| |
You raise some interesting points about events. Here are some counter
points to consider:
- I don't think the market is yet saturated on brick cons.
- Conventions which move from location to location each year have to
contend with some negatives of that:
- inconsistent leadership
- essentially need to go through the effort of finding a venue each
year (this effort is not insignificant)
- variable attendance depending on ease of getting to the area
- not all regions have the fan base to support a con
I think the hobby could easily support brick cons in the following
areas:
Pacific Northwest
SF Bay Area
Southern California
Chicago and/or Minneapolis
Washington DC
Northeast (Boston or New York)
Florida
Atlanta
Some of these would be smaller. The smaller ones could share time slots
with farther away locations (for example, if Florida and SF Bay were
expected to be small ones, they might both chose to be in the winter).
Clearly BrickFest and BricksWest will be the two largest cons, at least
for a while. BrickFest has an advantage of being in a central location
on the East Coast, and is a reasonably easy airline destination. It of
course also has first mover advantage. BricksWest has the attraction of
Legoland (which is an attraction for many people, and provides
interesting possibilities for interracting with the general public
[though I'm not sure what effect those will have on the event as a fan
event, but variety is good]).
Someone, somewhere raised the issue of costs in the Bay area. That type
of issue could be a killer. BricksWest was almost too expensive (between
hotel, transportation costs from the airport, and the event fee itself).
On the other hand, the more people who are within 6 hours driving of a
brick con, the better.
As the brick con market grows, eventually, we may want an annual con
which tries to attract everyone. At that point, moving around the
country makes sense. Such a con could piggyback onto existing cons, but
would be better started as a fresh con. With some pre-planning, the
existing cons could adjust their schedule so that they are not too close
to the annual con. The annual con should then be structured in a way
that it can rely heavily on non-locals so that people already over their
heads running the local events need not take on yet another task. The
biggest local presence necessary is a couple people to make site
arrangements. Much of the programming can be provided by non-locals. Of
course it would be important to have a bunch of locals who can step in
close to the con to provide things like rides, floor space for people
who would rather spend their hard earned cash on bricks rather than
hotel rooms, and other such things which need local bodies but not lots
of planning effort.
Frank
|
|
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: A BricksWest Critique?
|
| I think I whined a little too much in my orignal post :-) The point I was trying to make is that people (and I was just using myself as an example - but I suspect there are others) have jobs, families - lives - and can't easily travel. Having (...) (22 years ago, 24-Jul-02, to lugnet.events.brickswest)
|
60 Messages in This Thread:
 
 
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
