Midwest FurFest 2005 Registration Traffic and Demographics Analysis

And now with the charts and the tables and the statistics and oy!

Attendance Figures
Let’s start out with the raw numbers, shall we?

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Total attendees (staff excluded) 446 482 639 748 885 1008
Staff 27 29 46 52 74 58
Total attendees (staff included) 473 511 685 800 959 1066
Percent increase in attendance — 8.1% 32.5% 16.8% 19.9% 11.2%
Preregistered attendees (sponsors included) n/a 212 344 386 446 559
Preregistered sponsors n/a 51 69 64 66 56
At-the-Door sponsors n/a 34 26 19 24 43
Staff sponsors n/a 11 13 6 19 8
Total sponsors 37 85 108 83 109 107
% Sponsors 7.8% 16.6% 15.8% 10.4% 11.4% 10.0%
% Pre-registered n/a 41.5% 50.2% 48.3% 46.5% 52.4%

There’s a couple of items of note here. First off, the staff numbers seem to fluctuate a bit; this is because for MFF sometimes the line between staff and volunteer can be a bit blurry. Some years we’re good at defining who’s in what role, some years we’re not. Our sponsor rate is also not as good as I would have hoped, falling off slightly. I suspect this will continue to go down next year since we are raising the price for a sponsorship from $100 to $120. The last time we raised the sponsorship rate was in 2003, and you see what happened to the sponsorship rate then. Unfortunately, it’s the only way we can continue to make sponsorships economically feasible. The last item of note is that, despite a late start for online registration, our pre-registration rate went up for the first time since 2001. While I would still like to see that higher than 60%, I’ll take the modest increase as well.

This table also shows that we are maintaining a nice, steady rate of growth. As a matter of fact, if you plot the attendance by year, you’ll find that it’s nearly linear (R2=0.9841), with an additional 126 people per year.

As shown on the chart above, this would mean that a reasonable estimate for next year would be around 1190 attendees. This is a nice, moderate growth rate, and one that is much easier to prepare for than a sudden 30% growth rate (see also: MFF 2002).

Traffic Data
As usual, we had a huge crush of people registering on Thursday night. As I mentioned earlier, at our peak (around 6:40 PM) we were registering one person every 19.4 seconds. Even though we started out with two printers (and dropped to one on Friday due to hardware issues), the printers were definitely the choke point in the process. We had to do many more badge reprints this year due to printer failures, and this really slowed down the time it took to actually put the badge into an attendee’s hand (which is not reflected in the data, since that just tracks when the print request was made).

It is notable that this year it appears that many people arrived slightly later on Thursday night, but by the end of the evening about the same percentage of the total convention attendance had registered as at the same time last year.

Once again, we are faced with the fact that about a third of the convention is registering on Thursday night. I think it would be good if we could provide them with more to do – something to consider for next year.

Demographic Data
Let’s take a look at the geographic distribution of our attendees:

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Midwest 66% 70% 66% 66% 63% 66% (IL, WI, IN, MI, MN, OH, MO, IA, NE)
Northeast 6% 8% 5% 6% 5% 4% (NH, VT, MA, NY, CT, RI)
Mid-Atlantic 5% 5% 5% 4% 5% 5% (PA, MD, VA, WV)
South n/a 12% 12% 11% 9% 12% (NC, SC, GA, FL, AL, TN, KY, AL, MS, LA, AR, TX)
Canada n/a 3% 4% 4% 6% 4% (All Provinces)
West Coast 7% 3% 4% 5% 7% 5% (CA, OR, WA)
East Coast 15% 16% 14% 14% 14% 13% (ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT, NY, PA, DE, MD, VA, NC, SC, GA, FL)

What we see here is a moderate resurgence in Midwestern attendance, with a drop in Northeast and West Coast attendance. Keep in mind, these are percentages, so that do not constitute a decrease in numbers from those regions, but that more “locals” came to MFF this year. From what I saw anecdotally at Registration, we are starting to pull in folks from outside of furry fandom: the curious, the folks from other fandoms who want to check us out, and on, at least one occasion, a waitress from the Olive Garden across the street wanting to see what all those strange people were doing over in the Hyatt 🙂 It is also notable that even though they account for a small percentage of our attendance, this year Midwest FurFest was pleased to welcome folks from Australia, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Sweden. Slowly but surely, we’re going global!

