I read your post and it got me thinking some. A number of the ideas I'm already incorporating, some of them I know wouldn't work for me, some of them I want to investigate further. I thought I'd run some ideas/questions by you.
Go to other peoples Cons and set up a table, sell t-shirts and memberships to my Con at a discount...
I'm on cons like white on rice. At least those I can go to. I've talked to Japji from Kubla extensively, as with Chris Hanrahan from Endgame and Doug from NeonCon. I don't have much of any connection to Roderick (DDC) though. Do you know him by chance? If so, would you be up for an introduction? Any other cons you've attended that you really admire and thing "Yeah, these people do it right!"?
As for pimping my wares, I'm not sure I've got the stamina to sit out a con just advertising for my own, but I'll definitely be bringing whatever swag I have and advertising while I'm there. Any ideas about how to approach people to get names of reliable folks?
Design a "cool" logo incorporating the theme of the year and put it on coffee mugs, tshirts, etc and sell them for a couple of bucks above cost.
Make my website more interactive. Throw some polls on there, have people who have bought memberships vote on what they want at the Con for programs/workshops/seminars.
Done, mostly Polls a good idea. I'll find some plugin for that in Wordpress.
If you have 2-3 programming tracks, keep the same seminar rooms for the same tracks. Don't make people relocate every other lecture...
What do you think about seminars at local cons? At Gen Con they are huge events and often packed. But most of our local seminars I've only seen sporadic attendance. Partially I think that's because it's many of the same speakers, but also I'm just not sure we have a real audience of it.
Have decent Con kibble available as around the clock as possible. In the program book print a map of walking distance food places or those that deliver to the hotel.
Food is huge. The Oakland Hilton isn't going to provide catering. They have the restaurant in the hotel and there are a dozen (literally 12) restaurants in the area that you can walk to but nothing at the con per se. You think stocking drinks, snacks, etc would be worth having another staff member manning a booth to sell them as well has getting the fridge to keep them cold, and the credit card machine (as some folks will inevitably be with out cash) to ring up sales?
Create a DVD to sell on the website to those who missed this years events.
I like this idea a lot. Need someone filming it though. Thankfully I've got lots of volunteers.
Go to other peoples Cons and set up a table, sell t-shirts and memberships to my Con at a discount...
I'm on cons like white on rice. At least those I can go to. I've talked to Japji from Kubla extensively, as with Chris Hanrahan from Endgame and Doug from NeonCon. I don't have much of any connection to Roderick (DDC) though. Do you know him by chance? If so, would you be up for an introduction? Any other cons you've attended that you really admire and thing "Yeah, these people do it right!"?
As for pimping my wares, I'm not sure I've got the stamina to sit out a con just advertising for my own, but I'll definitely be bringing whatever swag I have and advertising while I'm there. Any ideas about how to approach people to get names of reliable folks?
Design a "cool" logo incorporating the theme of the year and put it on coffee mugs, tshirts, etc and sell them for a couple of bucks above cost.
What do you think of the "wolf" and the "gamers": http://www.bigbadcon.com/
Make my website more interactive. Throw some polls on there, have people who have bought memberships vote on what they want at the Con for programs/workshops/seminars.
Done, mostly Polls a good idea. I'll find some plugin for that in Wordpress.
If you have 2-3 programming tracks, keep the same seminar rooms for the same tracks. Don't make people relocate every other lecture...
What do you think about seminars at local cons? At Gen Con they are huge events and often packed. But most of our local seminars I've only seen sporadic attendance. Partially I think that's because it's many of the same speakers, but also I'm just not sure we have a real audience of it.
Have decent Con kibble available as around the clock as possible. In the program book print a map of walking distance food places or those that deliver to the hotel.
Food is huge. The Oakland Hilton isn't going to provide catering. They have the restaurant in the hotel and there are a dozen (literally 12) restaurants in the area that you can walk to but nothing at the con per se. You think stocking drinks, snacks, etc would be worth having another staff member manning a booth to sell them as well has getting the fridge to keep them cold, and the credit card machine (as some folks will inevitably be with out cash) to ring up sales?
Create a DVD to sell on the website to those who missed this years events.
I like this idea a lot. Need someone filming it though. Thankfully I've got lots of volunteers.
Reply
Leave a comment