Re: The terrible Pre-Reg line

[baka.livejournal.com]

Why doesn't Dragon*Con send out badges before the con?
Does anyone know? I'm just thinking "you know, why bother to register when you can just walk up and get a ticket next year" besides it being cheaper, I think I'm willing to opt out of a 3-4 hour line for 50 bucks.

Comments

[incyr.livejournal.com]

It's just my opinion, but I can't believe Fraud is really that big of an issue. The reason for this? Other conventions send out badges ahead of time, and seem to do just fine with it.

As far as cost goes, I'd rather pay an extra $10 for S&H/etc. than stand in line for 3 hours. Tack on another $5 for a tracking code so that D*Con can verify delivery if you're worried about the post office.

PAX, which services 60k+ people at this point, does all their pre-reg badges well in advance. The system is great, I've never heard ANY complaints or issues of fraud. It boggles me that D*Con can't do the same thing, especially since the 2 cons cost about the same (I actually think D*Con is more expensive, by a few $.)

[jarissa.livejournal.com]

I can't believe Fraud is really that big of an issue

Did you have any trouble getting host hotel rooms at the D*C rate this year, or last year? Did you hear that a large chunk of our D*C rate rooms in the host hotels, definitely last year and possibly this year, were taken by football fans who passed our registration code around their forums and communities like it's the newest Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition?

Or, hey, what about this story (http://community.livejournal.com/dragoncon/1638498.html), posted a year ago by pdfunplugged right here in this community? First one I found, doesn't mean it's the only one posted.

You are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but I take for granted that you will base it in evidence. I've met folks who insist on basing their opinions on vague impressions formed by what they have(n't) personally witnessed -- indeed, I've met folks who insist on basing their opinions on what they would LIKE to be true, and responded to all demonstration of physical law with "but I feel it!" -- but a quick perusal of your blog tells me that you're a person who knows how to think for herself. That certainly doesn't mean you'll agree with me; it just means you'll look at evidence and compare it to your current point of view.

[trybutez.livejournal.com]

This obviously woudln't impact the entire line, but I think it could be cut in half, maybe more... if the Con worked with the host Hotels and had your badges waiting for you at check in.

Obviously people local and day passes would still be stuck in line, but I would imagine the line would be significantly shorter...

[amyth315.livejournal.com]

The only problem I would see with this solution would be for those who are in overflows. You'd have to let D*C registration know what hotel your going to be in for this to work.

[datavortex.livejournal.com]

Good idea.

[kkatowll.livejournal.com]

That would be a great idea! The hotel is confirming our IDs anyway...

[hxcpunkchick.livejournal.com]

And what of those who don't get in a host hotel?

[incyr.livejournal.com]

Actually, you could use this to help stop the hotel fraud as well. You'd need to pick up your D*Con badge to get the rate for the weekend - so all those football fans would either need to pony up for a d*con membership, or they'd miss out on the rate.

How you'd implement this, I'm not sure. But it'd be worth looking into - solve two problems at once.

[xffan-2000.livejournal.com]

Just mail out the badges ahead of time!

Seriously, what's the obsession with thinking people will make fake badges? And so what if there are fakes? Just require panels/room "guards" to check more closely (random checks for the huge panels, obviously). From what I've read on other posts, it wouldn't matter if somebody had weeks or just a few hours, fakes can be produced, so "waiting until the very last second" to give people badges seems rather lame.

I've been go GenCon for years, there are thousands of people there, yet they send out badges AND event tickets (something that'd be much easier to fake than the D*C badges) ahead and there hasn't been any major counterfeiting ring. I skip the lines at GenCon completely. And, yes, I'd be more than willing to pay a bit extra for shipping and handling if I could avoid the D*C line, too.

But if D*C is dead-set against sending badges out ahead of time, then how about opening up registration on Wednesday *all day*? And *all day* Thursday. Honestly, people are arriving earlier and earlier each year and there's nothing to do but wait for registration to open, why wait until 2 or 3 or 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon?

There have been other great ideas presented here, like hiring a professional company to handle it, use barcodes on the postcards, let every line handle every name via computer, and/or break up the ABC lines earlier and avoid the switch-backs, I agree with all of those.

Please, SOMEBODY in charge of this stuff LISTEN to these suggestions and actually DO something for next year!

early reg

[zoe57.livejournal.com]

We come in on wednesday so as to avoid to crowds. that would be a good idea.

Re: early reg

[puppynme2.livejournal.com]

I agree. I'm not sure of all the logistics involved in getting the badges ready but if they allowed us locals or the early bird out of towners to pick up our badges a few days early, that would clear a significant number of us out of the way for the out of towners arriving on Thursday and Friday.

