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Catching up
Feb. 10th, 2009 09:30 amAnother OwlCon come and gone. We slept for 16 hours yesterday. I am working on catching up, but I promise to put together some sort of summary in the next day or so.
Feb. 10th, 2009
OwlCon XXVIII - Let me sum up
Feb. 10th, 2009 08:29 pmThis year I spent about a week preparing the registration material (nightly mail merging ftw), which allowed the typical Thursday night printing party to go very smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
drangelo and schroedingerbat (and others? the whole night is a haze) had already completed a huge portion of the task list that the volunteers usually do on Friday afternoon. This allowed the volunteers to finish well within their alloted five hours, giving them some valuable breathing time before we opened registration at 6pm.
Because of this most excellent preparation, there were very very few hiccups in the pre-reg/registration process. Yay! This was all to the good because early Saturday afternoon we lost our Volunteer Coordinator to a work-related emergency, and I had to wrangle the VC job as well as my own. Sadly, there were a few hiccups with the volunteers, as several of them did not show up for various reasons. A couple sent replacements in their stead (LOVE!!) and a couple, due to a lack of communication, did not even know they were supposed to be volunteering at the Con. *rolls eyes* (Plus, apparently, one "volunteer" was actually our VC getting punked.)
Numbers were a bit lower this year. With 394 pre-reg badges, plus 181 walk-up badges, we saw a total of 575 attendees this year, which is down about 30 from last year and about 65 from our highest year. Considering the economy, and the aftermath of Ike, no one was surprised at this minor reduction.
Painting competition was small, but we had some really great entries, many games were completely filled, quite a few games had a few no-show players (but, IIRC, only three no-show GMs, and all of them had valid excuses), no major LARP issues, and NOT ONE irate attendee showed up to yell at me at the registration area. Color me shocked.
In fact, we did have quite a few people coming to the registration area at the end of the Con to tell us how much they enjoyed it, and how well organized it has been year after year. That's always good to hear. With all of the work that everyone puts in, I'm still amazed when it's all over.
Amazed, and exhausted. We slept for 16 hours straight Sunday night.
drangelo and schroedingerbat (and others? the whole night is a haze) had already completed a huge portion of the task list that the volunteers usually do on Friday afternoon. This allowed the volunteers to finish well within their alloted five hours, giving them some valuable breathing time before we opened registration at 6pm.Because of this most excellent preparation, there were very very few hiccups in the pre-reg/registration process. Yay! This was all to the good because early Saturday afternoon we lost our Volunteer Coordinator to a work-related emergency, and I had to wrangle the VC job as well as my own. Sadly, there were a few hiccups with the volunteers, as several of them did not show up for various reasons. A couple sent replacements in their stead (LOVE!!) and a couple, due to a lack of communication, did not even know they were supposed to be volunteering at the Con. *rolls eyes* (Plus, apparently, one "volunteer" was actually our VC getting punked.)
Numbers were a bit lower this year. With 394 pre-reg badges, plus 181 walk-up badges, we saw a total of 575 attendees this year, which is down about 30 from last year and about 65 from our highest year. Considering the economy, and the aftermath of Ike, no one was surprised at this minor reduction.
Painting competition was small, but we had some really great entries, many games were completely filled, quite a few games had a few no-show players (but, IIRC, only three no-show GMs, and all of them had valid excuses), no major LARP issues, and NOT ONE irate attendee showed up to yell at me at the registration area. Color me shocked.
In fact, we did have quite a few people coming to the registration area at the end of the Con to tell us how much they enjoyed it, and how well organized it has been year after year. That's always good to hear. With all of the work that everyone puts in, I'm still amazed when it's all over.
Amazed, and exhausted. We slept for 16 hours straight Sunday night.
