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Albin (501st Founder) actually gave me some very sweet compliments late on Saturday night at the dance (OK, technically Sunday morning) about me having strength, grace and being a huge inspiration. He said that he gets a lot of credit just as a result of his role in starting the group but said that he thinks the hype is underserved he is proud of people like Brian and I for our time, dedication and humble efforts. It was totally a "I love you man" kind of moment in his happy drunkeness, and I thought he was going to either kiss me or start crying, he was so emotional about it. Woah!
Pictures (not too many):
http://www.501neg.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=841&page=1
We'll have videos of the performances at the ball later once we get capture them from Bob and put them up on youtube.
My NEG (and pretty much the same for Alderaan Base) writeup of everything at a high level:
Hey Guys!
Thank you so much to the folks that made it out to this! I know that the con chair was very happy with our turnout and what we were able to bring to the con. Albin told me that he had a wonderful time and thanked us for all of our generosity. Though there were some snags (as there will be with any event) I think we did a great job and learned some good things for future con trooping.
I was told that Friday's dance was very well attended for a first-night event at the con. I can't tell you how many people stopped me to tell me how great they thought everyone looked, how amusing the performances were or how much the room felt like they were a part of Star Wars. A special thank you to the folks that sat and sold raffle tickets in the dark, crowded corner - by Friday night we had made over $200 in just a few hours at a dark, loud, crowded dance.
Oh my god, our panels! I knew we'd have a good time and have some folks there that were interested but I'm really blown away by the reception we got at our panels. Molding + Casting was standing room only with over 50 people there and folks crowding out into the hallway. Thank you Brian, Garrett and Terry for lugging all of your stuff there and sharing your mad skills. Some con patrons were really excited about it, and came up after the panel and wouldn't let these poor folks leave for their next activity.
We had a full room for the costume weathering panel as well, and we had a lot of good conversations going back and forth on cross-genre costuming which was really neat. I think we get stuck in the Star Wars universe sometimes and forget that there are other Sci-Fi verses out there where folks are struggling with the same kinds of projects. Thanks Bob, Brian and Drew for sitting up there and sharing your stuff.
The visits to the Fast Track were chaotic (more on this below) but I know the division head was very appreciative of us for going up there. We passed out some activity books and fake SW tattoos and hung out with the kids for about an hour. Margaret was the best handler ever, Carlos (NEGIA member) broke out his Vader suit for a first try and faced kids armed with foam sabers. We even had a couple of Jedi to keep us company that were newbies to the con.
Our last panels included one on Fandom and Charity and About the 501st. The first panel wasn't too well attended, though I wasn't expecting a huge crowd. Albin and I set on the panel with a members of the New England Browncoats and The Robert Heinlein Society and the groups shared information on what their groups did, how they came about and how they've dealt with some of the issues they've faced. Though we only had a couple of guests in the room to watch one woman in the front row was really excited about us being there. She had helped run the Star Trek Tribble Bash the night before where they went through a ton of efforts to rase money for leukemia research, but in their first attempt at a charity event as a sci-fi fan group hit a lot of brick walls. She asked some good questions and got some good discussions going, and later on in the night thanked me again for putting the panel together and said it was inspirational and gave her hope for her own group.
Albin's 'Dog and Pony Show' presentation was better than I had heard folks rave about in the past. I think his efforts brought a lot of humor to the con and some good understanding about who the 501st is and what a cool thing just a couple of fans can be capable of.
We raised $800 for The Make a Wish Foundation in our raffle (more on this below). Our last raffle at Arisia brought in about $500 which has seemed kind of average for raffles. Folks that learned about what we were doing were very enthusiastic and one con staff member even threw in $100 of his own money at chances at the Red Sox tickets. We couldn't have done all of this without you folks sitting at tables, running around with tickets and that kind of thing. An extra special thanks goes to Lori who spent some of her Sunday afternoon calling winners who hadn't yet claimed their prizes.
On the whole I'm really happy with how this event turned out. Some things I learned through some snafus we had, and some ideas of how we can make events like this even better in the future:
If we make some kind of formal presence at Arisia again we should not do a visit to the Fast Track. They do work very hard there and the kids were very excited to see us but there wasn't enough supervison for me to be comfortable bringing armored folks in there. Some of the kids were totally off the wall and beating troops with their foam swords and things. We encountered plenty of kids while wandering the halls to brighten lots of faces, so I don't think we need to go locking ourselves into an area where we're surrounded again.
Given the prizes we had I think we could have sold way more raffle tickets, but truthfully my priority in planning had been on the ball and panels and collecting the prizes. We did have a system for selling, pulling and rewarding but I think there were too many prizes and the system was just too complicated for folks to easily remember (us, con patrons, Arisia staff and all). We didn't have any signage about the raffle (I had concerns about who would put them up, where we'd put them) and I'm sure that better advertising (beyond Livejournal, the Arisia Website and our own word of mouth) would have had a bigger impact. I think if we were going to do this kind of thing in the future having only a small handful of prizes all of the same caliber with tickets at one set price and doing the drawing with folks there (space willing) would have simplified a lot of things.
I think posting some kind of large signage for our own benefit with our schedule or having copies at the con may have helped folks know where to be when (if they so desired). Given everything we were doing and given the fact that I couldn't stick at the table all day on Saturday, I know there was some confusion over where to go when. I'm sorry if folks were running around crazy at times - it was my first time planning something of this scale for the NEG and Alderaan Base, so thank you for bearing with me.
