around for the sole reason of making sure one or two community members can make it then the new date might exclude two or three different community members. When a con has thousands of people coming to it that is no big deal but when our little con only has one hundred and twenty people show and you know almost every single one of them then it stings a little bit when you can't make all the stars and planets line up just right.
Anyway, our target date for the con is: World Wide Wing Night/Pre-Con party Thursday March 11th with the con on Friday March 12th and Saturday March 13th 2010. Note that this is our target date right now. We are not able to book the hall as of yet and the hall might be unavailable on those dates.
I verified our vendor this year. The wonderful Casey and his Gamer Ground store. He set up shop and sold all sorts of gaming books, dice and other gamer stuff (he even had old school video games!) in the last two fear the Cons. Last I talked about it with him he was closing his B&M store and going to only doing cons and events and possibly some web stuff. In this economy who can blame him? Him and his wife put up a really good display. Prices are reasonable and it his whole set up is really slick. I never met the man before FtC 1 and when I was told we were getting in a dealer I had imagined a comic book guy style fat beard sitting behind a single table with a cash box and about five or so books laying scattered about charging triple what they were worth. Luckily, I was very wrong.
Well enough, jerking off Casey. The real question is, why even have a dealer for a small con of only 120 people? The most practical reason is that people like to spend money. They come to these sorts of things and want to take something home with them. Personally, I always 'forget' to bring my dice so I have an excuse buy a set at the con. Say you just sat in on a game that you have never played before and it blew you freaking socks off. More than one person goes running from that game and buys the books off of Casey, possibly stopping for a beer on the way into the dealer room. Another reason we have a dealer is that is just looks so right. There is something about having a gaming con with all this play going on and someone right there, right in the con, selling almost everything you need, selling the games that you are playing. The hobby shop is an important part of the gaming experience for a lot of people and we want one right in the middle of the con. It also works out that this is a largely community based event, Casey can get on the forums and ask people what they want to see for sale or if they have any special orders.
Current Con Status: We have the dealer! Not much else. Next item on the agenda is for me to put together 'The List'.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Fear the Con 3 2010
Usual fair warnings, I don't know how frequent these posts are going to be and I'm not sure if I'm even going to be able to make any after this one. That's not to say I'm not going to update this at all after this post, I just don't know myself.
This is going to be the planning blog for Fear the Con. I'm Chad, one of the hosts of the podcast Fear the Boot. I'm also the guy who is heading up the Fear the Con 3 effort. I got into running Fear the Con with #2 but I helped with #1, abet very little. I got in on the very end of that one and attended one or two meetings and just helped set up some chairs. With Fear the Con 2 I ran the whole show. To much of the show in fact. It was pretty stressful for me and consumed a lot of my time. In the end it was all worth it. We had great fun, wonderful people and and some fantastic games. The whole con was declared by all a smashing success. Dan made a little speech at the end of it saying I was one who made it all happen. I got a rousing round of applause and a few cheers. That was a nice and much needed ego boost. :)
I had my 1st meeting with Dan, he's the money man, and hopeful the last face to face meeting that will take place for this FtC. We talked about some ideas of what we wanted out of FtC 3 and what worked and what didn't in 2. We also set the tentative times and talked about the secret project.... DUN! DUN! DUN! Well we have 2 secret projects planned for the con and the whole reason for keeping it on the down low is that we don't want to disappoint if we can't make them work. But don't worry, I'll reveal them if we can't get them started.
Right now I have a lot of ideas that I need to turn into action. To do this I will use my two greatest weapons: email and the Fear the Boot forums. Communication is key because the whole con lives and dies on the action of others. I need to start listing my ideas, turning them into jobs and then assign them to the different people on the con staff. I also need to start getting the ideas from rest of the staff. This can be a hard part sometimes. On one hand, you need perspective that only other people can give and they might think of some really cool stuff or have contacts that you didn't think of. On the other hand, people can have some really dumb ideas and it's a real waste of time and resources to chase everyone of those ideas down.
Current Con Status: Concepts and nothing more. Time starting pulling ideas and people together and turning that into action.
This is going to be the planning blog for Fear the Con. I'm Chad, one of the hosts of the podcast Fear the Boot. I'm also the guy who is heading up the Fear the Con 3 effort. I got into running Fear the Con with #2 but I helped with #1, abet very little. I got in on the very end of that one and attended one or two meetings and just helped set up some chairs. With Fear the Con 2 I ran the whole show. To much of the show in fact. It was pretty stressful for me and consumed a lot of my time. In the end it was all worth it. We had great fun, wonderful people and and some fantastic games. The whole con was declared by all a smashing success. Dan made a little speech at the end of it saying I was one who made it all happen. I got a rousing round of applause and a few cheers. That was a nice and much needed ego boost. :)
I had my 1st meeting with Dan, he's the money man, and hopeful the last face to face meeting that will take place for this FtC. We talked about some ideas of what we wanted out of FtC 3 and what worked and what didn't in 2. We also set the tentative times and talked about the secret project.... DUN! DUN! DUN! Well we have 2 secret projects planned for the con and the whole reason for keeping it on the down low is that we don't want to disappoint if we can't make them work. But don't worry, I'll reveal them if we can't get them started.
Right now I have a lot of ideas that I need to turn into action. To do this I will use my two greatest weapons: email and the Fear the Boot forums. Communication is key because the whole con lives and dies on the action of others. I need to start listing my ideas, turning them into jobs and then assign them to the different people on the con staff. I also need to start getting the ideas from rest of the staff. This can be a hard part sometimes. On one hand, you need perspective that only other people can give and they might think of some really cool stuff or have contacts that you didn't think of. On the other hand, people can have some really dumb ideas and it's a real waste of time and resources to chase everyone of those ideas down.
Current Con Status: Concepts and nothing more. Time starting pulling ideas and people together and turning that into action.
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