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I wrote a thing on the FB earlier today, the gist of which was astonishment that we can put on these conventions with hundreds of hours of unique events and panels, guests, workshops, gaming of all kinds, video rooms, dealers, and one of a kind experiences, and yet we still get people asking if they need to buy a badge, because all they want to do is wander around the halls and look at the costumers.
And there's a whole slew of entitlement behind that attitude of "if I'm not interested in it, then why does anybody bother?" kind of thinking. Insert 'those kids today' rant here.
But it strikes me to ask, sure, there's a bunch of stuff going on at the show besides wandering around looking at cosplayers. Do they know about it? Are we doing our job in making the average con-goer aware of the gigantic amount of things that happen at fan conventions? Are we counter-acting the years of inaccurate reporting in which the media portrays fan conventions as being nothing more than costumers and overpriced celebrity autographs? We may not be.
These people may look at the ticket price for a fan convention without having any idea what that ticket price pays for. They may feel perfectly justified in trying to get around it, because they don't know what "it" is, really - which means we're doing a poor job in managing their expectations.
Some of us have been in this game a long time. It's tough to put ourselves in the shoes of the first-or-second-time congoer, to think about what they find important or necessary. It's tough to even know what they know, and dangerous to assume they have any background in what we're doing at all. Every show is somebody's first show, and first impressions are hard to break, once they're made. If we're assuming everybody has our experience and our background, then we're making an ass out of U and of ME, as the tired cliche goes.
And there's a whole slew of entitlement behind that attitude of "if I'm not interested in it, then why does anybody bother?" kind of thinking. Insert 'those kids today' rant here.
But it strikes me to ask, sure, there's a bunch of stuff going on at the show besides wandering around looking at cosplayers. Do they know about it? Are we doing our job in making the average con-goer aware of the gigantic amount of things that happen at fan conventions? Are we counter-acting the years of inaccurate reporting in which the media portrays fan conventions as being nothing more than costumers and overpriced celebrity autographs? We may not be.
These people may look at the ticket price for a fan convention without having any idea what that ticket price pays for. They may feel perfectly justified in trying to get around it, because they don't know what "it" is, really - which means we're doing a poor job in managing their expectations.
Some of us have been in this game a long time. It's tough to put ourselves in the shoes of the first-or-second-time congoer, to think about what they find important or necessary. It's tough to even know what they know, and dangerous to assume they have any background in what we're doing at all. Every show is somebody's first show, and first impressions are hard to break, once they're made. If we're assuming everybody has our experience and our background, then we're making an ass out of U and of ME, as the tired cliche goes.
