Well right now it’s just a twinkling of an idea in my head, but I’m rather scared to pursue it as I don’t really know much about running conventions. What is there to know? Anyone have experience with them?
I mean, I know that you have to invite speakers, advertise for merchants, organize with the place to meet, is there more to it? Is there some resource I can consult and decide if this idea is worth pursuing?
What you’re talking about is known as “event planning.” Google the term and you’ll find books and other resources on the topic. Event planning involves a not trivial amount of work and know-how, and there are actually professional event planners who make a good living at it.
You know, your thread title caused me a little discomfort. I thought it was something else entirely. I feel a little faint now. I think maybe you should send me “a gift” to make me feel better…
P.S. The “good ones” deserve a capitol letter
Yeah, I too thought you were running a ‘con’ as in fraud or other crime.
If you want to send me money, feel free.
What s/he said. I haven’t run a con solo, but I was part of a committee for a big one once, and the best advice I can give you, seriously, is RUN AWAY!!!
They’re a big investment of time and resources, and you’ve got multiple egos clashing, and it’s headaches by the thousands. If, despite that, you still want to, see “event planner.”
What kind of con?
How big a con?
Day con or full-blown 24 hour whole damn weekend con?
Have you ever been to a con, and was it the type of con you’re planning on running?
Have you ever volunteered at a con? If so, doing what?
Can you find at least 20 people who are willing to volunteer massive amounts of time and energy?
To everyone who expected something different, no gifts, you fell for my trap 
To Czarcasm, it would be a gaming one. I have just recently got back into the ccg Magic the Gathering and my friends and I were discussing how cool it would be if instead of just tournaments there was a full blown convention around it, offering lectures about everything from strategies and tactics to deck construction and draft strategies. Have panels with the game developers, artists etc. I think I’d have the manpower to pull it off, but this is all still a twinkle in my eye. I can’t financially support it yet and I’m not ready to buckle down for it and find investors.
Here is the webpage of a gaming convention I’ll be working at at the end of this month. It’ll show you what is offered at a typical gaming con, and how many people are involved. Please note that all of the people involved in running GameStorm have spent years volunteering at other conventions-not a con virgin in the whole group.
I’ve been to plenty of cons and helped out a number of them, not in the higher levels though. I realize it would be a project of immense labor. It’s just one of those ideas that I think would be really cool / suicidal to do.
There wa a SciFi con here in Virginia Beach about six-eight years ago. I interviewed the guys who put it together.
It took them about a year to get things all set up, and they had experience as helpers/assistants with major conventions.
From what I understand, even though things went off fairly well, they still lost money and weren’t able to turn it into a yearly event.
The guests they had were make-up artist Tom Savini, the late web-cam girl Dawn Marie, Richard Hatch of the original Battlestar Galatica showing a film he made to get the series running again, and author Kevin J. Anderson (of the extended Dune chronicles.
Well the truth is that if this idea took off, I suspect I’d be able to get corporate funding from the guys who make the game as it would be loads of publicity and they’d sell a butt load of cards and stuff.
I dunno, the initial zeal from the idea is wearing off, but we’ll see how I feel as time wears on. If I do it, it is way way off.
ronincyberpunk writes:
> To everyone who expected something different, no gifts, you fell for my trap . . .
Does it ever occur to people who give deceptive, pseudo-clever titles to their threads that what they’re doing is causing the wrong people to read the thread? The best way to make sure that you get the people who can actually answer your question to read the thread is to give the thread an accurate title. Anyway, eleven years ago I ran a con. It was Mythcon, which is sort of halfway between a science fiction convention and an academic conference. Mythcon moves every year and is run by a different local committee each time. The one I ran was already the twenty-fifth one, so much of the structure was already set up and didn’t have to be newly invented. There were about 250 people at the Mythcon I ran (actually one of the largest). It still took three years of work between the time I decided to do the con and the time that it happened. There were about 20 people on the con committee, and really I could have used about 5 more.
Talk to as many people who run other gaming cons as you can and make sure that there’s really a market for a new gaming con. Get as many people who have already done work on gaming conventions as you can to be on your committee. Get as many other people as you can to be on the committee also. Work out your budget to make some money, and then assume that you won’t do as well as you hope, so that you’ll lose money, which will come out of the pockets of the committee. Assume that you’re going to advertise your con better than the established gaming cons you know of, since they can count on people who come to their con every year, while you have to persuade people to come to a new con.
Aw, damn, I had a long, bitter, and surprisingly cathartic post about a con we ran that went pretty badly, but then I hit the wrong button and lost it. Grrrr.
