Something to consider...

[tommo]

The $20 day pass for Friday was intended to make it more affordable for new people to have a "taste" of SwanCon. However, it also meant that SwanCon might have lost some revenue from the non-first-timers that bought Friday day passes.

Perhaps a better option is to have day passes at their normal rates for all renewing attendees, but give first-timers a day where they can just attend for free? For a student/teenager, even $20 can be a fair bit of money, and if it's the difference between them attending a day for free or not attending at all, you're really not making any sort of a loss by letting them in. And if you make it free people will almost certainly be interested, and I think it'd result in a very impressive first-timer turnout. Keep in mind that you can get into Supanova for a day for about $20, so from the new attendee's perspective it's not like we're offering anything particularly out of the ordinary.

Hell, I'm starting to wonder if we should just let first-timers attend the whole damn con for free. I think, in the long term, it'd probably be a wise investment.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/drayke_/]

what makes Swancon different from Ghengiscon, Waicon and Supernova? (If we don't differentiate ourselves, they'll eat our lunch! We can't compete on size or cost.)

Genghiscon is smaller and targeted at gaming. It's the only one of these cons to do so. Both Swancon and Waicon have Gaming sections, but that's not "in the name of the con".

Waicon is new. It's run by an extremely similar organisation (volunteers). HOW can you not compete on size or cost??? I REALLY don't understand that. 2 years ago they took a MASSIVE risk moving to the convention centre - it could have made the organisation (and a lot more than that) go bankrupt. It worked, but only just covered costs despite a huge increase in people coming (mainly through word-of-mouth advertising). The year after that (ie this year) there was nearly DOUBLE the attendance mainly because of the success of the '07 con in the new venue.
The first Waicon about 5 years ago had around 100 people and they now have over 3000 running with almost identical budget constraints that swancon has.

Supanova is a National thing run by a *company* that are PAID to run these kinds of events. They are mainly interested in money - it's why they run the event. It's not "run by fans, for fans" unlike the other two you've mentioned.
Yeah, it kinda covers the same area, but not really. It's not REALLY a SF&F con, but more a ...generic TV/Anime/Comics con...

[mynxii.livejournal.com]

With respect whilst Supanova are commercial in nature they are very supportive of fan groups and established events and the community as a whole. They have been unstinting in their support of Swancon, and Waicon and I've had several very productive, casual and friendly conversations with Daniel who is the event director. It's a family business - they're lovely people and they are people and care about what they're doing, same as any of the rest of us running events. Daniel the event director is actually a fan, it's totally a fan based thing, he's just set it up differently to how we've done our stuff.