This concludes my wrap-up of the Registration Department for Midwest FurFest 2005. If anyone has any suggestions, comments, or ideas, please feel free to comment here or e-mail me at registration@furfest.org. Thanks, and see you all next year!

17 thoughts on “Midwest FurFest 2005 Registration Traffic and Demographics Analysis”

  3. mwalimu

    I would speculate that the drop in attendance from outside the midwest is due in part to the increasing number of regional cons that fans outside the midwest might decide to attend instead.

    1. typographer

      Well, if I’m reading what duncan said correctly, there has not been a drop in a attendance outside the midwest.
      The attendance from outside the midwest nas not grown as fast as the attendance from within the midwest.

  4. altivo

    I think some of the apparent change in proportion of attendance from the coasts may also be related to increasing cost and difficulty of obtaining air travel.

    1. greenreaper

      If a long-haired foreigner in a duffle coat with a suspicious bag and an even more suspicious accent can fly, it can’t be that hard . . . that said, cost is a factor. If you plan ahead and shop around it can be a bit cheaper, though; I managed to get almost 10 miles/$ on a set of international flights, even over christmas.

      1. altivo

        Oh, I have more issues with it than that, and they date back to much longer ago than 9/11. After a particularly wretched holiday trip in 1978 I swore I would never fly on a commercial airline again. So far, I’ve kept that promise.
        But for normal people, yes, costs are up. Airport so-called security is a royal pain in the you-know-where. The actual experience of flying isn’t anything like the pleasure it used to be. All that probably adds up to fewer long-distance con-goers than in former years.

        1. quoting_mungo

          Ugh. Airport security.
          Each year, I feel so violated by Immigration, I swear I’m never doing it again.
          Each year, I end up changing my mind two weeks later. ;P
          Seriously, though, there’s something wrong with being fingerprinted and photographed when entering the US, having my passport briefly checked when entering the Netherlands, and my passport at the very most getting a cursory glance when entering Denmark.
          I did get a kick out of the fact they brought in the drug-sniffing dog when the flight from Amsterdam were picking up their luggage, however.
          Also, I’m very happy for my Nintendo DS. Considering how much in-flight entertainment sucks on the pseudo-affordable airlines.
          -Alexandra

          1. altivo

            I agree with you about US border crossing. They are treating even our own citizens that way in many cases. For what it’s worth, I did NOT vote for the turkeys who are doing this, and I do NOT support them at all.

  5. yotogi

    I do have to wonder, regarding the “more for Thursday attendees to do” if that’s not just going to leave us with people showing up Wednesday…

    1. woofwoofarf Post author

      I doubt it. If we had events going on starting at 8 AM Thursday, then perhaps people would show up Wednesday. If we don’t start until 7 PM Thursday, then that incentive isn’t there. I don’t think it’s a matter of enticing people to show up earlier. They’re already there – we need to find something for them to do (idle hands being the Devil’s playthings and all that…).

  6. taren_

    Doesn’t this mean that since over 1000 people attended, that all the staff is going to quit? Or was that just a 2004 thing…
    Thursday night, hmm. I’ll admit I was running around a lot trying to get stuff set up for DDR in the basement, but the attendance for that was atrocious. I think I can count on one hand the number of people that showed up for that. I’m guessing that’s mostly because it wasn’t well publicized (it was last-minute, so of course), and it was a little out-of-the-way. I’d be all up for doing it again next year, as long as it gets promoted a little better or put up in one of the main hall rooms, or something.

  7. wally_wolf

    Hi Duncan,
    Interesting report, and thanks for sharing it. I am glad MFF worked out well for ya’ll.
    Wish I was there; however, my fursona (ironically) was there. So perhaps I was there “in spirit”. 😛 There were several folks I know who attended and would have loved to have seen. I will have to think if I would have any vacation time left for next year to attend MFF.
    **sees the “R^2 = 0.9841″** Hummm… Must be an engineer! 😛
    Cheers,
    —> Wally

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