Duckon Report
Jun. 10th, 2007 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
billroperThings went well at Duckon. We had a couple of minor glitches getting ready for the SpaceTime Theater show on Friday night, but we had a great audience and got a lot of laughs. I was trying to get the show to fit in an hour -- we actually ran about 1:11 according to the tape. Pretty close. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spiritdance was good enough to sit for Katie during the show, which made things much more possible.
I'd spent about five hours standing and running around by the time the show was over, so my legs were pretty shot when we got back from our late dinner. I headed off to the filk, sang one song (Beyond the Sky), sat around for a while, and realized that I just wasn't comfortable sitting there, so I headed off to bed a little bit early.
Our room was supposed to be a king non-smoking. It looked more like a queen non-smoking -- if that bed was a king, then I'm Czar Nicholas or something like that. So the bed was a bit crowded, but we managed ok.daisy_knotwise may disagree...
Also, for some reason, there were two halves of the rind of a kiwi fruit lying on the floor when I picked up the room. I picked up the kiwi fruit and tossed it, vaguely thankful it wasn't something worse, which had been my first thought, since the green part was facing down.
The bathtub was also an adventure. It looked like it might have once been a whirlpool, as there was a built-up wide ceramic ledge around the edge that made getting in and out with my bad knee more of an adventure than it should have been. Also, the shower head was at what I consider Munchkin height. *sigh* But I kvetch... :)
The con, on the other hand, was just fine. I had a good time talking to folks over the dealer table, Katie was suitably charming, and sales were good. Of course, we had a boatload of new CDs and there's nothing like new product to drive sales. Gretchen tells me that other dealers were saying sales were slow, which is possible, but attendance apparently was up by about a hundred members this year, which isn't too shabby.
janmagic came by and spent some time on Saturday afternoon working on my bad leg. It certainly helped loosen it up, which it badly needed by then.
We ended up with six auctioneers for the art auction on Saturday night: me,daddy_guido, rmjwell, Dr. Bob, Murray Porath, and Mike Cole, who was the Artist Guest of Honor. dek9 volunteered as a runner and did a fine job, along with the rest of the runner corps.
Unfortunately, the auction started about 20-25 minutes late. I think there was a small paperwork problem that they were sorting out. And we had a mountain of charity items, some of which were very nice, some of which probably should have been sold on bid sheets (unless they managed to attract three or more bids).
For example: book autographed by Author Guest of Honor is good. Obscure trade paperback autographed by no one, not so good.
It's bad, not because we're raising money for charity, but because we're not raising much money for charity with the less desirable items and we're sucking energy out of the art auction. It's painful when you're flogging a no-bid item to try to get somebody to bid something so that you can make it go away. This is something we've been over at WindyCon and Capricon as well, so I suspect we'll get it sorted out soon.
After the art auction, I went to the filk. I actually stuck my head into the smaller filk room and let them know that the auction room was now available and about 80% of the filk moved over there -- enough that, by the time I got back with my guitar (which Bonnie J. thoughtfully carried for me), I had trouble finding a place to sit. Kindly,exapno offered me a chair one row off the main circle, which I was happy to accept. I sang two songs before crashing out for the night, Crosstime Bus (which Gretchen had asked to hear earlier in the day) and Wings.
It was funny, though. Gretchen and I had speculated that Katie would find herself crawling on the carpet at the hotel (as opposed to the hardwood floors at home) and we were pretty much correct. She was getting around much better, enough so that Gretchen put her in pants for Sunday to save her knees from rug burn.
Gretchen had taken Katie to the room to decompress during the art auction and had been waiting on a couch downstairs as the auction ended. Katie was quite happy to see me, so I held her for a few minutes before going to get my guitar and set up in the circle. Later, I ducked out to grab a soda and pick up snacks for Gretchen. As I walked back into the filk room, Katie started making a beeline across the carpet, heading for Daddy as fast as she could creep/crawl.
It was awfully flattering. So I picked her up and held her for a bit before going back to my seat. :)
Sunday we got up early and cleared out of the room before heading back to the dealer table. Things were pretty calm. After we closed, first Dawn and later Guido came by to help us pack out, which we greatly appreciated. Then we decided that exhaustion was the better part of valor and headed home to collapse and watch the Cubs game.
Which also contained the word "collapse", I suppose, but that would be a completely different story and certainly less fun than Duckon was.
spiritdance was good enough to sit for Katie during the show, which made things much more possible.I'd spent about five hours standing and running around by the time the show was over, so my legs were pretty shot when we got back from our late dinner. I headed off to the filk, sang one song (Beyond the Sky), sat around for a while, and realized that I just wasn't comfortable sitting there, so I headed off to bed a little bit early.
Our room was supposed to be a king non-smoking. It looked more like a queen non-smoking -- if that bed was a king, then I'm Czar Nicholas or something like that. So the bed was a bit crowded, but we managed ok.
daisy_knotwise may disagree...Also, for some reason, there were two halves of the rind of a kiwi fruit lying on the floor when I picked up the room. I picked up the kiwi fruit and tossed it, vaguely thankful it wasn't something worse, which had been my first thought, since the green part was facing down.
