(BotCon) Bigger isn’t always better, kids!

With all due respect, I’m sure your panel gives a good overview of Transformers for a generic audience at a generic convention but I don’t think it’s properly structured for Botcon. People at a generic sci-fi show aren’t necessarily expecting TF content (and likely don’t know much about it) and would certainly like a “potpourri” approach. But most Botcon goers would probably already know what you’re talking about, and at any rate enough of it would already be available in other panels or the dealer room that you’d have to focus more on giving a thorough look at just one special interesting aspect of your discussion.

Past fan panels have focused entirely on Japanese toys, or unproduced toys, or LARPing mechanics, or catalogs, or costuming…. just one thing at a time. People aren’t going to go to Botcon to sit in a panel room to hear about “a bunch of fun stuff about Transformers.” That’s what Botcon itself is for. The panel rooms need more focus and more depth.

Also, to be more specific:

-there’s almost always a transformation-time contest
-the PS2 game is infamously bad, and if anybody actually does care about it it’s always in the dealer room anyway
-Stan Bush is almost always there
-free giveaways happen every year
-the Japanese shows are in the dealer room

So please don’t be discouraged, but I completely understand why the Botcon team couldn’t spare a slot for this.

Tom,

I have not seen your panel. Have you ever seen a Botcon panel?

I have been to my fair share of “Talkin’ About Transformers” fan panels at sci-fi cons, and I’ve been to fan panels at 12 Botcons, so I know how different the dynamics are. I am sure you and your colleagues have great stage presence and know your material backwards and forwards–but I really do think that for you to pitch yourselves at Botcon you’ll need more of a focused theme, based on material and/or guests that aren’t already at the show. Stan and Greg are frequent guests by themselves. Nobody cares about that Japanese PS2 game and it’s very old news. However, if I may be so bold, a panel based around examining TF video games through the years (most of them obscure/foreign and almost every single one of them terrible) would be really interesting and likely draw a big crowd, because it’s never been done before. If you’re interested in trying again and have the resources for it, that would be a really unique experience.

I’ve been to real trade shows and never at such an event have I seen panels like those at a typical Botcon, devoted to creative and/or vintage interests (LARPs, cosplay, hidden easter eggs in 20-year-old animation storyboards, use of prototypes in foreign catalogues) that don’t bring so much as a nickel to the current licenseholder.

I’m glad to see that you like TF:Animated. If you had gone to the IDW panel you could have talked to the authors of the Allspark Almanacs–the fan-favorite companion books that give the coffee-table treatment to every single episode, character, toy, and hidden continuity reference. You also could have gone to the Hasbro panels and asked them about the status of unreleased Animated toys, or, rather than that, gone to the IDW and Hasbro staff at their dealer room displays and talked or asked them about anything you wanted. I’m sorry you were let down by your Botcon experience, but there were many opportunities available for you to have had a great time.

The show is expensive. They have to manufacture exclusive toys (many with all-new parts) and that’s expensive, and it is reflected in the pricing structure for every class of attendee. I can see how it would seem a burden for walk-ins who don’t buy the toys, but the majority of the hobby supports it, as demonstrated by the long-term success of the show’s business model and the high desirability & value of most of the exclusives over the years.

The endurance and success of the show (16 years), its high attendance (“2,500″? don’t think so, at 2008 they had over 8,000), the packed rooms at every panel, and the near-instant sell-throughs of the exclusives every single year, all speak for themselves. If you ever do feel like constructing a panel that is up to the standards that the audience there expects–based on unique material they hadn’t just seen in the dealer room–I’m sure it would be a memorable experience. The how-to-make-costumes panelists could do it, and I’m sure you can too.

As for your fellow fans being “mindless drones out for dumbass repaints”….. you paid $150 for a 3-hour experience and one autograph. I paid a little over $100 more than you did, and I got a 4-day experience, the same autographs and then some, all the panels you couldn’t be bothered to go to, and ultra-rare collection pieces that practically nobody else even within the hardcore TF fandom will ever own. You feel shortchanged? I understand why.

Tom: My apologies for not properly dividing up the amount you and your friend paid. However, you can’t very well talk about my “assumptions” while proclaiming there’s no way I could possibly have had a satisfactory or entertaining experience at the show. Be serious, please. I get the feeling you and your friend went to Botcon looking for something entirely different than I did, and different from what most of the other attendees wanted as well. I’m still not clear on just what it was that you expected to find. Everyone I know who went there loved it.

And speaking of what you were looking for, that leads me to….

Kelly: I’ve been to DragonCons, I-Cons, VeriCons, DevilCons, and lots of other ‘cons, and none of them have been as enjoyable as Botcon. And I’m really not sure what I am supposed to see as the difference between a Botcon panel where the fan who convened it shows off a slideshow of the 20-year-old storyboards in his collection, and an I-Con panel where the fan who convened it shows off how to make chain mail. If someone has the knowledge and drive to assemble and deliver an interesting panel theme, then it’s a good panel. Isn’t it?

