[Deptheads] John Paiva's after action report

[Eric M. Aldrich I]

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 08:35:01PM -0800, Patrick Havert wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> If we split the ballroom East-West, Boardgames loses space.  Last con we 
> had to use the Foyer, Ballroom, Minis, Collectables, La Jolla, San Jose, 
> demo tables, and the Flea Market tables on Saturday and Sunday(and if Minis 
> and Collectables had not given us space we would never have fit), so we 
> can't afford to lose ANY space at the moment.  I am actually hoping we put 
> Minis in La Jolla and the Penthouse, This would move Minis towards the 
> front of the con, right next to registration, and Boardgames/Open Gaming 
> gets the whole Ballroom, Foyer and San Jose.  San Jose can be used on 
> Friday night and Mondays to promote LARPS or something special.  Boardgames 
> would use it for Special or Big events during the day, and screaming 
> games/Werewolf at night.

The mini space needs to be better utilized. Given that all the warhammer stuff will be back mixed in it probably will be.

We can't really split this space up east/west anyway due to needing to close off Ballroom D for the auction Monday.
> 
> I'd also like to take the demo tables in front of the Dealer room, to put 
> the Payout crew there, so they have a bit more room to spread out.

Doubt we can do this either -- what was wrong with where they were other than lack of signage?

> The only problem I see with changing the Flea market hours is that the 
> Dealers would buy stuff and then sell it in the dealers room.  The one 
> dealer who went to the auction and outbid the little kids and most of the 
> other people has pissed off a lot of people so that they stopped bidding at 
> the event, and say they won't come back if they see him again.  The Flea 
> Market and the Auction I thought were for the gamers, perchance I am 
> mistaken.
> 
Erm, the only person really doing a lot of bidding was John Muiji, who is NOT a dealer. He is a game collector, and a rather well-heeled one at that. He drives or flys out from Vegas specifically for these auctions. And it's not like John goes overboard -- things were going cheap for the most part. There were four known game collectors in there that I saw bidding (myself included). John just has a bit more room in his house+basement to put the stuff. He purchased roughly 40 percent of what was sold at the auction by dollar amount (yes, I actually did count this -- I purchased roughly 8 percent and sold only 3...).

A big reason for moving the auction back to monday was to get the big money to show up again. It's starting to work in that our auction is healthier now than where it was two years ago. 

The only dealer I saw buy something was Frank Perkins, and he bought maybe two items.

> As for Larry, if we start our own library, do we want/need him to continue 
> to come?  Besides if we need to staff the Library, then it seems we really 
> need to look at Larry's as a possible elimination, as I am tired of him 
> asking Boardgames HQ to help look after it.  We have enough to do without 
> his deal, and as you mentioned it looks bad when it is not staffed.  Just 
> as a side note, he said he is coming every time from now on, so who set 
> this deal up with him?  and what was the actual deal?
> 
We had a great space for him at the Westin and no space for him here. We need to figure it out, because yes, the Board Game HQ staff can't be expected to watch his stuff.

We set up him coming in Orccon 2007. We needed someone to run the game library. If we create our own, then yes, that will need to be revisited.

Eric