The bathtub was also an adventure. It looked like it might have once been a whirlpool, as there was a built-up wide ceramic ledge around the edge that made getting in and out with my bad knee more of an adventure than it should have been. Also, the shower head was at what I consider Munchkin height. *sigh* But I kvetch... :)
The con, on the other hand, was just fine. I had a good time talking to folks over the dealer table, Katie was suitably charming, and sales were good. Of course, we had a boatload of new CDs and there's nothing like new product to drive sales. Gretchen tells me that other dealers were saying sales were slow, which is possible, but attendance apparently was up by about a hundred members this year, which isn't too shabby.
janmagic came by and spent some time on Saturday afternoon working on my bad leg. It certainly helped loosen it up, which it badly needed by then.We ended up with six auctioneers for the art auction on Saturday night: me,
daddy_guido, rmjwell, Dr. Bob, Murray Porath, and Mike Cole, who was the Artist Guest of Honor. dek9 volunteered as a runner and did a fine job, along with the rest of the runner corps.Unfortunately, the auction started about 20-25 minutes late. I think there was a small paperwork problem that they were sorting out. And we had a mountain of charity items, some of which were very nice, some of which probably should have been sold on bid sheets (unless they managed to attract three or more bids).
For example: book autographed by Author Guest of Honor is good. Obscure trade paperback autographed by no one, not so good.
It's bad, not because we're raising money for charity, but because we're not raising much money for charity with the less desirable items and we're sucking energy out of the art auction. It's painful when you're flogging a no-bid item to try to get somebody to bid something so that you can make it go away. This is something we've been over at WindyCon and Capricon as well, so I suspect we'll get it sorted out soon.
After the art auction, I went to the filk. I actually stuck my head into the smaller filk room and let them know that the auction room was now available and about 80% of the filk moved over there -- enough that, by the time I got back with my guitar (which Bonnie J. thoughtfully carried for me), I had trouble finding a place to sit. Kindly,
exapno offered me a chair one row off the main circle, which I was happy to accept. I sang two songs before crashing out for the night, Crosstime Bus (which Gretchen had asked to hear earlier in the day) and Wings.It was funny, though. Gretchen and I had speculated that Katie would find herself crawling on the carpet at the hotel (as opposed to the hardwood floors at home) and we were pretty much correct. She was getting around much better, enough so that Gretchen put her in pants for Sunday to save her knees from rug burn.
Gretchen had taken Katie to the room to decompress during the art auction and had been waiting on a couch downstairs as the auction ended. Katie was quite happy to see me, so I held her for a few minutes before going to get my guitar and set up in the circle. Later, I ducked out to grab a soda and pick up snacks for Gretchen. As I walked back into the filk room, Katie started making a beeline across the carpet, heading for Daddy as fast as she could creep/crawl.
It was awfully flattering. So I picked her up and held her for a bit before going back to my seat. :)
Sunday we got up early and cleared out of the room before heading back to the dealer table. Things were pretty calm. After we closed, first Dawn and later Guido came by to help us pack out, which we greatly appreciated. Then we decided that exhaustion was the better part of valor and headed home to collapse and watch the Cubs game.
Which also contained the word "collapse", I suppose, but that would be a completely different story and certainly less fun than Duckon was.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 07:45 pm (UTC)At an art auction, keeping the audience amused is good, but spending a lot of time on the amusing stuff has the opposite effect on the person who's just waiting for the piece he's there to bid on to come up.
The bidder who didn't see the piece in the show but is genuinely interested in it at the auction is a conundrum. Once the piece is actually being auctioned, it's not practical to give him the time the piece deserves, and even making a pretense of letting him really evaulate it, rather than just giving him enough of a look that he remembers seeing it in the show, is going to be a big delay. I wonder if there's a way to change the format so that people could actually look at the pieces that are waiting to come up without it becoming a mob. Consider this as a thought experiment: Rather than arranging as many pieces as will fit on chairs at the front of the room (where the bidders can't really see them anyway), break all the pieces to be sold into groups of roughly five pieces (with one or two pieces per auctioneer per group when there's a team of auctioneers). The current group is handed to runners, but the next group is placed on a table at one side of the room, and people are allowed to leave their chairs and look. Between groups is a good time for a charity piece or an announcement or a joke, and the new "on deck" group is announced and placed in the side viewing area before the new "being auctioned" group gets started. A little attention to the traffic pattern (for instance, the rows of chairs should be wider spaced than normal so it's less difficult for people to get up and walk by the side table when they see a piece they'd want another look at). If this works, it would cut way down on the number of runner calls and let people really see pieces they missed in the show. And when people know the next 5 pieces to be sold do not include the one they're there for, they can safely go to the bathroom. On the other hand, if it fails, all the bidders are jostling each other at the side table checking out the next group rather than in their seats bidding on the current group.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 09:51 pm (UTC)Anything that requires more work to get the room reset to specification for the art auction is probably a bad thing overall. I decided to pull a column of chairs out of the center aisle before the auction started, because it was just too narrow for the runners to navigate quickly. That was enough work. :)
As far as keeping the audience amused, it's quite possible to do that while still being quick about it. But that's the trick...
no subject
Date: 2007-06-12 02:36 pm (UTC)While I certainly haven't worked as many art shows as you, I've worked enough that I have some appreciation of how much work is involved. I wouldn't want to make the job harder unless it had real benefits. But if my idea worked, it would certainly mean more work in terms of more people coming to the auction, more pieces sold, more art coming to the con, etc., and I don't think that's a bad thing. If a different room layout and a slightly different auction format made things run more smoothly, I think it would be worth it. Unfortunately, I suspect the improvement would only come after bidders had a chance to get used to the new world order, while the complaints would be immediate because someone will always complain when something changes.
Laying the chairs out differently to accommodate a new traffic flow can probably wait until the new traffic flow develops, though. Other than that, the main effort is convincing the auctioneers that there's something to gain from picking the groups ahead of time.