Oh yeah, we just did. Midwest FurFest has come and gone, and now life is returning (slightly) to some semblence of normal.
This was a difficult year for me – between dealing with a new job, a killer commute, separation from my sweetheart, and the usual pre-con stress, I was pretty much a mess mentally by the time Thursday came around. Takaza was there to steady me, as always, and that helped a lot.
There is absolutely no way I can do a minute-by-minute or even hour-by-hour recap of the con, so I’m just going to hit the high points that I can recall:
Wednesday (yes, Wednesday. For some of us, the fun starts early): Rushed down to the hotel from work. Had dinner at Johnny D’s Koko Cafe (one of my favorite places in the area; I liked them so much I asked for a stack of their menus for the freebie table). After dinner, we had The Stuffing Party: 150 Sponsor Coolers were stuffed full of munchies and a sponsor pin, 150 Sponsor Packets were stuffed with prints and ribbons and coupons, and 1,200 Registration Bags were stuffed with con books, restaurant guides, and flyers. It was a lot of work, and it took a dozen or so of us about three and a half hours to get it all done. Bless his heart, even one of our Guests of Honor, scribble_fox, joined in to help as well! Thanks to everyone who showed up and helped out!
Thursday: An early run over to the rental place to pick up the chains and stanchions. On the fly, I remembered forgetting to ask justincheetahfor cable guards (aka “racetracks”) and I picked up a couple of those as well. Good call – they came in handy throughout the weekend. Rusty showed up with the Registration system at 3 PM and we did a quick print of all of the staff badges and stuff the Staff Packets with the Registration materials they would need to pick up in Operations. After a brief meeting with the hotel staff, we got to work setting up the rooms for Thursday Night Registration.
For Thursday night, I wanted to try something new. We had a lot more space to work with (the combined Arlington Heights and Rolling Meadows rooms), as well as extra chains and stanchions to work with, plus six or seven terminals. We separated out sponsors from pre-reg and at the door members, and opened up the door about 45 minutes ahead of schedule. The doors opened, the crowd rushed in and…filled about half of the queue. And after about 45 minutes, the crowd was gone. And never appeared again. WTF? I still need to do a traffic analysis, but it would appear that the system I designed was grossly overprepared for the flow of people that were arriving. Sure enough, we wound up getting about 350 people registering that night, but they were spaced out enough over the 4.75 hours we were open that rarely did a line of more than three or four people form before they were quickly dispatched, badge and Registration bag in hand. Damn.
Friday: OK, I figured. If we didn’t get slammed on Thursday night, we were going to get slammed on Friday morning. I and my amazing staff (mostly my amazing staff) started in early and got Registration up and running about 15 minutes ahead of schedule. We had a line of about 20-30 folks right at opening and then…once again, no lines. This was seriously spooky. As near as I can tell, the traffic patterns are changing and the flow of people wanting to register is evening out throughout the day. We took the stanchions down by noon and really could have pulled them down by 10:30 or so. The only minor drawback from all of this miscalculation is that my poor Registration staff was left with a lot less to do than planned – really, a problem I would love to have more often! I sent some folks on their way, and we settled into a nice, steady pace throughout the day.
We closed up shop on Friday at 8 PM, and after hanging around with some friends for a bit retreated up to our room. Takaza came in with Ursula Vernon and her husband, James Trevett, David Gilbert, and Scribblefox and Rich, and we were joined by a few other folks in a vain attempt to work our way through the ten gallons of beer I had made a few months back. Then we went to bed.
I’ll have to pick up this a bit later – more to come! Including, once I have all the data in hand, a full report on MFF Registration.
You better not forget slapping that idiot down at QA. Talk about a mushroom print.
I suspect part of the lack of a line at registration is that you never allowed one to form in the first place. That system is pretty slick from what I saw of it. You are probably right about it having a lot more capacity than we need right now. It would be interesting to see how it would handle a significantly larger crowd (not at MFF). It might be worth offering the software to other cons. If it scales as well as you said it would and could handle various printers and layouts, it might well meet the needs of some other conventions out there and would save them from having to re-invent the wheel. Gencon comes to mind actually. That would give it a good stress test.
“WTF? I still need to do a traffic analysis, but it would appear that the system I designed was grossly overprepared for the flow of people that were arriving.”
There is absolutely no such thing as that. Consider it room to grow. 🙂
The fact that you and your crew managed to keep the flow of people moving without lines backing up is remarkable! Well done! I’m curious to see the analysis. You all must be doing something right – even my con room mate Ricochet (a.k.a. “Denny Crane”) had a good registration experience, and he’s not an easy customer in that regard!
Yes, I was amazed. As a country driver, it took me several attempts to find the hotel. Consequently, I arrived at registration just a few minutes before the opening session on Friday and was amazed to find no lines. I had my packet and my badge in plenty of time to get to the openers.
Well done!
Thank you! I wish I could take all the credit, but I’ve got a great group of people working with me to make Registration at MFF as simple as painless as possible. I’m glad you enjoyed it, and I’m really glad to hear you’re considering sponsoring next year. It’s stuff like that that really tells us we’re doing something right 🙂