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Hey Con Organizers!
14 years ago
So I'm going to a not-furry, business-type convention, and they did something brilliant. For people who pre-register, they mail their badges to them beforehand. In the mail! Before the con!
So, when I go to this convention, I won't have to deal with with slow/broken badge printers, or registration computers going down all the time, or any lines at all. I can just walk right in.
FURRY CONS. MAKE THIS HAPPEN! I'd gladly pay a few bucks extra to have this option.
So, when I go to this convention, I won't have to deal with with slow/broken badge printers, or registration computers going down all the time, or any lines at all. I can just walk right in.
FURRY CONS. MAKE THIS HAPPEN! I'd gladly pay a few bucks extra to have this option.
And yeah, it should be optional. Some people might prefer not to have their badges mailed.
Man, this is why this fandom still worries me. I support this notion and all it entails, Cons, MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Thats what a non-furry convention did when I went.
The con that's doing this has a barcode on the badge. I imagine they'll be scanning the badge as I walk in to the con, getting their numbers right.
1. Make people enter their own info, thusly they can take their time and its up to them to get it right.
2. Streamline the cashier process.
3. Flow!!! You make the reg room work in a flow and people herd themselves out.
4. Don't let stuff break. Maintain your equipment, test it, every last bit, set it up *early* test it again. Have backups, lots of them.
5. Don't throw ideas or people out when they get old. Sometimes throwing caution to the wind and going out on a wild idea is not the right thing to do. Know when something is a good idea.
6. Coordination! When your not even supposed to have reg open on Thursday, don't be badge checking.
7. Other things we don't like talking about, but you can imagine what if you have been to RainFurrest.
The fail was 1/3 of the mailed badges being lost or forgotten. People forget the mail that arrived back in February, and showed up with a "I need my badge." "We.. mailed it to you." "Uhm.. I forgot it?" Just a disaster. We worry that the same thing will happen again. Moving the mailing point closer to the convention might fix that somewhat, but that's also the point we're scrambling to get everything done.
There are other complications of the possibility: It would make refunding a mailed badge almost impossible as we'd have to collect that badge again. We'd never get to check the ID of the person getting the badge in the mail, leading to potential fraud; As another poster mentioned, we'd need a way to check to see if an attendee is of adult age.
This idea does come up every year, and we've debated it quite thoroughly, and for right now.. it's a no go. Pre-Registration at Anthrocon has evolved to crazy-fast due to a few innovations like printing all the Pre-reg badges the week before, and keeping computers well away from the Pre-reg area. (I can open pre-reg with a single Bic pen and one volunteer with a wicked hangover and still start the lines moving.) On-site registration will continue to have a line, even as we've gotten that quite efficient.
Mailing badges a good idea, but the complications around the edges are prohibitive for Anthrocon.
--Chiaroscuro, Anthrocon's Director of Registration
Cancelled membership? Just invalidate the barcode, let them keep the useless badge.
Forgot the badge? Invalidate the old barcode, print a badge with a new one.
Minor trying to sneak in? Train the guy with the barcode reader to card people who look younger than their badge claims. Let the database mark people who've already been carded and approved (or rejected!)
But yeah, furries will be furries and being prepared is always a good option. So few cons I've been to seem to be prepared in any way.
A big question for a big convention like AC is 'the guy with the barcode reader'. We have multiple chokepoints, and having to have a barcode-reader at the DLCC entrance, the Westin entrances, the Dealer's Room.. it could get immensely complex. It may work better for a smaller convention! Right now, our badge security is a very good system- minor badges and one-day badges quite clearly marked and legible from a 10-foot distance. The current system keeps badges in the hands of the right people, not that 99.9% of attendees don't behave anyway. (troublemakers are such a small, small, small contingent. But there's gonna be one knucklehead every year.)
As for preparedness.. I'm not so vain to say Anthrocon does everything right, and that we can't improve or take in new ideas. We LOVE new ideas, but we also scrutinize the heck out of them. That said: our system right now is really, really good; other furry conventions should be studying how we handle it, even as we look about at how other conventions do things and try to steal their good ideas. :)
(you know, FC, you're in an actual convention hall now...)
Some things we do: There are 14 separate Pre-registration lines on Thursday, the busy day. 2 Supersponsor, 2 Sponsor, 2 Attending, 1 Dealer, 1 Staff/Guests. We sort within attendance styles by last name to break up the lines, and the processing speed gets wonderfully fast. Even for On-Site, we break that into two lines, and have 6 payment stations. Even smaller conventions can benefit from dividing lines up.
We pre-print all the Pre-reg stuff: badges, sign-in sheets, etc. That way the computers don't have to be live. If the computers all caught fire, we can get still 2/3 of the con handled. More usually, we can open Pre-reg earlier when we have the staff, begin the processing, and roll folks through while we make sure the tech setup is good. If there is one thing I can urge conventions to do, it's this
We have a command structure for when problems occur, and problems do occur. People know to pass problems up to more senior staff if they're unsure, and that keeps the lines from stalling.
