Do you have any plans for expanding Kumoricon's name for drawing in more attendees, guests, and businesses?
We had an increase of over 1000 attendees this year, which is fantastic! It also puts us in an interesting position. As many people are quick to note, we’re close to outgrowing our space. I don’t think our current location could manage another large attendance increase in 2014.
So that brings up the question: what is publicity’s purpose as a department for the 2014 convention year? Well, just because we aren't aiming for another huge increase in attendees this year doesn't mean I plan to scale black or cut out outreach events. Quite the contrary. Last year we had booths at 10 events, and this year I have identified even more local and out-of-town events that I want us to attend.
That being said, I think the publicity department needs to have another focus for outreach events this year: getting more staff. We had a huge attendee increase this year, but roughly the same number of staff as last year. Needless to say, that left us stretched thin and stressed out. With the move to 4 days next year it’s more important than ever to expand our staff base. And recruiting staff from other events is a great way to do just that. I can’t count the number of times I had volunteers from other events ask me about getting involved with Kumoricon, and I’m sure there are many more out there. We need to focus on reaching out to them and growing our staff base if we are going to survive Kumoricon 2014 with our sanity (mostly) intact.
Now, to address the other parts of your question I want to take a step back and look at what the publicity department’s general focus is. Simply put, publicity is focused on communicating with the attendees; we’re the mouth piece for the con. Publicity goes to events, answers questions and makes announcements via social media, manages the website, puts together the con books and is charge of media coverage by our staff and outside press. We also work very closely with the relations department, whose job includes getting guests and industry to attend Kumoricon. We attend a lot of the same events and conventions as relations, but we have different focuses. Apart from continuing to do what we're doing and make connections, I defer to the relations department on the specifics of getting guests and businesses to attend Kumoricon. While we work closely together, it’s important to understand where the lines are drawn and be there to support the other department in their vision.
