Long Time Between Drinks

Well it was August 2007 when I last posted, and I think I'm going to have to make an effort this year with posting at least once a month on Live Journal, if for no other reason to tell people that I still alive and well.

As I write this I'm in the midst of organising the 2009 incarnation of Gen Con Australia (www.genconoz.com) - and my god has this been yet another mammoth task.

Last year was the first time I had run a convention the size of Gen Con, having only run The BIG Weekend and ORK-toberfest as games convention (and a few other large scale non games events through my involvement with PCYCs. Overall, the show went well I think with over 10,000 attendances, and a lot of positive feedback.

There was a chance that I wouldn't do it again. Not because I didn't think it worked, but because it took its toll on me, my family and our finances. But we knew we had to build it first in order to make it a success, and after recovering - which took a little longer than I had expected - I set about reassembling the show for the next outing.

The hardest part of this process so far has been the fact that we had lost a number of our key people to full time, better paying jobs. This in itself sucked from our perspective, but was a reality I just had to deal with. It also didn't help that certain individuals took us for a ride financially, so we had to deal with things that we hadn't done before. In the long term this worked OK, because we have found some excellent resources to help us on our way.

We managed to get a few of the band back together, even if only in a part time capacity, and a lot of our volunteers have agreed to take on more heftier roles - which is awesome - and takes some of the load off me so I can concentrate on the show as a whole rather than playing the roles of about 15 people.

Now its onwards and upwards, and I can feel that this year is going to be a lot different from last. This year this show will solidify itself for the future - and don't tell me otherwise.

And now for something a little different - see the next post The Interview.