[comix-geek.livejournal.com]

For all that are complaining about having registration open on Wednesday, the convention doesn't start until Friday and the Con is very gracious to give out badges on Thursday. I didn't get to the con until about 4:30 or 5 p.m. Friday I waited about 3 seconds in line and a few minutes while he searched for my badge sticker. I've been doing this for 13 Dragon*Cons in a row and I've had to do the wait in line routine of on-site registration also, but even with my younger brother not getting his pre-reg postcard in the mail for 2 years straight he didn't have problems or a long wait either. It seems the people who complain the most have the least patience, because you are not only person coming to the con and if you have physical disabilities they are more than accommodating. If I can wait I think it's possible for others.

[datavortex.livejournal.com]

Your experience is an outlier when considering pre-registered people who pick up badges on Thursday evening or Friday morning (IE, those who don't want to miss events), wait for an average of hours.

I waited for 80 minutes this year on Thursday and I felt lucky. Last year was about three time that.

This is not acceptable when excellent, inexpensive, tried and tested automated solutions exist.

[drhaggis.livejournal.com]

The current system is clearly designed to prevent counterfeiting, and to insure that you actually get your badge, rather than someone else grabbing it and leaving you without.

The amount of time actually spent at the booth is short and reasonable, a testament to the efficiency of the volunteers.

The slack in the system is in the fact that people, understandably, don't line up in alphabetical groups, so many booths remain empty until those folks can reach them.

If the convention wants to keep the current binder system, one needs to break people into alpha-subgroups sooner. Which is what they tried to do by calling up different letter groups, which resulted in at least two separate queues forming. Breaking people up at the door would be more efficient; A-M goes left N-Z goes right. The the same amount of pipe-and-drape should be able to create two separate lines. Having different letter groups in different rooms, even different hotels, would be more troublesome logistically, but would make the total registration time shorter.

Having any booth issue any badge would work great too, proving that the computer system needed to regulate it never failed, printers never stopped working or ran out of ink and paper. I would not want to be in that line when the computer system went down and no one could get a badge. Not an impossible system to maintain, but definitely more expensive and demanding than the no-tech binders.

The line time would be shorter still if the badges didn't need our names on them. No personalization and no label printing would simplify the entire process, no matter how the line is arranged. Are day passes personalized?

I know having names on badges is a big tradition, and a great social tool, but it would save time and effort on the part of the con. People can make their own name badges, if they wish. If a member can work the complex logistics of getting to, and navigating the event, I'm sure they can manage a trip to Staples sometime in the year between conventions.

Signs are also needed. Having someone yell information down the line is primitive, and not always heard. A large banner saying "Photo ID required to collect badge" would save a lot of shouting and bother.

[jarissa.livejournal.com]

Are day passes personalized?

Yes, I'm pretty sure they are. I noticed a lot of Saturday passes -- small, with a stripe down the left spelling out the name of the day for which the pass was issued -- but I didn't note a lack of name sticker so I'm pretty sure it must've been there.

As far as signs: Yes, lots of them. Some on sticks, so the line-directing staff could wave them gently to get people looking at them. Maybe brightly colored ones, with boundaries of the same tape color as the floor line, saying

A through F
Get your Photo ID out
And Follow Me!

'Course, this is more work I'm asking someone to do, so I guess that means I better ask if I can make some of them myself, and take a shift or two waving them around!

Names on badges

[dice100.livejournal.com]

One upside to personalized badges is that when you lose them, there is a chance that it will get turned in and your entire con weekend won't be ruined.

Followup to My Previous Posts Regarding Automation

[datavortex.livejournal.com]

I have made several comments in threads above supporting the idea that registration should be automated and badges printed onsite. I want to take this suggestion one step farther and endorse a company that provides this service.

I did some research and found out that just one small company has been responsible for all of my best convention registration experiences. All have been flawless, allowed me to print or reprint my own barcodes to scan in order to print my badge, etc. This company allows for robust database integration that allows, for example, Google I/O conference to print 2D barcodes on each badge that allows conference attendees to look each other up in Google's central registration database (even though they are not the primary data store).

This company is WebEvents Global LLC of Sacramento, California (NOT WebEvents consulting group of Atlanta, which is an SEO company). I have zero affiliation with this company and no financial or other interest with them. My endorsement is purely borne from the awesome convention registration experiences they have provided to me in the past.

I would be thrilled if DragonCon contracted with WebEvents to provide online registration, printing of preregistration documents, onsite badge printing for preregistered attendees, and onsite registration. In my experience they are awesome at all of the above and provide the experience of allowing preregistered attendees to get their badges in mere seconds.