The fan panel offerings in 2010 were a bit more sparse than in past years, due entirely to the location. There was ALWAYS a comedy panel except for this year. There was ALWAYS a live original fan-written script reading (authors chosen by contest) featuring the original voice actors and sometimes the original voice directors too–except for this year. This is because for the first time, BC was held in Disneyworld and the organizers wanted to keep the evening schedule wide open to allow people to enjoy the parks. I would not want that to be a trade-off forever, but for one year out of more than a decade of tradition I can understand.

I think what many of you see as a prime attractive feature for a convention–the ability to sit in a room with other fans and just talk to each other, or as you put it, “interacting and exchanging ideas”–I fully take for granted and consider to be unworthy of paying an entry price of any amount and certainly unworthy of putting into a schedule slot. That isn’t a panel, that’s called “being able to socialize with other people.” Hey, Spawn fans–come to room 203C at 1pm to talk about Spawn! Zzzzzzzzzzz. Please, we need a schedule for this? This is a feature of a major gathering? At a Botcon, that’s something you do while lounging in the hotel lobby waiting for the next real event to happen or while you’re eating lunch at the cafe, or at any of the very numerous “parts trading parties” that (for what it’s worth) are part of the official event schedule. But honestly, can you explain to me why, In the age of the Internet, someone would need to attend a convention of any kind if all they wanted to do was talk with other fans? If you’re so eager to have another fan discuss arcane trivia with you or read their fanfic to you, why do you have to go to a brick-and-mortar building for that? Why does that deserve to be called a “convention” and why does it need a special event name? You can achieve the same ends on your own with a mailing list and a Meetup page. What’s special about it? Why schedule a trip around it? It’s no different from making and maintaining friendships the normal way–the venue no longer matters!

Yes–I recognize that that is exactly what conventions were for many decades, before hobbies began to be organized around Internet chat rooms. I am aware of the early history of Gygax’ pre-D&D gatherings, of early Tolkien fan gatherings, and other such events in the ’60s and ’70s that really did consist of a lot of nice people with shared interests meeting in someone’s house or a rented room and just talking. But Internet forums are where many such hobbies are oriented now, meaning just “chatting” can happen on a daily basis and it is perfectly well possible for a convention to deliver more than just that. When I go to Botcon, I can “just chat” with the original G1 voice actors, or musicians like Stan Bush, or the guy who wrote a 4-issue British comic book 7 years ago, or the Hasbro team who will give sneak-peeks at what the toys will look like 2 years from now. And so can anyone who goes there and manages their time appropriately.

Chris: by your own reasoning, then, regardless of how GOOD a TF convention is, you can always find one guy who hated it, but that doesn’t mean it was bad. As for the appeal of the exclusive toys: it’s a Transformers fan convention. With that in mind, why would you find it surprising to learn that attendees see the opportunity to get rare and exclusive Transformers to be a major attractive feature? Don’t you think that if a Star Trek convention were able to offer attendees a completely original finalized Star Trek episode for their eyes only, that they would consider it to be a rewarding and valuable experience? If a Botcon attendee isn’t into collecting the toys, that’s fine for them, but let’s not act like the toys AREN’T a major feature of the hobby for most of those who follow it. You can go to LunaCon and say “I hate filk, all this filk is ruining the convention for me!”, but it probably just means you are in the wrong place.

As for Botcon ’99 in particular, as memory serves there was a “Mystery Science Theater”-styled episode spoof panel, a MUSH panel, and a multi-round trivia contest–plus the parts trading parties I mentioned earlier. Do those “count” as what you consider convention panels? What would you rather have had, specifically?

And for what it’s worth, there already are lots of TF-related Meetup events as I alluded to, just as there surely are for any other hobby. Just, again, I wouldn’t call “getting together with your friends” enough to be a convention.

Kelly,

I think we’re talking past each other.

I’m trying to suss out your definition of “programming” as based on “interaction”–I just don’t see how that necessarily makes something any more or less a proper convention than anything else.

When I’ve been to DragonCon and I-Con in particular, one thing I’ll say is that scheduled events were happening continuously, many different ones simultaneously–even all night long, sometimes even 24-hours-a-day. I’ll say right now, Botcon has never had that. However, I don’t think most of them deserved to be called “events” (or “programming”). Especially if they’re things attendees could just as easily do without bothering to go to the show. If a dealer room and autograph panel is a “shopping mall”, why isn’t a schedule full of fan discussions a “website”?

I would consider the International Toy Fair, held annually in NYC, to be a trade show. There is no attendee-created material whatsoever, no vintage material whatsoever, and nothing for anyone to do that does not involve press releases about upcoming merchandise. It is a press event–albeit a fun one that fans can attend. E3, from what I have read, is much the same.

In Tom’s last post, he linked to the BC10 program. As I said, it was more sparse than most years due to Disney access. Why don’t you take a look at it, then imagine an additional 4 or so panels taking place to make it more of a “normal” year–say one comedy, one trivia, one original script-reading, and one LARPing– and tell me where that would fit into your classification scheme? I am honestly curious.

