First off, welcome all
new readers! If you've found my blog from my business card, I'm glad you made
it by! I usually tend to post mostly convention reviews, but I'm working on
posting some newer things. :) This time around, it's a recap of experiences
from Youmacon.
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youmacon.com |
This particular review
will be a little different, mostly because I didn't really have a lot of events
I went to (and only after alley hours, which was judging and photography), so I
just wanted to provide a general overview of my experiences over the entire
weekend. I also forgot to take pictures, so you get animated GIFs instead. :P
If you've been poking
around the internet, you may have come across a lot of bad press from artists
regarding this particular show. I'm not going to say we didn't have problems as
a show and as an alley, but I'm here to provide the good, the not-so-good, and
suggestions to improve the show for later years.
GOOD
+ I may be one of the
few people who actually enjoy having my artist alley inside the same room as
the Dealer Hall, as well as being over in the Cobo. I really like the
professional atmosphere the facility provides, as well as an honest, legit
convention hall (tall ceilings, concrete floors), there's just something that
screams "home" to me about that sort of thing.
+ Speaking of the COBO,
I also really enjoy being able to park on the roof as a "vendor" (I'm
usually in AA, but I'm still vending things), because it's cost effective, and
I never have to deal with rowdy crowds in the tight-spaced Ren Cen. There's
nothing wrong with the Ren Cen, I
just happen to prefer to avoid the more rambunctious crowds due to my partial
social/spatial anxieties.
+ Staff was willing to work with me when I checked in. While my requests
for seating had not been added to the chart, they were more than willing to
help me out, and it seemed everybody else who had a request. (I'll have more on
this in other sections)
+ Crowds were pretty nice! Most people were really polite, happy to
be there, and enjoyed perusing my wares (and I could assume other's wares as
well!).
+ Lots of tables available – upon arriving, the zone where the
artists would be was actually quite massive. I'm used to vending in huge alleys
(aka: Anime Central, Katsucon, etc), so the number of tables did not frighten
me. I did find out that the registration area emptied directly into the
"north" end of the room (the side opposite the main
"entrance" to the hall), which it's nice to at least have the
attendees walk past the artists area to get to dealers. Could be better, but
honestly, could be worse!
+ AA Ops had their own little "booth/kiosk" thing! This was
nice, because it made it really easy to find where to check in, and where to go
if we had questions.
NOT SO GOOD
~ Artists Badges =/= Helper Badges. Upon checking in, I received an
artist badge, but my helper did not (they did not have them at the desk yet?).
We shrugged it off, and planned on getting it the next morning. When we got the
helper badge, it was only listed as a 3-Day badge. While this doesn't sound
like much of an issue, when your helper has to go get things during
"off" hours in the alley (aka, early morn, or close down), they can't
get back into the hall unless their badge said vendor or artist. I'm not sure
why they did this, but this fact alone made it a little stressful to send my
helper on food runs and supply runs.
~ Check-In Amnesia. When I checked in, the staff had a list of names
with numbers, and then a corresponding map (awesome!). The list however, was
done by name, not by studio name, and when I checked to see if my neighbors
were the booths I had requested (all three of us sent in requests, and received
an email saying it was received and would be taken into consideration), and
they were not. Thankfully the staff let me change some stuff around so I could be
near my neighbors who we share helpers/supplies together with. During this
process I was informed that they had "remembered" my request, but had
somehow… "lost the email". It was frustrating to say the least.
~ Corner Booths. I understand that there was a lot of hassle with the
last-minute map layout (I was there for the first posting of the map, and the
subsequent thread about it), and that in the end the Fire Marshal had to change
the set up. But what I'd like to know is why they thought it was "fire
safe" to have 60% of the booths be corner booths. I'm sure a lot of you
have heard me complain about it (I'm building a full-sized post about booth
locations in general because of this), and this isn't the first corner booth I've had to navigate. But one thing is certain:
Corner Booths SUCK.
