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??

Comments

[adrian76.livejournal.com]

Uh, nice try...but those are member numbers, not counts. The member number is reused each year for attendees...mine has been the same since 2000 (when I started going) even the year I wasn't working staff. I have an idea of how many people attend, but it is based on rough speculation and overheard conversations...nothing truly accurate. All I know is that the official number last year was 35,000 with an obvious "wink wink" thrown in by Pat Henry.

[astralfire.livejournal.com]

The number of people at Dragon*Con last year was about 32K. This count also includes day badges. Which means if 1000 people by a Friday only then those people should not be there the next day, and so on for the other days.

There are a number of comments over the past year about the numbers being way higher than the 30,000+ listed on the website. The main reason for these were due to the bottle neck at the Marriott caused by the construction.

The Marriott bottle neck reduced the flow of people between all the hotels just like sand in an hour glass. As higher attended events (ie. parade, masquerade, Dealer hall open/close) happened, people would move through the bottle neck, and notice the LARGE number of people at the convention. The ripple effect was than many people stopped moving around and tended to stay in their favorite people watching spot in the Hyatt lobby.

We have done a lot of work over the last year getting programming in all four hotels and even planned on airing our larges events so people can go take a break in their rooms and still see the panel.

[drhaggis.livejournal.com]

Curse your reasonable, and logical response! Let the conspiracy theories fly!

Clearly there are thousands of undocumented attendees stealing our slack (http://www.subgenius.com/)

:)

[astralfire.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do not doubt there are some people sneaking over the border, but to reach the numbers people claim are there, it would have to be about 20k or more. That would be two non-badged people per three badged people.

[tempest-omouthy.livejournal.com]

Unrelated, were you the shoveler last year? If so, I was like, the only person who knew who you were in the Hyatt main elevator area at the start of con and you made my day. I told you you shovel very well. :)

[drhaggis.livejournal.com]

POST CON REPLY!

Unfortunately I have never completed my oft dreamt of Shoveller costume. Sometimes it's the simple ones that take the most time.

[starlady42.livejournal.com]

Part of the reason for the disparity in numbers is that many cons count attendance as # of people per day X number of days -- so if you buy a 4-day badge, you're counted 4 times. Dragon*Con doesn't do this, but to compare it to other conventions, some people may be doing this extrapolation. It's hard to accurately run the numbers -- if one person buys a 4-day badge, one buys a Friday-only badge, and one buys a Sunday-only badge, is that 3 attendees (total number of people), 6 attendees (1 person for 4 days and 2 people for 1 day each) or 1.5 attendees (1 full con attendance and 2 25% con attendances)? So the number of badges sold really doesn't tell you all that much about the number of people at the 'con at any one point, as astralfire notes above.

And yes, the number on the badge is an ID number. My badge number has been 2449 for 11 years. If you find the highest one possible, it should tell you how many unique people have attended Dragon*Con over the years (plus or minus, given that some people have probably gotten altogether new badges if they've dropped out of the system for a few years and/or moved).