Adkison's Gen Con report

[reapersaurus]

Very impressive, stand-up behavior, by posting that message to the internet, PA.

However, as a computer professional, I feel I should give some feedback about some of the computer-specific stuff that happened.

a) [knee-jerk response] A virus? Come on, that's the oldest excuse in the book. Everybody says it, even though most viruses are quite easy to buffer against. What virus was it exactly? Why weren't the computers protected with anti-virus software? Why didn't the filters catch it, unless you want us to believe it was a brand-new virus that Symantec didn't know about, and you were the first on the internet to get hit with it. [/kneejerk]

b) Network congestion:
Networks are awfully fast now - it's hard for a virus to take them down, unless they're specifically designed to do so (SQL SLammer virus, for example). Did they have a Gigabit network, or just a 100 MB network? If you're expecting high traffic volume, it's not much more expensive to go with a GB network, since you're installing it from scratch, I'd wager.

c) The printers probably could be buffered from anetwork congestion simply by making them local printers, instead of dealing with network traffic.
I don't know if that's feasible with the order-processing software you're using, but I see no technical reason why there wasn't one print-out station that could have generated local print jobs.

That's all off the top of my head.
Did you have a network engineer worth their salt design this network, or did they take the 'plug this end here, then this end here' approach?
It's not 1998 anymore - computers are not new, and the difficulties you described are not unexpected, or difficult to guard against.

Take any feedback at face value, since I can't tell you I've installed a PointOfSale network, but networks are pretty standardized now.

 

[Bagpuss]

Peter Adkison is the man. He should get an award or something.

Peter Adkison is the man...... who cancelled Euro GenCon. The largest and one of the longest running conventions in the UK. So forgive me if I disagree that he deserves an award.

Let me just remind you this is the same Peter Adkison that came up with this press release after Euro GenCon...

The below information was passed to us from Peter Adkison:

"I wanted to give you an update regarding Gen Con Europe.
We are having serious reservations about the strategy we've developed over the last few months regarding Gen Con Europe.

Essentially, we're concerned that due to language and cultural barriers, a large pan-European Gen Con event might be very difficult to realize. We also feel that the complexity of this task is compounded by the fact that we're an American company based in the United States. Furthermore, our team has several new employees, or employees in new positions, and we need to adopt a less ambitious strategy until we gain more experience and refine our systems.

Therefore, we have decided not to run a Gen Con Europe convention in 2004 or 2005.

But we do not want to see the Gen Con brand die in Europe. Therefore we are making the Gen Con brand available for licensing, most likely on a national level. Or, if someone thinks they could implement our original strategy and could develop a credible plan for doing so, we'd consider an exclusive license for all of Europe.

I appreciate the interest all of you have shown for Gen Con and your willingness to comment. While this email doesn't have great news, I thought you'd appreciate the update. "

Keep on gaming!
Peter Adkison
Owner/CEO, Gen Con LLC
"The best four days in gaming!"
http://www.gencon.com

Perhaps you like to award quitters.

 

[StumpwaterJack]

It seems that at a minimum, they should have had the public access pcs on a seperate vlan from the point of sale terminals and printers, if not a seperate network. If a virus was able to get from one to the other, your credit card numbers were able to do the same in reverse.

Firewalling and locking down the public access terminals is a fine suggestion, but they should have been able to throw them to the wolves without affecting anything else on the network.

SJ

 

[JoeGKushner]

As I've noted, I think it's great for Peter to suck it up. As I've also noted, I think that Gen Con will indeed go strong, at least in America, for many years.

What I hate though, and this drifts into politics and public figures, is that when somone is caught doing something wrong and in public taken to account for it, as long as they apologize not only are they forgiven without having to prove that they'll fix the issue, but they're patted on the back. "Man, way to screw all those people! It was awesome!"

Stop thanking people for screwing you.

 

[Teflon Billy]

I don't know; from the quote you posted it sounds like Adkison and his people didn't see a way for Gen Con Europe to be efficiently run without a lot more infrastructure in place than they currently had.

He said he wanted to get his convention-running abilites up to speed, ut was willing to license Gen Con to anyone who felt they could do it.

Unless I'm missing something inthere, what's the big problem?