For those NOT in the
know, a corner booth is one table that is on the corner edge of a
square/rectangle "island" of booths. It's often said that corners get
the "best visibility", and while that may be true, I find living behind
one an exercise in futility. Both me, and my other corner mate will end up
losing over half our backspace (as the central area should be set up so we can
put things like displays). I ended up having to trash my original set up, and
get my old supplies from home in efforts to even have something that was useful
and wouldn't be so unsteady to fall over on people (I managed to only have a
little button wall that might attack people if bumped). I had to borrow back
end space from my friend because we had no
room to store our products in a manner that would even be feasible to get
when a customer ordered it. BUT ENOUGH
ABOUT CORNERS. We can all come to the current conclusion that I very much
dislike them, and hope that maybe we get rows next time.
~ Same-Ness of Booths. I'm not going to call out any particular booth. (I honestly can't in this regard!) There's
been enough drama about that on the boards and internet, but this is more an
offshoot from the "Corner Booth" critique. I've seen people
complaining about the alley looking "cluttered" and "hard to
navigate", and I must say I agree (I can NEVER find my OWN booth in island
set ups…). What happened is that due to the tiny island set up (each side only
had 3 tables wide), the booth set up that it was most conducive to was the
"puppet theater" version.
A puppet theater booth
is when the booth makes a tall wall usually on top of the table space and
plasters it with posters/prints/plushies/etc, and leaves a small window for the
owner to act through. (kind of like a drive-through window). There were a few
behind-the-artists displays, but I want to say about 80-85% of booths were
puppet theater style just due to the lack of backspace. This made all the
booths look the "same", and in essence would have the chance to
confuse patrons. This may also have lead to "worse sales" for some
artists who may accidentally have a similar motif, or style, or mayhaps drew
characters from the same show. When it all blurs together, nobody knows where
to shop!
~ Communication Breakdown. In the weeks leading up to the show (even
up to 2 months out), we received little communication from our department, and
from what it looked like on the forums and websites, from ANY department. Our
DH appeared to be unable to get replies from any other department, and none
would aid her in using the registration system (let alone working with her to
make it so we could purchase helper badges at the time of table purchase). I
also get the feeling that she was not provided table information until the
absolute last minute, and received little/no help or support from the rest of
the departments. But I won't say the DH was wholly excluded from critique
either, because they would vanish for periods of time, then come back with any
number of reasons why they were unable to access the page, and it felt more
like excuses. We understand you're busy AND stressed! Please, when you come back,
just start crankin' out responses, instead of listing off all the reasons why
you couldn't respond. We're ALSO busy and stressed, and the faster we get
confirmations on things, the less we'll bug you! I PROMISE! Moral of the Story:
DEPARTMENTS. NEED. TO. TALK TO EACH OTHER.
~ Artists. I want us all to take a deep breath. I am going to say
this with the utmost love. I have never seen a more doom & gloom
alley in all my years. *sighs* Every time I checked the Facebook group in
case of any updates… all I saw was "not selling anything" and
"terrible show", combined with a few "we're so screwed!"
type of updates, along with angry ranting about demanding refunds for table
sizes, and so forth. I understand we were all stressed, and things weren't going
as planned.
But I just want to
reassure ALL artists, Fridays are ALWAYS SLOW. ALWAYS. I hardly ever sell
ANYTHING on Friday. Yes, attendees are going to totally blow past the alley
upon first entering the hall. They are there for the VENDORS first and
foremost, and then the AA. This is just the way things work, and while there
are exceptions to the rule, the attendees wanna go buy their figures first
before getting prints. It's always been that way. The amount of doom &
gloom, whining, angry ranting I saw on Friday, made me kind of embarrassed to
be sharing a hall with many of you.
Everybody, it's gonna
be okay. Wait until later on Saturday before making some judgments. Also. IT
WAS HALLOWEEN. School was in session, and most people would probably want to
stay home or get home early so they could either hand out candy or go trick or
treating themselves. OF COURSE IT WAS DESOLATE.
