[Deptheads] 3 Weeks ago...

Fri Nov 6 10:12:20 PST 2009

top of the head ideas--------------------------

1. Create a "Kids Programming" department.
Boardgames has enough to do so a seperate department means getting someone in charge that wants to do the job, will get their own volunteers,and  will run and coordinate kid events on a schedule.

2. Discuss guests for a specific con and pick them 2 cons in advance.
Unlike most other conventions we are 3 times a year. We have less time to prepare between cons but do offer the flexibility for guests to choose between 3 con dates per year.
I have talked to several people in past 2 months for may or sept 2009 (designers of miniature games, collectable games, role playing game  designers, chris from EA and rock band, magic the gathering champions to attend and do seminars and take on challengers, etc.) I will pass the info on to eric A , Tim, and specific dept heads.

Special guests and guest of honor, etc.---- 
Having more than 1 guest is great and have 1 guest of honor.
We can have a gamer guest of honor. It is open-ended.
Heather needs to be informed of guests so she can know who they are, what they did and do, their background, etc.
Heather has to be in the loop.

3.Offer a VIP package.

Have 50 vip badges availabe for the convention at an increased rate,
Includes:
--4-day VIP badge to the convention
--Swag bag (easier to make 50 swag bags than 2000).
--Strategicon t-shirt 
--Strategicon badge holder
--1 hour early pre-registration
--Autographed items from guests without waiting in line or having to do the demo/event  (if the specific guest has cards or something they bring and give out.
--we can discuss with janice inviting the vips to the vendor meal on saturday night.
vendor, guest, staff and vip badges get in.
That way the whole meal is a vip meal including vendors and our guests. Heather shines as usual as she takes special guest to the meal, guests are informed of meal and assisted as needed, staff gets introduced to the guests, vips meet guests, and everyone gets good food and the relaxed atmpsphere janice and the food servers provide.

--we can have a vip and volunteer raffle. All vips and volunteers get 1 raffle ticket to use for games and video games I or someone else can get donated. Example; star trek 2009 dvd, rock band guitar signed, champions online game, gift certificates to specific dealers in dealers room, chaos in old war boardgame, box of flames of war miniatures, d&d module signed by designer, etc. We offer a few good prizes, This gets vips and volunteers interested.

Just ideas to chew on

V

--- On Thu, 11/5/09, Evil5757 at aol.com <Evil5757 at aol.com> wrote:

From: Evil5757 at aol.com <Evil5757 at aol.com>
Subject: [Deptheads] 3 Weeks ago...
To: deptheads at strategicon.net
Date: Thursday, November 5, 2009, 4:38 PM

Everyone,

I have resent the below EMail I from mid-October asking everyone's input on possible solutions to areas we can improve for the Conventions for 2010 because I haven't seen any responses at all. If we are going to truly improve the entire Convention as we say we want to, we need input from everyone on new ideas to be looked at and brain stormed.

Anyone have anything to start?

John 

OK Everyone.

We've had the discussion, now let's put it to use.

As I said at the meeting, we ALL need to stop thinking as separate Departments and start thinking about the Convention as a whole. We need to become a team that when one department says "I need help with this" everyone thinks of constructive ways the department can be helped. In the past, this convention has become stagnant because of every department watching out for itself (I've even gotten the comment "That's not my department" from old management department heads).

We have some IMMEDIATE needs that don't need to be argued about, but we need input from EVERYONE on ideas to make them work.  For instance:

Heather and Devi, you have run special events with special guests for the past couple of years. Everyone in the Miniatures department (myself included) have been trying things that have worked in the past.  Using what you have known and learned over the past years, what kind of "out of the box" event/guest or whatever can you think of that would spark life back into Miniature?

Janice, our LARP department is in big trouble as we discussed at the meeting. Can you think how we can use the facilities/visibility of the Dealer's Room to help bring more people or groups into the Con for LARPs?

Eric B, another department that is sagging is our Seminars. What local, low cost boardgame names can you think of we can get to give some seminars about game design, upcoming games, whatever that would attract the boardgame attendees to the Seminar room?

I'm not picking on anyone or pointing anyone out except to show that people who are not directly involved with a department can make a major contribution to the department.  the above requests are real, I think these people can come up with some creative thinking to address the problems listed and I look forward to reading their answers.

Let's use this list to constructively brainstorm.  the way I see it (and I could be wrong, just my thoughts):

Boardgames is doing fine...we can hold off on this department while the others get the fixes they need.

Registration is doing fine...smoothest I've ever seen it at Strategicon.

RPGA is doing fine...let them keep going as they are.

RPGs is doing fine...Micheal will be working to get different systems in the mix as discussed at the meeting, and needs an assistant but the program is on target.

Collectibles is doing good...Victor has done a great job, but needs a "local assist," someone in the area who can assist him between conventions to drum up local gamers and such for growth.

LARPs might need a new director.  They got screwed over pretty good last con and we need to give them some hugs and kisses in 2010.

Seminars...what seminars?  EVERYONE needs to get a couple of Seminars from their departments and rebuild the genre. "In the old days" people used to go to Conventions and do nothing but sit in the Seminar rooms all con and listen and PARTICIPATE.  I believe Seminars still have a  lot to offer the convention and we need to get them going again.

Dealer's Room is doing good....we still want to be a convention that manufactures attend and maybe AEG could be the beginning of it...?

Computers are doing good...we have the PS3/XBox craze working for us and it seems to be picking up speed.

Miniatures....as stated before last convention we need to rebuild this department from the ground up. Tim said over half the events were from my group last time...we need to drum up events and attendees badly. As mentioned above, "out of the box" thinking is required if we are to do anything the miniatures community will notice....it can't be the same old thing, we need new ideas.

So everyone...look at the list, pick a department and make a constructive comment/idea.  We know what is going wrong with EVERY department, let's hear ideas on how to make improvements with EVERY department (concentrating on the problem areas). Along with that is the requirement for the Department Head of the department getting the idea to not throw away any idea, but think through "How can I use that thought" to make things better and get back to this list with "How about this.." so we can further brainstorm to help things out.

John

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

_______________________________________________
Deptheads mailing list
Deptheads at strategicon.net
http://mordred.punk.net/mailman/listinfo/deptheads

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mordred.punk.net/pipermail/deptheads/attachments/20091106/ab05261d/attachment.htm