[Steppes] Akon vs. Scottish festival

Sir Morgan Buchanan morganbuchanan at hotmail.com
Fri Apr 13 18:53:03 PDT 2007



> From: rudin at ev1.net> To: steppes at lists.ansteorra.org> Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:58:02 -0500> Subject: Re: [Steppes] Akon vs. Scottish festival> > Sir Morgan wrote:> > I happen to think AKon isn't the greatest venue either, but at least we're> > trying something different. My biggest issue with AKon isn't actually the> > target market of Anime fans, but the fact that it's really an uber-big > > event> > that doesn't give us much chance to actually build any rapport with> > people we know to be local.> > While we're playing Devil's Advocate, how could the size of the event reduce > the chance to build rapport, when that's always done in groups of two or > three anyway?> > Robin of Gilwell / Jay Rudin 
 
My opinion is two-fold in this regard.  The first part is factual, and the second is anecdotal.
 
First, I didn't say we can't build rapport, but that we had less chance to build rapport with people we know to be local.  The size of an event like AKon (I've heard about 12,000) necessitates that many of those who are drawn to it are not from Dallas/Fort Worth.  Many are not even from the region.  People come from all over the world.  So at an event like this, the odds that a given individual is from DFW or even Ansteorra are lower than a small local event that is far less likely to draw people from farther away.  This isn't a HORRIBLE thing, of course...if we recruit someone to the SCA who lives in Atlantia or An Tir or Northshield or the West or where ever they may be from, that's cool.  But it doesn't address our local recruitment issues as we'd like quite as much.
 
However, my own experience with various conventions from 500 person small local conventions to huge international affairs like Gen Con suggest to me that although you're certainly seen by a huge number of people, those people give you less of their time.  I believe that part of the reason our demos are largely ineffective is that we have such a small window to really engage a perspective individual in meaningful discourse.  We're reduced to essentially shilling the organization in 5 minute sales-pitches and hoping to get thier contact information or convince them to contact us at our contact points on a flyer we hand out.  I believe that if we do a more comprehensive convention experience where our populace who are interested in the convention attend with the secondary goal of relationship building, we're more likely to attract "our kind of geeks."  :)
 
For the sake of conversation, below I include a brief outline of a convention concept I've talked about with Faelin, Katheryn, Her Majesty Deanna, and many others.  I'm very open to suggestions, comments, critisizm, input...  
 
Morgan
 
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Here is my idea for a fully encompassing demo.
 
First of all is a general concept:  If we have trouble finding SCA people to do a demo, is that perhaps an indication that the venue isn't necessarily the best place to do a demo?  Why are we doing demos at places "we" don't want to go in the first place?
With this in mind and knowing how many SCAdians like going to Science Fiction, Fantasy, Comic and Gaming conventions, we've done demos at these conventions in the past with varrying degrees of success.
 
What seems to normally be done is we take a 1 hour slot time slot, wander around yelling to get people to come watch, fight, and talk to people during the fighting demo.  Then we leave.  A few SCAdians stay for the con.
 
This creates an atmosphere of desperation, in my opinion.  We are handcuffing ourselves by limiting our exposure and limiting the time we have to build relationships with our target market.
Demos like the various heritage festivals allow us to sit around all day long and in a more laid back atmosphere we can do our fighting and talk to people, but because the demographic is farther away from our target market, we're again less successful.  We're also in a situation where a person may never walk past us again because of the size of some of these festivals.
 
So the concept I have is to combine the two thusly.
 
First, we find as many of our populace as possible who want to actually attend the convention in question.  We can fill certain ranks with people who will be simply stopping by to help with some of the activities that we'll talk about later potentially, but without this group of actual con-goers, this concept won't work.
 
We acquire a table in an appropriate room.  At most conventions this will be a dealer's room, but we'll discuss it with the Con-Com and figure out what will be best.  We man this table with no more than 2 of our members on a regular basis.  Everyone who goes agrees to take some time on the rotation.  At this table we can have a display of A&S and armour as well as perhaps a laptop that has a slideshow or even potentially wireless access and we can show the http://scademo.com/ website.  We would also have an information gathering clipboard or whatever here to get contact info for interested parties as well as handout fliers.  I've found the "Why is this man smiling?" flyer to be terrific.  
 
We work with the Con-Com in advance and insinuate ourselves into their programming track.  I'd suggest we do 2-5 fighting demos sprinkled across the convention at various times.  We talk up these demos at our table.  We have a sign that says, "Next fighting Demo at 2:00 p.m. in the Green room" or whatever.  We have our best and brightest and give them a heck of a show at these demonstrations.
 
Finally, when possible, we run a party room at the convention on Friday and Saturday nights.  Most conventions have a mechanism for running an "official" party room.  We can use various medieval themes such as the Medieval Tavern or Hafla tent.  We serve refreshments and food.  Perhaps we do some bardic.  We tell war stories and talk about fighting and just how much FUN we have.
 
The key to all of this is that we're not locked into 5 minute opportunities to "convince" someone they're interested. We're building relationships.  We look less like we're shilling for members, even though we're actually working HARDER for members.  
 


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