My advice? Get off the
internet and start working on things to look busy instead of complaining at
your booth on a Friday. Stop attacking/blaming your neighbors. Stop yelling at
the show as though they are obligated to you to get you into the black. You're
there to SELL. SHOW YOUR BEST SELF!
NEED TO IMPROVE
I'd like to provide
some advice to the show, on stuff that happened, and what could possibly make
it better. I'm no guru, nor does the show have to take my advice, but as an
artist, here are some suggestions:
# Communication & Staffing.
Please please please do two things for me: 1.) Get all the departments to know
that they really SHOULD know what each other is kind of up to, so in case they
need to contact each other, they can. Also, they should check their emails. 2.)
In that regard, please get the Artists Department a set of full STAFF. One gal
doing it alone should NOT be how this works. You're a big show, your
departments deserve some extra staff members now to help.
# Technology/Email. Numerous times we were provided that there were
issues with the DH handling email. That our messages might get lost, or that
requests were somehow missed. (We couldn't even send in location requests until
the map was started because in theory the messages would get lost in all the
emails). We live in the year 2014. Most email systems are a POP3 system. You
can route them to other emails (like gmail) or you can route them into a reader
like Outlook! Outlook has folders, and rules you can set to filter stuff like
spam, or space requests. I do this with my own departmental emails, and it
makes it 10x easier to keep track of stuff. Having an email list would be
great, but I'd rather the poor DH get the emails in an easier to sort format than
they've currently got! This will make both the DH's life as well as the
artist's lives SO MUCH EASIER.
# Confirmation Communication. One of the issues we had as artists was
with the sign ups. Upon entering the system, and paying the fee, we received no
other information on if we were in. In theory, if you were able to pay you were
in, otherwise, you could add yourself to a waitlist. A simple copy/paste email
of "you are in" would have been FAB-U-LOUS. For people who complain
that we as artists are extra needy, it's little things like this that will keep
us from hounding you. We just need to know if we're in, so we can then plan
travel and booths. 30 minutes of copy paste emails will save you WEEKS of
headaches.
Also, can we go back to using forums?
Facebook is too chaotic. I kept seeing the same question REPEATEDLY, and people
don't like to search for terms. I may be old, but forums at least keep threads
alive. I like the Facebook group for meeting and chatting with the other
artists though, so it's not all bad.
# Artist Badges for All. It's kind of a minor thing, but we
desperately need specified helper and/or artist badges to be provided to those
helpers we've designated. Your door guards were doing a great job making sure
only artists got back in during closed hours, but that also unfortunately
prevented some of our helpers from getting back to us! My helper only got back
in because he was wearing a very recognizable Spooky Hat and had talked to the
door guard before he left. I don't know WHY the department wasn't given more
artist badges, but please, can you make our helpers be able to access the hall
with us?
# ROWS rows rows (row your
boat!). I can't stress enough how terrible corner booths are. Not only were the
tables shortened (we were told they were 8 ft, but ended up getting 6 ft, to
which I didn't care as much about that as I did losing all my backspace), but
60% of the booths were corners. Which meant 60% of artists were sharing a back
area with another person. We were stepping all over each other, and I really
want to know why the fire marshal thought that set up was a good idea. We were
expanding our displays accidentally over each other's space, in a desperate
fight to be seen. So many went taller.
If you maintain the
same set up of dealers, I may suggest having the artist alley mimic the rows
that the dealers were placed in? In a way, we'd all look somewhat uniform and
the patrons could float between the sections, without hitting a strange wall of
odd set ups and getting lost in a maze.
WOULD I ATTEND AGAIN?
Maybe in future years. I am actually planning on taking a year off
from this particular alley unless any major changes occur.
It really comes down to
the fact I retained a lot of stress from the show. Whether it was pre-con
drama, at-con drama, post-con drama, as well as lack of communication and
answers or poor set ups, I maintained more stress than I normally have for
conventions. I wish the show the best for the future, and I hope to return at a
later year!
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