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Vandalia-Con: Report
7 May 2014 10:45 pmI first heard about Vandalia-Con last year at the Pittsburgh Comicon in September. As a new con, it was an unknown quantity with two things going for it. First, it was relatively nearby in Parkersburg, WV, only a two and a half hour drive. Secondly, they were set up as a non-profit with all of the proceeds dedicated to breast cancer screening and services. What's not to like?
I was on programming and wanted to support a local and worthy cause so, in spite of still being unemployed, I went.
The convention was held in the 1889 Blennerhassett Hotel, a fantastic opportunity for a steampunk convention. They had a period styled sitting room which offered a fireplace, wood paneling and high-back chairs. They called it a library but most of the books on the shelves were not the sorts of things you felt you could just leaf through or read casually. The vintage hardcover collections of National Geographic should not have been unreachable on the highest shelf. The second floor, where the conference rooms were, had a lounge area. A band played in the area on Friday nice. Nice for con-goers. Not so nice, perhaps, for non-congoers with adjacent rooms. The third floor (where my room was) had an atrium with tables and a nice skylight. Another nice place to congregate unless it's late at night and people are trying to sleep. The rooms themselves were typical of hotels.
My airships presentation was scheduled for 9:00 Saturday morning. Too early. Not that I have a problem getting up for it but most other people do. Better to schedule programming no earlier that 10. With that, I had one person show up. About half way through, another person came in and the first got up to leave because there was another program set to start at 9:30.
That's another scheduling thing. Conventions with multiple programming tracks have enough problems with competing content but to have people getting up half way through one to go to another. I can see why they did it that way. They slotted 1.5 hour blocks which, since most programs are built to fit in an hour, provide a lot of set up and take down time in between. This also limits overall time for programming so staggering programming in these cases is common.
As to my program, I didn't have a chance to do any tweaking of my airship presentation from the previous week when I decided that it needed to be more of a resource for writers and world builders.
My Mystery Airships presentation was scheduled for 7pm and I had one person show up for that as well. Two more people showed up later because the one of the presenters scheduled opposite me canceled their program because no one showed up and he wanted to attend a third program. With attendance what it was (more on that later) there weren't a lot of people available to fill three tracks of programming plus the dealer's room. Afternoon programming wasn't bad, at least in the panels I went to, but the ends were sparse.
Except for the performances on Saturday night. Those were well attended in no small part because there wasn't anything else on the program to compete with them. I think that if this is going to remain a small con that the schedule should be tightened up with fewer tracks.
One of the dealers had a the Lindburg 38” Graf Zeppelin model and I was sorely tempted. Being unemployed means you have plenty of free time to do things like build models. However, you tend not to have any money for the purchase of said models. I was able to resist, though.
There was an auction with play money. You could attend the gaming track and gamble your way into having more money or simply pay cash for more play money, proceeds going to the cause. One of the donated items in the auction was a small lasercut steel Graf Zeppelin. Bidding went wild for that item and I lost out. Well, if I really want one, they are available for $10.
Parkersburg is one of those towns that rolls up the streets in the evening. The Crystal Cafe just across the street was a nice place to have breakfast but they didn't have any evening hours and were closed on Sunday. Aside from the Jimmy John's a block up the street, I would have needed to get in the car and drive somewhere to find a place to eat.
Unlike most of the other cons I've been to, the hotel was not dominated by con-goers. There were a lot of regular people there for business conferences, senior proms and, given the way the town closes up, the hotel seemed to have the only open restaurant downtown. And so there was a lot of interaction with people wondering what was going on. Yet another opportunity for me to explain what steampunk is.
Sunday afternoon had a steampunk parade where the attendees would walk a few blocks to the park where a women's health fair would be set up. Pirates were pulling the carriage because there was no horse. Professor Bubblemaker was making bubbles. The 20 or so participants were cheered on by the 20 or so townspeople who turned out to watch.
Part of the con Gold Ticket admission price was a tour of the Blennerhassett Mansion and a ride on the sternwheeler to get you down the Ohio River to the island where the mansion sits. The sternwheeler was an actual sternwheeler unlike the Gateway Clipper boats in Pittsburgh which only have stern wheels that rotate as the boat moves under the power of a conventional propeller. The tour of the mansion was interesting enough but a little disappointing when you learn that it burned down in 1811 and was recreated in the 1980s.