Sorry if I'm ranting a bit. I try to spread success around.
Are you on drugs? WTF!! THAT KIND OF TALK WILL
BRING THE GREAT OLD ONES DOWN TO EAT OUR
BRAINS AND DRINK OUR LEMONADE AND....DO..
OTHER THINGS........TO US.........!!
STOP IT!!
NEVER MENTION THIS AGAIN!!
On a side note, I'd also gladly pay a bit extra to get
my badge mailed to me BEFORE the con starts!!
Also: MR. MOOSE AT FC? Yes.yes.good.
And yes, EFF CEEEEEEEE~~ I'll probably mostly be hanging around the artists' lounge or whatever they call it.
FC for example, nothing is really going on Thursday, and if there is it won't start until much later.
I did this for the two Anthrocons I went to, and they were literally walk-ups.
PAX has been dealing with fake badges year after year. They mail their badges out beforehand, and in that time many people have found ways to duplicate even the most elaborate badges.
And PAX has tons of money to spend on hot plastic bonded badges (think like drivers licenses) with holographic and UV inlays.
Now what do furry cons have? Not a whole lot, we cant have these badges like above because they require runs of around 50,000 and all that. We can do dye sub badge printers, but those are a dime a dozen (hit me up at FC if you want something printed on one! I will have one of my 6 badge printers there) and security features creeps into the more expensive range.
In response to some things you have said:
Having a barcode on the badge would fix most of these issues:
Barcode readers that smart are expensive (On the order of about $100 each after buying the reader, replacing the batteries, fixing shit, buying grips), then you also still need 100% wifi coverage or a very complicated update procedure. I have studied these things extensively and own quite a few different types of them. I intend to make use of them at some point, but there are many hurdles to get over, like cost and how much it would slow things down at times... but one thing that we haven't been able to shake that much is how when you slap a barcode next to someone's name, it makes them feel. Some people have expressly said that they would stop attending an event if they started placing barcodes on their badges and actually used them.
Oh, and RFID? Wait for my paper on that one. To put it simply: its not possible to do it without screwing up in some way, and if you screw up in the wrong way, your really screwed.
So why do professional conventions mail out badges beforehand? Because either, as above, they have made heavy investments in security technologies, or because they don't care. Do you really think someone's employer is going to spend alot of money to fly people out to a convention, but fake their badges?
So how do you fix this? I have been working with
Unfortunately, this backfired on me at FC.... TWICE! The sponsor line was short, so of course they took 1 person from the sponsor line for every 10-15 people that moved through the pre-reg line. You know, to keep it "fair".
I think it's just easier for the handlers to have a small line of people mad at them rather than a 4-wide line that stretches down the hallway and around the corner mad at them. If this method is going to continue to be used, they need to take a hint from the airlines and have at least one DEDICATED cashier for sponsors and patrons. This cashier serves the other line ONLY when the sponsor/patron line is empty.
Or adopt a better system, such as the barcode system.
The barcode system doesn't require that all badges look the same. Minor and one-day badges can still be different colours. With barcode scanners at the entrances to the major con venues (Dealer's den, dances, shows, etc), the first scan of the card would prompt the bouncer to check the bearer's ID. It would be checked not only for age, but matching names. This prevents duplicate cards/barcodes. They sign on the reader (like when you sign for a package) to agree to the terms (which they would have already read since it would be provided with the badge in the mail), the badge is approved in the system and the bearer is on their way. Subsequent scans are quick and painless.
You don't need someone manning every entrance to the hotel, you need a couple at the entrance(s) to each venue. Number of people stationed there can be varied. 3 per entrance of the dealer's den at opening time. 5 at the entrances to the main stage as people are entering for the masquerade. Easy.
The only people standing in line will be those registering at the con and those who have forgot their cards. They wait in the same (small) line.
Hotels and convention centres have wireless throughout and special consideration is made for cons. This is not an excuse.
People who refuse to come because they don't want a barcode associated with them? C'mon, really? There's got to be maybe 10 of them out there and 8 of them would come anyway.
Cons big enough to have people complaining about the lines can afford a one-time cost of a couple hundred dollars each for decent handheld scanners.
Have I missed anything?
the first scan of the card would prompt the bouncer to check the bearer's ID.
This means there will need to be something like 5 "bouncers" per double doorway. Also then you need a custom app to do this with, or pay through the nose for TicketMaster to write something. This is already getting into the expensive range...
Yeah, and for all but the absolute largest con these readers will be completely unaffordable. You do know the average retail price of the average wifi enabled reader like this is $2200, right?
You don't need someone manning every entrance to the hotel, you need a couple at the entrance(s) to each venue. Number of people stationed there can be varied. 3 per entrance of the dealer's den at opening time. 5 at the entrances to the main stage as people are entering for the masquerade. Easy.
Now youve turned one huge line into a bunch of big lines, how do you think attendees will feel? What if it all breaks? Stop letting people in, or just toss the whole thing out?