Overall I think this was a good con for us, despite some snags along the way. I hope folks enjoyed themselves (despite some awkward or really strange con patrons - they are at any con but for whatever reason Arisia seems to attract a lot of them). I know we won't be able to do anything of this scale next year, because we won't have the same kind of connection to the con chair, but I'm pretty confident that Arisia would love to have us back in some kind of more limited capacity in 2009 if its something we'd like to do.
Pictures (not too many):
http://www.501neg.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=841&page=1
We'll have videos of the performances at the ball later once we get capture them from Bob and put them up on youtube.
My NEG (and pretty much the same for Alderaan Base) writeup of everything at a high level:
Hey Guys!
Thank you so much to the folks that made it out to this! I know that the con chair was very happy with our turnout and what we were able to bring to the con. Albin told me that he had a wonderful time and thanked us for all of our generosity. Though there were some snags (as there will be with any event) I think we did a great job and learned some good things for future con trooping.
I was told that Friday's dance was very well attended for a first-night event at the con. I can't tell you how many people stopped me to tell me how great they thought everyone looked, how amusing the performances were or how much the room felt like they were a part of Star Wars. A special thank you to the folks that sat and sold raffle tickets in the dark, crowded corner - by Friday night we had made over $200 in just a few hours at a dark, loud, crowded dance.
Oh my god, our panels! I knew we'd have a good time and have some folks there that were interested but I'm really blown away by the reception we got at our panels. Molding + Casting was standing room only with over 50 people there and folks crowding out into the hallway. Thank you Brian, Garrett and Terry for lugging all of your stuff there and sharing your mad skills. Some con patrons were really excited about it, and came up after the panel and wouldn't let these poor folks leave for their next activity.
We had a full room for the costume weathering panel as well, and we had a lot of good conversations going back and forth on cross-genre costuming which was really neat. I think we get stuck in the Star Wars universe sometimes and forget that there are other Sci-Fi verses out there where folks are struggling with the same kinds of projects. Thanks Bob, Brian and Drew for sitting up there and sharing your stuff.
The visits to the Fast Track were chaotic (more on this below) but I know the division head was very appreciative of us for going up there. We passed out some activity books and fake SW tattoos and hung out with the kids for about an hour. Margaret was the best handler ever, Carlos (NEGIA member) broke out his Vader suit for a first try and faced kids armed with foam sabers. We even had a couple of Jedi to keep us company that were newbies to the con.
Our last panels included one on Fandom and Charity and About the 501st. The first panel wasn't too well attended, though I wasn't expecting a huge crowd. Albin and I set on the panel with a members of the New England Browncoats and The Robert Heinlein Society and the groups shared information on what their groups did, how they came about and how they've dealt with some of the issues they've faced. Though we only had a couple of guests in the room to watch one woman in the front row was really excited about us being there. She had helped run the Star Trek Tribble Bash the night before where they went through a ton of efforts to rase money for leukemia research, but in their first attempt at a charity event as a sci-fi fan group hit a lot of brick walls. She asked some good questions and got some good discussions going, and later on in the night thanked me again for putting the panel together and said it was inspirational and gave her hope for her own group.
Albin's 'Dog and Pony Show' presentation was better than I had heard folks rave about in the past. I think his efforts brought a lot of humor to the con and some good understanding about who the 501st is and what a cool thing just a couple of fans can be capable of.
We raised $800 for The Make a Wish Foundation in our raffle (more on this below). Our last raffle at Arisia brought in about $500 which has seemed kind of average for raffles. Folks that learned about what we were doing were very enthusiastic and one con staff member even threw in $100 of his own money at chances at the Red Sox tickets. We couldn't have done all of this without you folks sitting at tables, running around with tickets and that kind of thing. An extra special thanks goes to Lori who spent some of her Sunday afternoon calling winners who hadn't yet claimed their prizes.
On the whole I'm really happy with how this event turned out. Some things I learned through some snafus we had, and some ideas of how we can make events like this even better in the future:
If we make some kind of formal presence at Arisia again we should not do a visit to the Fast Track. They do work very hard there and the kids were very excited to see us but there wasn't enough supervison for me to be comfortable bringing armored folks in there. Some of the kids were totally off the wall and beating troops with their foam swords and things. We encountered plenty of kids while wandering the halls to brighten lots of faces, so I don't think we need to go locking ourselves into an area where we're surrounded again.
Given the prizes we had I think we could have sold way more raffle tickets, but truthfully my priority in planning had been on the ball and panels and collecting the prizes. We did have a system for selling, pulling and rewarding but I think there were too many prizes and the system was just too complicated for folks to easily remember (us, con patrons, Arisia staff and all). We didn't have any signage about the raffle (I had concerns about who would put them up, where we'd put them) and I'm sure that better advertising (beyond Livejournal, the Arisia Website and our own word of mouth) would have had a bigger impact. I think if we were going to do this kind of thing in the future having only a small handful of prizes all of the same caliber with tickets at one set price and doing the drawing with folks there (space willing) would have simplified a lot of things.
I think posting some kind of large signage for our own benefit with our schedule or having copies at the con may have helped folks know where to be when (if they so desired). Given everything we were doing and given the fact that I couldn't stick at the table all day on Saturday, I know there was some confusion over where to go when. I'm sorry if folks were running around crazy at times - it was my first time planning something of this scale for the NEG and Alderaan Base, so thank you for bearing with me.
Overall I think this was a good con for us, despite some snags along the way. I hope folks enjoyed themselves (despite some awkward or really strange con patrons - they are at any con but for whatever reason Arisia seems to attract a lot of them). I know we won't be able to do anything of this scale next year, because we won't have the same kind of connection to the con chair, but I'm pretty confident that Arisia would love to have us back in some kind of more limited capacity in 2009 if its something we'd like to do.