Besides eliminating the problems in this post, onsite badge printing opens up a whole world of possibilities. Imagine having 2D barcodes on your badges encoded with anything from your contact information to your hotel room to your character/server name for an online MMORPG. Unique barcodes on badges could be used to eliminate counterfitting as well. I have experience with WebEvents doing all of this for technical conferences I've attended. It's freaking great. At Google I/O there was a scavenger hunt for badge barcodes at it was loads of fun.

I encourage Chip or others to contact WebEvents and ask them about fixing DragonCon's registration line woes, and perhaps even opening up vectors for more cool stuff.

Contact information is here (http://maps.google.com/maps?sourceid=chrome&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=webevents+sacramento&fb=1&split=1&gl=us&view=text&latlng=6470457553101713386).

Re: Followup to My Previous Posts Regarding Automation

[kkatowll.livejournal.com]

And the Con could purchase a few barcode readers and test people at random as they enter panels, thus dramatically reducing counterfeit passes.

Re: Followup to My Previous Posts Regarding Automation

[comix-geek.livejournal.com]

Personally my personal information is my own and it's bad enough too many companies can acquire it these days. Not being a fan of MMORPGs myself this idea has no interest for me and I know many others. We've already seen the problems with Froggy that people had at Dragon*Con this year and that's an example of using someone exclusively. I prefer not to rely too much on technology, since as someone said before about problems of computers and printers failing.

Fixing Registration

[sffilk.livejournal.com]

A person who's been coming to the monthly meetings at an Atlanta-area SF group came up with a viable option which is based on what he's seen at registration (18 booths available to register, only 6 in use, for instance): get temps to work for the 4 days of the convention handling nothing but registration - it'll speed up the process (and heck, in the long run it could save money, time, trouble, hate, discontent, grief)......

[meaninglesscog.livejournal.com]

Why did the pre-reg tape go in two different directions this year? This caused massive amounts of confusion.

Signs need to be far enough out so that the huge lines of people are not blocking them, rendering them useless.

I will also mention that the lines themselves need to be changed. The alpha breakdown needs to be done sooner and when they break down, only have one actual line per letter range. Two lines per booth with three signs really confused people. Folks in line with me assumed that since their name was on the sixth sign then they needed to be in the sixth line. This would put them further down the lines of booths.

Granted, when I got there (3:45 Thursday) we were probably in line less than one hour total, but I watched the chaos from a bench in the lobby.

How much money is DC losing in lost revenue due to people giving up on attending that year because of the line versus potential loss due to counterfeiting?

I am thinking of getting an eternal in the future. Cherubs sing when you show people your "eternal" ribbon, right?

[jarissa.livejournal.com]

Totally!
And they give you BOOKS!

Thus far in my testing, crowds don't part like the Red Sea, though.

[jantra.livejournal.com]

This year was my very first Dragon*Con. I got into Atlanta about 8PM at night and immediately got into line for my badge because I wanted to be in line at 5 AM the next day for the Shatner-Nimoy panel. At 9:30, when we were close to the Sheraton front doors, someone was going up and down the line telling us that registration was closed. Confused, as I specifically looked up the time registration closed which was 10PM on the site, I didn't get out of line with my friend. Good thing we didn't.

Imagine to my horror seeing the lines go completely and utterly insane. I hadn't pre-regged, and after waiting 2 hours in line, I got my badge in five minutes. It took my pre-reg friends another 2 hours to get their badges. We left at 11:35.

I simply could not understand, as a first timer, why it took so long. I have been going to Otakon for many years and provided I wasn't one of those silly people that waited in line before the line started to move, I never waited more then 45 minutes for a badge even when the line was snaking around the building.

I don't know how they could make it better so much, but... wow. I now plan to come on Wednesday so I can get in line really early Thursday.

[sea-haven.livejournal.com]

I will pay a 100 bucks for a badge, if they'd just listen, and fix the damned issues. Hell, I'd pay 150.


With as many fans are there are, in so many diverse fields, that someone can't come up with the tech to implement some of these ideas.....


Do a mini fundraiser for new equipment, and get a special badge, or a plastic pony...Make it unique and people will pay it.


I love the dragon, but it's turned into a classic FUBAR

[melonaise.livejournal.com]

The question D*C organizers have to consider is "How many people avoid going to D*C because of the long registration lines?" If the answer is 100 people, and they would have all pre-reg'ed at the cheapest price, then they're out say $5000. Would it cost less than $5k to put in a new, fraud-resistant registration system? I don't know.

There are a lot of smart people at D*C, people with experience with cons and computers. They need to put together proposals to offer the D*C organizers-- not just "it worked over there" or "why can't you do (item a)," but the nitty-gritty with pros and cons and contingency plans. D*C is primarily volunteer-run, so no one is getting paid to come up with solutions to the problem.

As long as I have a decent job, I'm going to be doing the on-site reg from now until registration is re-vamped. That's not protesting with my pocket book, though.