Cons big enough to have people complaining about the lines can afford a one-time cost of a couple hundred dollars each for decent handheld scanners.
Califur has lines people complain about, can they spend the $4000 in capital to buy into this thing?
Hotels and convention centres have wireless throughout and special consideration is made for cons. This is not an excuse.
Uh, no.
For example, the Seattle Airport Hilton does not have wireless in the convention center at all.
And if they did, they were talking $100 a day per device.
The Washington State Convention Center charges $150 per day, per device.
I think at this point its painfully obvious that the convention runners have looked at this idea, not even at this scale, and tossed it because its just too infeasible for a con that does not have 10k+ attendees.
Let's say it's Friday morning at BigCon. There's a huge line-up for both pre-reg and at-con reg, and one (or both) is moving slowly. You should be going to any length to avoid making your paying customers sit around in con stew for hours.
So let's take a queue from restaurants and adopt something like the pager system. You don't have to buy any pager hardware -- nearly everybody has a cell phone.
So make everybody take a sequential ID number, and leave their cellphone number. When their ID number is almost ready to be processed, send the cellphone a text message telling them to get to the reg desk. There you can make a short queue of people responding to the message.
Now, you guys don't have to deal with an angry, stanky mob; and the customer is free to wander around until their number is up.
Now, furries will be furries, and they'll wander away from the con, or not hear their phone go off; if this happens, they can re-queue. If they don't have a cellphone, they can wait somewhere near the reg desk and you can just shout their name or ID when it's their time.
This works for restaurants because people are hungry and they want to dine right now. When the pager goes off they have alot of incentive to come right back. And they do, reliably, quickly.
In a reg line thats not quite the case, they will be off talking to friends, and delay and all that, come back at irregular intervals. Thats assuming that text messages are nearly instant, which we all know is not always the case. This causes a kind of bunching, so suddenly you have two choices:
1. Have a line to even it out.
2. Have idle reg people.
The problem with #1 is people will be upset that they were made to take a number, just to stand in line again.
The problem with #2 is, if you don't have enough people to get everyone through fast, then even less people is just that much worse.
So, you could even it out by taking random people that show up in between the pager people, but that really does not help much with people's impression and might lead to alot of the pager people being angry that they could have just shown up.
Oh, and this is all assuming that the pager people dont show up with 5 of their friends and make a fuss about needing to register them too.
Now, the biggest problem with this is: It does not fix the line problem at all, the line still exists, its just cast into the ether.
Ideas on ways to get rid of the line itself?
Also, while discussing this barcode thing with a co-worker who is a PAX Enforcer, we thought up a way it would fail to prevent duplicates: just duplicate the barcode on a good badge.
We *do* have a minor idea along that notion I'm hoping to get to in the future at Anthrocon, that will help with one chokepoint of data entry. Our biggest chokepoint will probably remain payment-collection, signature collection, and ID checking at On-site.. even if efficient, that's still a 60-90 second process and that limits our processing speed.
The trick is here. Leave their cellphone number.. where? How? Written a sheet of paper would be a quick collection, but likely to lead to terrible scrawling. On a computer? It'd be better to just have that computer collect all their information while they're typing it in.
Not that it's a wholly unworkable idea, but these are the concerns that spring up when I ponder this sort of system.
1. It's possible. Cons of varying types do it.
2. Furry Convention attendees want it.
Enough said.
Anthrocon's usual handling of this is to take 2 from the On-site Sponsor/Supersponsor line, and 1 from the Attending line, until the S/SS line empties. Then we upsell the empty line anyone willing to pay Sponsor amounts might jump to. It's slightly different than a dedicated cashier, but it has the similar effect of rapid processing. We also have separate Pre-registration lines for Sponsors and Supersponsors, which open guaranteed earliest of any lines.
[i]Hotels and convention centres have wireless throughout and special consideration is made for cons. This is not an excuse.
The DLCC in Pittsburgh has wireless throughout! Attendees can access it for the lovely price of $20 a day. But i doesn't reach into the conveniyon halls; that wireless is $100 or so a day. per vendor. The DLCC gives us quite a few special considerations, but they're out to make money too.
Subsequent scans are quick and painless.
Honestly? I don't see any barcode scan as quick and painless. You've got to have everyone bring their badge up to a scannable point; you eliminate the ability for a fast glance from several feet away. There is also absolutely no way that scanning a badge and getting a barcode approval will be as rapid as a pair of eyes looking at a badge- not with the need to scan the device, ping a server for info, and bounce it back to the device. The process of actually enjoying the convention would be slowed down, in an attempt to speed up what should be a quick-moving Pre-registration line. There's possible merit to it, but for the size and budget of most furry cons, it's dramatically infeasible.
The only people standing in line will be those registering at the con and those who have forgot their cards. They wait in the same (small) line.
People registering On-site account for a third of Anthrocon's attendees. That will never be a small line. I would expect that figure to be usual for most furry conventions as well.
Great idea ^^