by SQ » Mon Oct 16, 2006 2:17 pm
Everyone says the MetroCon chess match is awesome, but I've never seen it.
I go to cons for the people, really. I used to go for the AMV contest, and the panels (instructional things, like "How to publish a book" or "How to make an AMV").
Instructional panels/workshops = good(I think), but it needs to be toward a rather large focus group/fans or else you're going to get people who are going to say "Man, that was boring" or it made no sense.
I was never into serious cosplay, but that's a huge fandom you probably shouldn't ignore.
But, for a con just starting out, try to partner up with a distributor. Like for TechWoodCon, we got Gamesare Studios to give out prizes and do game demos(TWC is a game/RPG convention I help run).
It's the people that make the con work when you're first coming out. So if you have a very visable, friendly staff and a lot of good conversations, people will want to return. When the con gets bigger the staff get less visable, but you still have good people(other con-goers), and it's those expierences that keeps people returning, even if the con itself sucks.
For example, I know that most of the guys that go to AWA don't really go for anything that happens specifically at AWA. It's just a place where we can all meet and hang out and, well, stroke our egos if we win something. XD
If you really want tournaments and think you can handle running ads and other publicity for it, then go. But most of our tourneys have been cancelled due to lack of interest.
So I think workshops may be your best bet. With the interest of YouTube rising, see if you can get someone "Well known"(AMVer, on YouTube, or otherwise) to "teach" people how to make their own home videos, video blogs, funny shit, or AMVs.
There also aren't a lot of fanfic-oriented things. I don't know what the turnout was at AWA's fanfic panel, but I'm sure that's a fanfare you could probably grab a lot of people from, simply because it doesn't get a lot of exposure.
-SQ™
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