Dates and Dealers

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'.