[Deptheads] Child Care at the Convention

[Victor B]

Talking about moving the con already is like dating another person "just in case" days before your wedding.

1. A family oriented convention does not mean you are just trying to get in more kids.
2. Kids under 13 are not wandering outside the hotel nomatter where it is located. Kids aren't running around at night alone
outside disneyland 
3. Hotel has to be close to an airport. 
Guests, staff, volunteers, exhibitors, dealers, attendees and game companies that demo or run tourneys need to have easy access to and from airport without
renting a car. Also as janice mentioned flight variety has to be available.
4. Convention cannot increase in cost to run and cost to attend drastically. 
5. Convention cannot lose it's loyal core of regulars.
6. Not counting staff---families come for the day and leave or stay at hotel for weekend and do not venture from it. Either way the neighborhood does not
prevent a family from attending. I seen families outside the old forum for laker games in hell neighborhoods. The event trumps the neighborhood. If
Programming attracts people they will come. Hollywood sucks at night but people stil lshow up.
7. Juggle numbers, get feedback, and research before decisions are made. There will be people picked up changing locales and there will be people lost.
Gencon socal didn't just fail because of pricing (as most here know) In theory the grass looks greener on the other side.

I support whatever is best for the convention. Personally I spend alot nomatter where it is so I am not biased.
Just make sure "if" we move it that it stays put . We need to establish "tradition" and familiarity again.

Vic


----- Original Message ----
From: Janice Sellers <janicemsj at gmail.com>
To: deptheads at strategicon.net
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 5:22:29 PM
Subject: Re: [Deptheads] Child Care at the Convention

One of the things to think about in terms of moving the convention
away from the LAX area is that it could become more expensive to
brings guests in, as LAX tends to have fairly good flight pricing
overall and better availability.  If we go to a smaller airport, the
best pricing is usually restricted to one airline (e.g., JetBlue at
Long Beach, Southwest at Ontario), with reduced flight options.  I'm
not saying this should override other considerations, just mentioning
it as a factor to consider.

As for the area being family-friendly, as Sarah mentioned, for the
most part people come to the hotel and stay there, because that's
where the event is that they've come to attend.  If we were able to
effectively add more family-type options at the convention itself, it
may not be as much of a problem that the area isn't as
family-friendly, as the entire family would be interested in the event
at the hotel.

As I mentioned earlier, a convention I used to attend in Boston had an
excellent children's activity track.  I talked with somebody about the
possibility of doing something similar, though smaller in scale, at
the Strategicon conventions.  At this point I don't remember if it was
Rocky or Eric (sorry, it was a while ago, and I have too much on my
mind right now).  As I also mentioned, it took lots of volunteers to
make it work, because it does take extra effort to coordinate
children.  I even had one of my regular volunteers express interest in
helping with the children's track if we get one going.  But we'll
definitely need more than the one person for it be effective.

Janice
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