Would you like to play a game??

[http://users.livejournal.com/-demigod/]

How many people attend DragonCon is often asked each year after the convention.  Many people speculate about the number; as a result we get numbers as low as 20K and as high as 60K.  Web searches about DragonCon gives attendance in the 30K range.  The fact is the true attendance is known to only a handful of people in the DragonCon senior staff; and they are not talking.  Odd seeing how most conventions are more than happy to tell how many people attended their event.

So that got me thinking; is there a way to figure out how many people attended that isn’t just total speculation?  A possible answer came to me when I came across our badges from last year.  Most people when they get their badge, they look at the picture and their badge name and not much else.  However, if you look closer you will notice a number printed on the front of the badge.  Given how our last name isn’t common, my wife’s badge was right in front of mine; and more importantly the number on her badge was one lower than mine.

Which brings me to the hypothesis: If all the badge labels (attendees, staff, guest, dealers, etc..) are printed together? Then finding the highest number and subtracting the lowest number should give us a number of people at DragonCon.  Now this is not a foolproof plan.  The number on my badge last year was ~145725.  Which is way to high for a single year total; and too low for a total of all DragonCons, unless they hit a million a few years ago and had to restart at 1.

So the game is to try and find the lowest and the highest badge numbers.  The highest is fairly easy; just find someone with a Sunday only badge.  As they should be the last ones printed.  The hard part will be finding the lowest number.  I’m thinking it will be one of the senior directors.

So does anyone want to play??