But, anyway, it boils down to this: Everybody in our gaming club thought we should run a small con. Everybody also mysteriously expected that the con would happen because somebody else would be doing all the work. So we had a serious lack of manpower, serious problems with people making comittments and then flaking out, and then “conversations” that nearly came to blows when people who had point blank refused to do even the slightest thing to help showed up a the con and said, “Wow. This is really lame.”
Gee, thanks, for pointing that out Sherlock. And what game are you running? Oh, yeah, that’s right . . . when we begged on our knees in every meeting for two months straight for people to run something . . . anything, a D&D module, a game of Settlers of Catan, anything you were all like, “I have too much homework! Waaaaah! Pity me! Waaaaaah! My major is sooooo much harder than yours! Waaaaaaah! I don’t have time to run anything, because my life is so terribly busy! Waaaaah!” Well guess what, Brainiac, when nobody can be bothered to run games, there will be no games run at the con!
pant pant pant pant
Not that I’m still bitter 5 years later, or anything.
Er, so anyway, we’ve been doing much smaller 2-slot “Gaming Saturdays” that are better suited to the pitiful level of commitment we can get from club members. We have some CCG tournaments that draw in some people from out of town, the FLGS shows up with CCGs and a few other things to hawk, there is free pizza in great abundance, and all in all everybody’s happy.
So, yeah, it all comes down to the people you have working with you. Start small; don’t bite off more than you can chew, and spend at least 20 minutes a day in soothing silent meditation so you don’t end up killing anyone. 
And FWIW, the con-artistry angle didn’t even occur to me when I read the title, but then I am a huge geek.
Used to (more than 10 years ago) help run minicon.
My better half, Brainiac4 helped run that as well as Con of the North(more up your line).
When we did Minicon it took about 40 dedicated volunteers, plus a hundred plus weekend only volunteers. We started eighteen months before the convention. At the time, Minicon had approximately 3,000 attendees - we were basically throwing a WorldCon every year. It was a spectacular headache, lots of politics, lots of work.
Con of the North was a little easier in some ways, but gaming cons can be harder in other ways. For one thing, programming becomes more important than at a SF con - and is more of a committment - you HAVE to have GMs. And then those GMs get cranky if they’ve prepped games and no one shows. (Minicon, in particular, was a “programming optional” type of SF con - a lot of people didn’t realize we HAD programming - they were too busy getting drunk.)
I’ll point Brainiac4 this direction tonight.
I’ve been involved in running Albacon sincd 1995, and am convention chair this year. We also have a gaming component, and I’ve been dealing with some local gaming people who have many years of experience.
If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me.
As far as getting the gaming companies to sponsor you goes…don’t bet on it.
If you are lucky the smaller companies( if they had a good year) might donate some swag that you can use for prizes and bribes for volunteers. The larger companies will run you through the corporate mill, never making a solid commitment until the last minute. They are always looking for the best venue to advertise their wares, and you will be in direct competition with all the midsize or larger cons that are running at approximately the same time. A firstcon has no reputation to build on, so your best chance would be to have known SMOFs who have dealt with these companies before on your committee list, and you would have to schedule your con when no other well-known cons are scheduled.
Well I think the novelty of the idea has faded, so I’m going to let it fall by the wayside. Thank you all for the input and ideas. I don’t have the time for it now, I think in the future that it would be something I’d enjoy making happen down the road.
Oh, and I was being semi-sarcastic about the title, I honestly didn’t even think of the entendre until after I hit submit.
So thanks again for input from everyone.
Sounds like you’ve decided against it, which is both good and bad. Good in that cons are (as already noted) lots and lots of work. But bad in that running them can be lots of fun.
As **Dangerosa **noted, I’ve worked on a few. In addition to running Hotel for Minicon and Operations for Con of the North, I’ve worked on little dinky cons – single-day events with just one or two programming tracks.
I think your idea has merit, but you may want to approach it differently. Rather than trying to put on a convention, maybe you could do a gameday? One day, in partnership with a local gaming store, with a tournament or two, some open gaming space and a few lectures/seminars. You can do something like that nearly single-handed (at least the organization of it – you need some additional folks to run events on the day). If you get enough attention, then turn around and do it again, a bit bigger, with some more people involved.
Now that’s an idea!!!
I actually work for the local game store and I’m trying to convince him to do more business for this game. So maybe I’ll turn focus to this smaller idea.
Thanks a lot Brainiac.
Any time. I do like the idea of something more than just tournaments and trading at a gaming con. If you can get some good seminars or lectures going, that may be a cool draw.