The plans for Gen Con 2012 have now officially started! January 29th was the the kick-off for badge pre-registration, and the 31st they opened up their housing site to make hotel reservations. My two bits of advice:
- Get your badges online and have them shipped to you before the event, the last thing you want to do right when you get there is stand in line for hours.
- Get your hotel/housing arranged asap because the good stuff near the convention center fills up fast.
We are definitely going this year, but we don’t want to be stuck at a booth. We’d really like to plan some time for fellow BoardGaming.com users to meet up and play games (maybe a designated spot each evening). We’re also brainstorming ideas for how to educate other gamers about the site. We thought who better to ask than you!
- How could we and the BoardGaming.com community let fellow gamers at Gen Con know about us?
- If we hold events or gaming get-togethers, what/where should they be, and what would make them fun?
- How many of you would want to meet up at Gen Con?
- From the perspective of a Gen Con attendee, what would be an effective way for you to learn about a site like ours and want to try it out?
Thanks in advance for your input!
Cool, good read.
I can recommend try to gather some friends and rent a place nearby. Indy have lots of good rental places to stay. When I was there in 2010 me and my gang rented a house for $2000 a week. We were 9 people and the house was stunning! Like a mansion to tell the truth. We even had a black piano on the second floor. Amazing.
So I highly recommend rent a place and share with your friends.
I’m not trying to hijack the discussion, but I’m just curious as to whether you are planning on having a presence at Origins this years, as well. I am seriously considering this one as my first boardgame convention. I’ll likely be bringing my 10 year-old son, so I thought a relatively smaller convention (although I realize it’s still pretty big) would be a better place to start.
We’re looking into the sticker/badge idea … something you’d be able to print out that would show off your BG profile and stats. It would be pretty cool to be walking around the convention and spot somebody else wearing their profile.
As of this posting, most of the connected hotels are already sold out! Got to get in on the first day they open the registration. It is just redunkulous.
@Randy… Were you at EGG this weekend?
I’d be happy to sport a t-shirt for a day.
What about postcards with some promotion – could be some starter XP or a free Avatar for first-timers? It’d be nice if it was tied into the recruiting feature so that I could get credit for steering people to the site.
I so wish I could be there! Alas, unless some unexpected and happy windfall happens, I’ll be kickin’ it in Eugene, Oregon.
I wish I could go this year, I would love to meet up with you guys and play games together.
Ideas for spreading the word? Hmm, have to think about that. I do like the t-shirt idea.
Corey’s idea of having a badge that has his avatar and his badges is really great too! I’ll have to post back here later tonight after I’ve thought about it.
If you create a really cool t-shirt… wear them around the con and quiz people about the site. If they get it right… give them a shirt. If they don’t know the answers… give them the opportunity to go look it up and come back to find you with the answer. People are suckers for free stuff. You might also give out rewards to people if they are caught wearing the shirts… in order to get them to wear it.
Boardgaming.com would be very prominent of course… maybe with a picture of the mouse on the front, and the URL on the back. I’m sure Greg could come up with something great.
Granny’s marketing advice is always free. 🙂
A few good news stories here on the site in the weeks leading up to GenCon detailing what get togethers and/or events you’ll be holding would be a good way to get the word out to folks here that are going.
I can understand not wanting to be tied to a booth, but a small booth on a well traveled thoroughfare could really help to build the site’s visibility. Getting a few fans of the site that you trust to run the booth would probably be pretty easy. All the booth would need is two or three laptops for people to be able to browse the site and to sign up with. The person running the booth just needs to be able to answer questions and tell people what stuff Boardgaming.com has going on at the con (meet-ups, gaming nights, prizes, etc…). Just have an exclusive badge or background or avatar for folks who help out at the booth and give them a t-shirt that makes them look a little more official when they act in their role as site ambassador.
And since others would be running the booth, that leaves you official site guys with plenty of time to run the other stuff, explore the con for yourselves, and talk with publishers both great and small about getting set up with the site like AEG and Tasty Minstrel already have.
Wow! I have way too many ideas to post! It will be great to meet and game with my new community of gamers!
I’ll want to meet up. I’ll be there starting Thursday morning.
I was thinking I’d like to have/wear a badge that shows my avatar and badges. This could just be a sticker that I put on my GenCon badge holder. I’d like to put faces to avatars.
I’m always on the lookout for experienced Carcassonne players who’d be interested in playing with a complete set.