Ok, So here's the deal. More than likely I will be the registration manager again. I have been planning for 2011 for a few weeks now.
At the rant and rave after closing ceremonies, I addressed the entire audience.
“I want to thank my Registration staff, they worked very long hours and got little to no sleep.
I want to thank our volunteers, WITHOUT OUR VOULUNTEERS, this con would have failed miserably, We were very understaffed because of last year, without our volunteers this con would not exist, we need to thank each of them.
I have just one rant, a certain person is not allowed to touch the badge printers.
Ok, I have heard people complaining about the long lines. I was here as an attendee last year, how many of you remember the long lines then? How long were you in line? 4 hrs? 6 hrs? I was in line for 5 hrs as it moved back and forth. I want to apologize, for the long lines. I took over as the manager in June, 3 months before the convention. Shortly after I took over i discovered a major glitch the affected over 100 attendees. Somehow addresses and names were switched in the database by 1 line, this affected a lot of people. Within a few weeks I had fixed 90% of the issues. The remaining 10% is what caused the long lines, we had hundreds of badges in will call, along with other issues.
For that I am sorry.”
Now here is the good side, We are working on a system to decrease the wait time to around 30 minutes or less per person who pre-register. All you will have to do is show your Id and badge. We will then enter you in to the system using a 10 key, and along you go. It should take approximately 22 seconds per person at the desk. Since the next venue will be in 2 hotels. We should have more than enough room to have 3 lines. Having 3 lines will decrease the wait time for everyone. Pre-reg will be broken into 2 groups "Mail" and "Will Call". By doing this, those who choose "Will Call" will not affect those who already have it, it is a burden on everyone to do will call, but it is required for many circumstances. The only way to decrease the wait time for "At The Door" registration is for people to have their paperwork properly and fully completed and most of all legible. I have made some major changes to the registration forms already to resolve a lot of issues. Besides the database issue, another issue we have is the USPS. The USPS has each house’s address registered to the adults who live there. When mail to a child is sent to the address, the USPS will sometimes return it to us with a label that says “No such addressee, unable to forward” This happens a lot when the child has a different last name. Also a lot of attendees have 2 addresses, their physical home address, and their mailing address. A lot of people only provide us with their physical address. Because of these issues, I changed the reg form to have a secondary mail line (physical address, and mailing address), I also added an area for parental information. When an attendee is under 18 years of age (at convention’s dates) we will mail the badge out “CARE OF [C/O]” their parent. This will ensure the mail reaches the attendee. By initiating these steps, the “Will Call” should be decreased to less than 100 badges, maybe less than 50.
In the next few weeks, I and a few others will be going to the new venue, I will begin registration planning as soon as we go there.
If you want to make it a better convention
PLEASE BECOME STAFF
Kumoricon is 100% Volunteer Staffed