He didn't think they were up to doing a proper Euro-Gen Con, so they didn't do it.

 

[Bagpuss]

Yeah but Gencon Europe (I think the past two years it was called that), and before that Gencon UK had been running well enough for a good many years, and expanding. People experienced at running just such a convention (even in the same venue) why did he bring in people that didn't have a clue?

There is nothing stopping him running a UK convention next year, people have routinuely come from all over Europe to the UK event.

 

[Galfridus]

I was at GenCon (didn't see many EN people except from afar) and was fortunate enough to have pre-registered.

Wednesday night I wandered over to the hall and saw the /huge/ registration line (which they had capped) and thought "oh boy, this is bad".

By Thursday it was clear that they did not have their act together in the slightest with regards to registration / generic tickets. GMs in my group were basically ignoring ticket requirements; better to game than not to game, and few to no people had generics at that point. (Most of this ticket deficit was made up later once generics started to filter out.) Thursday night I heard stories about people who waited 2.5 hours for generics only to hear "we're out, sorry".

Friday was also bad, though I was somewhat distracted and didn't check the line out personally.

To not notice that there's a problem until Saturday is a huge management failure. This did not just suddenly pop up on the weekend, it was building the whole time and apparently no one did anything about it until it was too late.

My suggestion: don't let this stop you from going next year, but go ready to raise hell if the same sorts of lines form again. A horde of EN people (especially if they come prepared with signs or something) tracking down Mr. Adkison will probably leave a pretty solid impression.

 

[Ed Cha]

The U.K. definitely deserves a large gaming convention. It is one of the biggest markets for RPG products. I know that every month the people from the U.K. are always the 2nd or 3rd largest group visiting my Web site. It's a shame not to have a Gen Con in the U.K. Partly because some day I'd like to make an excuse to come and visit the gaming community there, too.

 

[GravyFingerz]

Peter Adkison is the man...... who cancelled Euro GenCon. The largest and one of the longest running conventions in the UK. So forgive me if I disagree that he deserves an award.

Let me just remind you this is the same Peter Adkison that came up with this press release after Euro GenCon...

Perhaps you like to award quitters.

I don't like the fact that Peter Akinson cancel GenCon UK, but I think his reasoning is sound. I'm sorry you suffer for it, but there really nothing we can do. Only one man can save GenCon UK, and that man is:

Peter Adkinson

 

[Zaruthustran]

The Con was wonderful--once I got inside. My comments/suggestions:

1. Pre-print Generic Tickets. Generic Tickets are Generic; there is no reason to print them on demand. So, pre-print 10,000 Generic Tickets before the show--DO NOT PRINT THESE ON-SITE.

2. Pre-print Attendee Badges. It takes far too long to take down someone's name, enter it into a computer, and have that computer print a sheet of paper. Instead, just pre-print thousands of blank Attendee badges, each with a barcode. When a customer buys a badge, just scan the badge's bar code to activate it, then hand it to the customer along with a felt-tip pen. The simple act of having the customer write his or her own name will save thousands of man-hours.

3. Again: there is no need to print on demand. Printing on demand is slow and vulnerable to technical failure. DO NOT PRINT ON DEMAND.

4. Sell Generic Tickets in blocks of 5. This will save time since your staff will deal with standardized prices and your customers will have fewer choices/an easier buying decision.

5. Work with the convention center so that they serve your customers' needs. I found that there were plenty of trash cans, adequate lighting, decent temperatures, and fair food prices. Good job. But I did notice that many of bathrooms were quickly depleted of paper towels, soap, and other consumables. GenCon is a 24-hour convention--the Convention Center should be made aware of this and plan accordingly.

6. Have a crisis plan and quickly respond to trouble. The line was a catastrophe that repeated itself day after day. I'm glad to hear that someone finally responded by hand-writing badges, but this should have happened the very first day. GenCon should have responded to the fiasco by clearly communicating to customers what the problem was and what was being done to solve the problem. GenCon should have also distributed free bottled water to the line (they are lucky that no one passed out or had medical problems). Such consideration costs only a couple hundred bucks and a quick drive to Wal-Mart, but goes a long way toward mitigating the tremendous loss of goodwill caused by GenCon's lack of logistical skill.

-z