I grew up going to the San Diego Comic Con back in the day. Back then though, it wasn’t the 110K+ attendees it is now. I remember hanging with my pops, walking around saying hi to all the friends he saw once a year, brushing into artists like Sergio Aragonés and Moebius and getting some drawings from them. Yes, brushing into…not waiting in line for who knows how long like you currently have to. It got to the point that even the vendors that I liked, that my dad didn’t such as movie poster/button/toy vendors, began to recognize me even though I was a growing tyke. The thing I remember fondly was that back then the community was more like an extended family.
We want to try to recreate that. There was two reasons why that family feel grew. One was that the event was small back then. We’ve covered that with the future 360 people size limit.
Another thing I seem to recall was early registration. That’s when most of the “family” would register. We’re going to do an interesting twist on that. For our conferences, we’ll help maintain relationships that can grow stronger each year. To do this, we’re implementing the Alumni first registration period. What this is going to be is a set time frame for Alumni to register before the general public has the chance to register. If all 360 reregister for the next version of a given conference, so be it. We want to get to the point where everyone knows everyone and networking time turns into bonding time.
We maybe crazy, but that’s okay. Crazy never hurt anyone. =)