Actually, I’m afraid Tom’s link is only to scheduled panels. It did not cover all scheduled events, so it omitted some important things from Saturday and, to a lesser extent, Wednesday. That’s here:

http://www.botcon.com/BotCon10/BC10schedule.pdf

Chris, I guess we just know different hardcore fans.

Logically, if Botcon were so unfun and overpriced it would not exist. Please don’t try to act like the only people who go in for it would just “always come running” no matter what Hasbro did. That projects bad faith–very EXPENSIVE bad faith!–onto so many thousands of people as to be not even remotely believable. Accept the fact that these people are making rational judgments and like what they’re getting.

And I’m truly confused about your “social phobias” complaint. You say I ought to have liked DragonCon better because of a fuller social calendar but at the same time say there’s nothing to do at BC except the dealer room and 5-ish panels and thus nothing else to “keep a person’s interest.” Does that imply that talking to people and making friends is impossible? You’re in a giant crowd of people who all share the exact same hobby as you, it’s the easiest setup in the world in which to make a conversation happen. I’ve done the whole DragonCon thing, the whole “Firefly fans go to Hall B to talk about Firefly,” and it just leaves me cold. Everybody who walks through the door at Botcon is a TF fan. You can talk to anybody there about anything pertaining to TFs. It doesn’t have to be scheduled and it isn’t the organizers’ responsibility. This notion keeps coming up in numerous posts here so it must just be a matter of different fundamental expectations of what a convention is actually supposed to facilitate for its attendees.

Tom,

“You’re dead wrong here [on the need for having a schedule full of 'Come here to talk about this with other fans]“–okay, then, that’s going to remain our ultimate area of disagreement. As I think I’ve made clear, I’ve been to shows that had schedules like that and I don’t get either their appeal or, frankly, their rationale for existing. If that’s a “convention”, so is CraigsList.

As for programming for those who are “in it for the comic book or the cartoon or Michael Bay,” then I’m still not sure what you’re complaining about. There were comic book panels there. There were voice actor panels there. There were panels about the next cartoon there. There was a Lasertag-styled, run-and-shoot Nerf gun game people could do there based on the Bay movies. All of those actually took place while you were at the show and your admission fee gained you entrance to them–but you chose not to wait for them. It is not true that “Botcon offers almost nothing to general attendees”. In the time that you were there, you could have done every single thing available to the premium preregistrants.

I understand how frustrating it can be to wait out the afternoon in an autograph line, but by your own admission you chose to do that and nothing else.

Calling Botcon “undefendable” and “a tragedy” is pretty over-the-top. Is it “a tragedy” that people go to I-Con and actually pay money just for the privilege of hearing other people say “hey, I like Buffy too!”? No, it’s just something one may or may not be interested in.

It is also kinda strange to see you attempt to draw such a firm distinction between “toy collectors” and “Transformers fans”, given that your show review mentions you spent $300 on Optimus Prime merchandise. I’d wager you out-bought and out-spent me. Look at that Saturday night “Hall of Fame” dinner event–it was entirely devoted to commemorating major past contributors to the hobby: the original Japanese and American creative teams from the early ’80s and the most popular characters, as chosen by votes on about 10 of the biggest TF fan websites. Nary a piece of Chinese plastic to be seen.

Joey, for what you paid you could have attended every single panel, played “War for Cybertron” on giant plasma screens, and joined the TF Nerf-gun shootout game. Not to mention talking to other fans there or the creative types (past and present) who had booths in the dealer room. Did you at least stop by Stan’s booth and say hi?

You chose to do nothing but the autograph line. Not the organizers’ choice. Your choice. Do you think it is fair to suppose that if you had chosen to do more than that, you would have experienced more and enjoyed it more?

“BotCon offered ONE ROOM of programming outside the dealers room”

And you chose not to go there at all, not even when it offered programming about Animated, which you like, and Peter Cullen, whom you like a lot. It was waiting for you all day, but you were apparently so “tired and disappointed” that instead of taking the opportunity to get SOME experience back for your investment, you chose to do nothing at all.

If you were that tired, what makes you think you would have taken any more advantage of 3 panel rooms, or 7? Heck, a person can only exist in one place at a time, and you and Joey had just a few hours. If the comic book panel, the Cullen panel, and the new toy panel had all been happening in 3 rooms simultaneously, would you have gone to any of them? Is the number of doors more important than what’s behind them? Or would you have considered that stupidly bad scheduling and condemned it too? I keep trying to figure out what you would have chosen to engage with at Botcon and keep drawing a blank.

And please, enough of trying to characterize the BC preregistrants and/or toy collectors as some kind of “elite”, a “niche of a niche”.

You spent more money than I did, on toys for your collection. Joey boasts of his own high-spending potential. Apparently the two of you spend a major chunk of your real-time lives going to one convention after another after another. Well, most adults cannot afford to do that, in terms of either money, frequent days off, or otherwise unoccupied weekends. Time is just as subject to elitism as money is. There aren’t eight or nine Botcons a year for the max-paying preregistrants, there’s only one. That’s not a “toy-collector niche,” that’s a vacation. Doesn’t sound quite so elite that way to me.