I spoke to Shelly, running the show, at the Symposium a week previously and asked how she was doing with pre-reg. Fourteen. That did not seem encouraging but she said she expected more to pay at the door. Most of the other cons I am familiar with tend to have higher pre-reg numbers compared to at the door and day-passes but, then again, most of those conventions are established. She hoped for 100 to 150 total.
At the end of Friday, I asked Shelly again how things were going and they were up to 40. A little more respectable. There were clearly more people on Saturday and I know two of the people who came down from Pittsburgh for just the day. I didn't get a chance to ask on Sunday how things had gone overall because I wasn't going to get up early for their 8:30 am con planning panel but I don't think they broke the 100 mark.
What held the attendance back? I was at the first of most of the cons in the region; Tesla Con, Steampunk World's Fair, World Steam Expo, the Steampunk Empire Symposium, all of those did very well right out of the gate and had good attendance. Why should they do so well while Vandalia Con was so sparse?
Well, in the case of the World's Fair, there was Jeff Mach's reputation and experience doing other conventions. Tesla Con also benefited from those sorts of things as well. Geographically, the Expo and Symposium benefited from having a local steampunk community. Could that be it? Parkersburg is not so far off the beaten pass. It's less than 2 hours away from Columbus. Pittsburgh is 2.5 hours away. Cincinnati is 3 hours off. Those places have decent sized steampunk communities and I count myself among the people who will drive further to get somewhere. It's five hours for me to get to either the Symposium or the World's Fair. I drive ten hours for Tesla Con. Is three hours too much for the steampunks in Columbus and Cincinnati?
Maybe it is for an unknown quantity con trying to enter an already crowded market. The Symposium was a week before and the World's Fair was the week after. Was it a timing issue? Are three cons in a row too much for people? I know that there are a significant number of people in Ohio who aren't driving the 8 to 10 hours to get to the World's Fair, are two cons in a row too much for them when one of them is only a few hours away?
They seem intent on doing it again next year and given that they are operating as a non-profit and got a lot of resources donated, their budget can probably support it. That is, if the people donating feel they got their money's worth. I hope that word-of-mouth improves attendance next year. At this point, I intended to return.
I was on programming and wanted to support a local and worthy cause so, in spite of still being unemployed, I went.
The convention was held in the 1889 Blennerhassett Hotel, a fantastic opportunity for a steampunk convention. They had a period styled sitting room which offered a fireplace, wood paneling and high-back chairs. They called it a library but most of the books on the shelves were not the sorts of things you felt you could just leaf through or read casually. The vintage hardcover collections of National Geographic should not have been unreachable on the highest shelf. The second floor, where the conference rooms were, had a lounge area. A band played in the area on Friday nice. Nice for con-goers. Not so nice, perhaps, for non-congoers with adjacent rooms. The third floor (where my room was) had an atrium with tables and a nice skylight. Another nice place to congregate unless it's late at night and people are trying to sleep. The rooms themselves were typical of hotels.
My airships presentation was scheduled for 9:00 Saturday morning. Too early. Not that I have a problem getting up for it but most other people do. Better to schedule programming no earlier that 10. With that, I had one person show up. About half way through, another person came in and the first got up to leave because there was another program set to start at 9:30.
That's another scheduling thing. Conventions with multiple programming tracks have enough problems with competing content but to have people getting up half way through one to go to another. I can see why they did it that way. They slotted 1.5 hour blocks which, since most programs are built to fit in an hour, provide a lot of set up and take down time in between. This also limits overall time for programming so staggering programming in these cases is common.
As to my program, I didn't have a chance to do any tweaking of my airship presentation from the previous week when I decided that it needed to be more of a resource for writers and world builders.
My Mystery Airships presentation was scheduled for 7pm and I had one person show up for that as well. Two more people showed up later because the one of the presenters scheduled opposite me canceled their program because no one showed up and he wanted to attend a third program. With attendance what it was (more on that later) there weren't a lot of people available to fill three tracks of programming plus the dealer's room. Afternoon programming wasn't bad, at least in the panels I went to, but the ends were sparse.
