By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 6/9/2016
Disclaimer: I was a sponsor and paid guest for Awesome Con held last weekend in Washington, DC so considered this a sponsored post. That said, as you know, I write a lot about comic cons, and I am not a spokesman for Awesome Con. These are my honest opinions and if you have any questions please […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 6/2/2016
Tomorrow Awesome Con in Washington DC kicks off, and The Beat will be there. In case you missed it, last year Awesome Con partnered up with Leftfield Media, the convention organization run by Greg Topalian, who founded New York Comic Con. Greg and I had a blast working on the very first NYCC together and […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 9/29/2015
A new con conglomerate is on the scene with LeftField Media LLC, launched last year by Greg Topalian, founder of New York Comic Con and some colleagues. They’ve been jetting around teaming with some of the smaller shows on the circuit as opposed to launching new ones — which on the crowded con circuit would […]
By: Heidi MacDonald,
on 4/25/2014
When news that the Salt Lake City FanX last weekend claimed to be the third largest comic con in the US came out earlier this week, there was some questioning by some veteran con observers of whether this number was accurate, given the number of people shown in photos. I reached out to the show runner Dan Farr to ask how the attendance number was arrived at, and he graciously replied:
Thanks for reaching out to me about this. I know there is always a lot of questions around how different events count attendee numbers. We based our numbers on estimated individuals not the turnstyle number (counting people each time they come). We had about 60-70K ticketed attendees (in Sept we had just over 50K ticketed) and then we added the number of non-ticketed free kids that we estimated at .5 per adult ticket. That was the same formula we used in Sept last year so either way it was clearly significant growth over the past 6 months. We had over 400,000 square feet of exhibit space plus 115,000 square feet of indoor ticketing area which was double the floor space we had in Sept. We also had around 50 – 75K square feet of meeting space for our panels etc.
So there you go, the number is an estimate, not a ticket count, but it is a consistent estimate with with the previous show in Salt Lake City. I appreciate Farr’s honesty in stating how this number was reached. Clearly there were a LOT of people at the event, whether you think the #3 claim is deserved or not.
I also asked Farr about the PR statement that the SLCC Facebook page had a reach of 2.5 million when it has just over 92,000 likes. He replied:
The reach of 2.5 million is based on the Facebook analytic numbers about how many people saw our posts during the week of the event.
So there you go…some weird FB metric I won’t even go into.
I notice that Awesome Con in Washington DC has claimed attendance of 40,000 and to be honest, their photos look even less like that number. Once again, I’m sure this was a great and successful event however the numbers were derived.
Once again, we’ve been seeing a lot of wishful thinking/porky pies* over the years on con attendance, and we’ll only see more of that as the business gets bigger. I would entreat show runners to stick as close to the truth as they can. An aura of flim-flammery and undue hype will hurt this still-rising event category more than it will help.
[Photo from the SLCC FB page, of the FanX volunteers.]
Cool. Wish I had gone.
Hmm… no mention of Con Wars with Wizard World Philly?
The week before was MegaCon (slowly evolving away from their comics-centric mission after being sold to Fan Expo).
MeCaf was also last weekend, as was Phoenix Comicon.
My big criticism? It’s held in the summer.
DC has roughly 80K university students, not to mention more in Maryland and Virginia (UMD, UVA, George Mason, Johns Hopkins…)
That photo op is the old Carnegie Library. It was once slated to house Judy Chicago’s “Dinner Party”, but UDC… well… Now it’s in Brooklyn.
The library was replaced in 1972 by a design by van der Rohe, a rare International Style building in a city of neoclassicism.
If you need to get away, I suggest the National Portrait Gallery/SAAM in the old Patent Office, at 8th and G. (Free admission, because Smithsonian.)
The convention center is nice… it’s also the home of the National Book Festival.
I’ve been there for BEA, and ALA.
The trick is to go up or down when you enter, as streets crisscross the site.
For cheap eats, there’s Mayur Kabab House next to the Methodist church on 11th and K. It’s been there since at least 1994, when I lived/worked at HI-DC across the corner.
North of the CC is Giant Food at Ninth and O.
Also.. when ranking shows, I’d go by attendance:
200K+ Comiket
100K+ CCI, NYCC, FanExpo Toronto
75K+
50K+
Also, note which shows use all of the convention center, and which have expanded outside.
This was one of those shows where it was kind of a bummer to be sitting behind my Artist Alley table the whole time. It was a great show for me, don’t get me wrong, and it was great meeting everyone and selling my Poop Office crap. But there was so much great stuff going on, I wish I could just attend it!
Couple other cool highlights that I noticed:
The MAGFest area had a free arcade, something that’s a staple of gaming conventions, but should really be at more comic conventions! There’s something magical about being at a comic convention and hearing that arcade Colossus scream!
Geppi’s Entertainment Museum had some display cases with some pretty valuable comics and a wonderful tribute to Darwyn Cooke. They also had a copy of Spawn #1 on display, which made me laugh and also feel a bit old.
It’s a very easy show to get to by public transportation, with a subway stop literally right at the entrance to the convention center. So it’s very easy to get a more affordable hotel room somewhere in the larger DC Metro area and then just take the Metro in each day.
Our table was within sight of the kid’s area (the K-Zone!), and it looked like they had tons of fun activities for kids the entire weekend.
Apparently there was some kind of science fair going on, too. I didn’t get to see it, but that’s cool as hell. There was also an entire segment of the show floor made up of government science agencies like NASA and the Dept. of Energy. Great use of the DC location!
Awesome Con is definitely on my list for next year. Comics & Politics sounds like an awesome panel!
I only went Sunday and so experienced the cons without many pros. Running out of program booklets by 10:15 AM Sunday, delaying the Capaldi and Coleman Q&A by 2 hours, shrinking the Q&A down to 35 minutes, and cancelling the Sunday costume contest without any announcement all pointed to massive disorganization. I’ll be interested in seeing what you say about this “too fast too soon” problem in your later post.
Not living up to the posted online photo timing policy caused major problems: “For your comfort we have implemented a “group” system much like the zones used in airports. Hence select photo ops are subdivided into 15 minute sessions per group – ex. Group 1 starts at 5pm, Group 2 at 5:15pm, Group 3 at 5:30pm, etc. This allows you to only arrive a few minutes before your group start time rather than wait an hour or more.” They clearly sold way too many photo ops to fit into each 15-minute slot (and continued to sell more even when they knew they were way off schedule).
https://store.epicphotoops.com/awesome-con/2016