As I prepare for DragonCon and other upcoming shows to promote L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume 41, I am grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to work at a few conventions, which prepared me for the working side that I did not see as a fan.
In an earlier post, I mentioned my time with the Grand Comics Database (GCD). While I enjoyed the people and believed in the mission, the highlight was organizing our first-ever convention booth experience. Since their founding in 1994, members have led a few panels (at the San Diego Comic-Con, no less), but I wanted to see if we could recruit new users and volunteers for our website.
It is not a revelation that a lot of work goes behind convention booths, but I had a small team of dedicated people ready to make this happen. We had enough volunteers to staff four events: Planet Comicon Kansas City (booth & panel), AwesomeCon DC (booth), Heroes Convention NC (booth & panel), and Baltimore ComicCon (booth).
It was a crash course on convention logistics. For example, we sized for a specific booth size, but when one location donated more space, we couldn’t fill it. We wanted to use the internet because we are a website, but many convention halls didn’t have enough WiFi coverage or bandwidth. Volunteers travelled from different states to help us out, which required coordination that I hadn’t anticipated (one didn’t even have a cell phone). We bought a nice banner, but how do you hang it up on a budget? (Hint: PVC pipe is your friend)
A few members wanted to support at other conventions across the U.S. and Europe, so we made t-shirts and bookmarks, which had to be packaged and mailed.
This seems obvious now, but I remember it being a learning curve. I had experience as a project manager, which helped (a lot), but I still needed to navigate a whole new world. Everybody involved dedicated their time to making this a reality, and I am grateful to this day for every single one of them. We were successful enough to do Baltimore ComicCon in 2015 to celebrate our success and hang out as a team, sharing the stories of that special year together.