Except for the performances on Saturday night. Those were well attended in no small part because there wasn't anything else on the program to compete with them. I think that if this is going to remain a small con that the schedule should be tightened up with fewer tracks.
One of the dealers had a the Lindburg 38” Graf Zeppelin model and I was sorely tempted. Being unemployed means you have plenty of free time to do things like build models. However, you tend not to have any money for the purchase of said models. I was able to resist, though.
There was an auction with play money. You could attend the gaming track and gamble your way into having more money or simply pay cash for more play money, proceeds going to the cause. One of the donated items in the auction was a small lasercut steel Graf Zeppelin. Bidding went wild for that item and I lost out. Well, if I really want one, they are available for $10.
Parkersburg is one of those towns that rolls up the streets in the evening. The Crystal Cafe just across the street was a nice place to have breakfast but they didn't have any evening hours and were closed on Sunday. Aside from the Jimmy John's a block up the street, I would have needed to get in the car and drive somewhere to find a place to eat.
Unlike most of the other cons I've been to, the hotel was not dominated by con-goers. There were a lot of regular people there for business conferences, senior proms and, given the way the town closes up, the hotel seemed to have the only open restaurant downtown. And so there was a lot of interaction with people wondering what was going on. Yet another opportunity for me to explain what steampunk is.
Sunday afternoon had a steampunk parade where the attendees would walk a few blocks to the park where a women's health fair would be set up. Pirates were pulling the carriage because there was no horse. Professor Bubblemaker was making bubbles. The 20 or so participants were cheered on by the 20 or so townspeople who turned out to watch.
Part of the con Gold Ticket admission price was a tour of the Blennerhassett Mansion and a ride on the sternwheeler to get you down the Ohio River to the island where the mansion sits. The sternwheeler was an actual sternwheeler unlike the Gateway Clipper boats in Pittsburgh which only have stern wheels that rotate as the boat moves under the power of a conventional propeller. The tour of the mansion was interesting enough but a little disappointing when you learn that it burned down in 1811 and was recreated in the 1980s.
I spoke to Shelly, running the show, at the Symposium a week previously and asked how she was doing with pre-reg. Fourteen. That did not seem encouraging but she said she expected more to pay at the door. Most of the other cons I am familiar with tend to have higher pre-reg numbers compared to at the door and day-passes but, then again, most of those conventions are established. She hoped for 100 to 150 total.
At the end of Friday, I asked Shelly again how things were going and they were up to 40. A little more respectable. There were clearly more people on Saturday and I know two of the people who came down from Pittsburgh for just the day. I didn't get a chance to ask on Sunday how things had gone overall because I wasn't going to get up early for their 8:30 am con planning panel but I don't think they broke the 100 mark.
What held the attendance back? I was at the first of most of the cons in the region; Tesla Con, Steampunk World's Fair, World Steam Expo, the Steampunk Empire Symposium, all of those did very well right out of the gate and had good attendance. Why should they do so well while Vandalia Con was so sparse?
Well, in the case of the World's Fair, there was Jeff Mach's reputation and experience doing other conventions. Tesla Con also benefited from those sorts of things as well. Geographically, the Expo and Symposium benefited from having a local steampunk community. Could that be it? Parkersburg is not so far off the beaten pass. It's less than 2 hours away from Columbus. Pittsburgh is 2.5 hours away. Cincinnati is 3 hours off. Those places have decent sized steampunk communities and I count myself among the people who will drive further to get somewhere. It's five hours for me to get to either the Symposium or the World's Fair. I drive ten hours for Tesla Con. Is three hours too much for the steampunks in Columbus and Cincinnati?
Maybe it is for an unknown quantity con trying to enter an already crowded market. The Symposium was a week before and the World's Fair was the week after. Was it a timing issue? Are three cons in a row too much for people? I know that there are a significant number of people in Ohio who aren't driving the 8 to 10 hours to get to the World's Fair, are two cons in a row too much for them when one of them is only a few hours away?
They seem intent on doing it again next year and given that they are operating as a non-profit and got a lot of resources donated, their budget can probably support it. That is, if the people donating feel they got their money's worth. I hope that word-of-mouth improves attendance next year. At this point, I intended to return.
