Hama-con Saturday Review
Here are my thoughts on Hama-con 4. I had some expectations going it this being that it is year four that a lot of the lessons learned from previous years should have led to this year being pretty good because they are no longer a "new" con. Lets face it year 1 a con is trying find it's way. Year 2 you fix the failings of year 1. Year 3 you do tweaks from the previous year. Therefore year 4 it should be be smooth sailing ahead. So my expectation were of a good con experience. I decided to take my preschool age daughter with me because it is the only local anime con in our area. I thought she would have a good time. A friend of mine also brought along her 10 year old child as well. We treated the day as Mother/Daughter Geek Outing. The overall feel was lackdasical. Throughout the day everyone mulled around in a daze. Pretty much everyone was having "hang out at the mall syndrome." I overhead several attendees say they were bored. An was seen attendee riding up and down the elevator of the con hotel for several hours because she was bored and found that activity more entertaining the convention events. This is not good thing.
Con site
It was set up in the VBC south hall. They had so much space this year. So much in fact it seems like they did not know what to do with it. The layout is very awkward. It seems the center piece of the con site was the "Brawl" area. My guess was it was place prominently there to draw maximum attention from everywhere. For me it felt as if this was very distracting from everything else going around. In my opinion most attendees did not see to care about it. The the left of the convention space were the hard walled rooms. The dealers room as in the middle of the rooms. This led to mess depending n the time of day because the line leading to the dealers room cut off the flow of foot traffic to the artists alley an other panel room. Either you cut through the line or walk around the Brawl area. Perhaps and room off line queue area would have been helpful. The remainder of the convention space was in a large convention spaced portioned off with curtain partitions or rope. You had to walk around the brawl space to get to the various attractions.
I do appreciate that there was a parents rest area. It was a nice touch; however, putting it next to the gaming area was not a wise idea. I'm sure that rest and relaxation area was all kinds of awesome with the sounds coming through the curtain partition from the gaming area. Also Artist all was located along the back wall of the convention space. It was portioned off with curtain partitions. It had the literal feel of an alley due the way it was situated. Truly awkward. I do not mean this in a good way. Random suggestion somewhat related: give guardian/parent escorts their own unique badges. I think this will be beneficial to staffers that they know that they are dealing with an attendees parent who is more than likely paying for that child's badge. Also, giving them there own special designation is nice because you can tell if someone is rightfully sitting in that parent's lounge.
Panels and Events
As I mentioned I only attended on Saturday. I went to three panels with my. 1 of the 3 was ran well. It was the good folks over at Cosfluff. It was well organized. The My Little Pony theme panel/event was quite haphazard and seemed to be poorly organized. Please do not have a co-host for a panel that is not a fan of the series. It is insulting to die hard fans (I am not so it did not offend me like it did some others I know). The co panelist actually said it out loud. Then finally there is the Pokemon panel. I was peeved due to the fact that the panelist ignored a child that wanted to ask a question. The child climbed up on to her chair and waved her arms around to get his attention. Other members in the audience had to yell at him to make him acknowledge her. It was not hard to notice her considering she was wearing a pastel wig. She stood out. Pokemon is an all ages fandom. To my knowledge I believe Hama-con still considers itself a family convention the panelist needs to be more child friendly and able to handle children better. A side rant: if there is a parent panel please do not let it be ran by a non parent. It is insulting to other parents. Find subject matter experts on the subject. I know for a fact there are parents and guardians on that staff.
Staff and information
Brief your staff well. Especially the information people. How can they give info without not know basic facts. Also touching back on the lay out of the con space and large map at the info table would be useful. There were accounts by other attendees that the staff was queried for information and failed to be able to get answers. I ended up missing cosplay pre judging because the information staff did not know the location of it. Granted I purposely showed up close to the end of judging because I had a child entry for her personal comfort and convenience is why this occurred (and smart parenting). Suggestions: add a dry erase board to write down info on changes to events. Also clearly identify your staff with an official staff t-shirt. Badges are nice and all but a t-shirt stands out more. Many cons do this. Sure money is an issue as well but the importance of this outweighs the expense in my opinion.
Forms, papers, pamphlets and more. Please post all of your forms on your website prior to the con. This means registration forms, contest entry forms, maps, programs and such. This is standard for most conventions. Especially for cons past their 3rd year. Being a newb con is not excuse for this. During year 1 they did this so there is no excuse for this at all. I found an electronic version of the program was published on a staffers twitter account and FB page. Yay for the info but you know it would super awesome if you put it on official site as well. It was paramount that program guide be posted to the website because this convention does not have a convention app. This only makes it appear that the con staff is disorganized. This is nothing new or foreign because during their first year most if not all of the aforementioned information was available on the website. They need to to think of everything is being looked at by a non-geek Joe Schmo. All information needs to be primarily posted on the official website. That is your flag ship and your legitimate official face to the world. Not your Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr accounts. Social media should be used an enhancement to your website. Not the number source for information. As a parent if my child is going to ask me about a convention I will most definitely by default to a website first. If you are not going to utilize your website properly why even have it at all. As of this very moment at after 1PM on Sunday afternoon the con program guide was still not posted to the conventions website.
In conclusion Hamacon 4 (Saturday) was just OK. There was an attempt to make it special by have the Brawl event all weekend but it just fell flat. Most attendees seemed to treat it as one big hangout session because of the complaints of boredom. Some in fact were mentioning forgoing Hama-con next year to attend other conventions around the same time of the year. As any convention will say as they read their reviews and feedback will get defense by stating their events and staffing are built on the backs of volunteers who freely give their time. Attendees know and appreciate this. However, staff must also read every single review, every single tweet, message and such to gather all feedback positive and negative. Take all of that information and fix what you can to be more successful in the following year. I know in fact I have friends on the con staff were offended or irked at some of my Facebook posts in the final days leading up to the convention. I like to think of it this way, you would rather hear it from a friend than a stranger first and fix the fail before the entire general public notices something amiss then complains.
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