The Curious Case of a Conference that wants to be a Convention - HawaiiCon 2018

How did we get here again?

It's been a while since I've dusted off the storied pages of this blog, and one of the more popular poasts here was what I felt was a scathing review of the inaugural episode of HawaiiCon, hosted annually on the Kona side of the Big Island after an adventure that left me very angry at the treatment my friends and I had been given, and after an interesting conversation about flimsy lanyards, I had told myself that this convention had to really get their shit together for me to return.

So of course 3 years later in 2017, I returned as a vendor -- selling gaming items as I with a few others had opened a gaming shop, and for the most part that particular weekend was pretty enjoyable (mostly because we had made a decent amount of money for a store which at the time had only opened in the previous month), but as I was dealing with my vending duties I was unable to really critique the "con" and look into the issues that I highlighted to see if HawaiiCon had, in fact, gotten their shit together.

Fast forward to this year: 2018. After working with the HawaiiCon Gaming department for the better part of nine months on and off, a series of unfortunate events caused me to attend this year not as a vendor, but as a volunteer. This became a great opportunity to not only re-critique what I did get to see, but also compare their first year to this... current year.

Things I Liked...

One of the more crowning moments of the con was presenting a Loco Moco to Stefan Pokorny of Dwarven Forge

I know that at the bare minimum, some of the things I suggested did get implemented at the game room. Advertising was definitely much better compared to first year. A schedule was worked out, and (mostly) posted on the website. The layout of the room was a good collaboration effort, and I was happy to have been a part of the scheduling and layout process. On the days of, I liked how gaming room staff were active and inclusive, either starting up board games, running RPGs or manning the info booth. All my positive experiences with the convention were with gaming room staff, and for that I wanted to thank them for that. I also wanted to thank the gaming room VIPs, they were an absolute joy to pick their brains, have dinner with and just let them be them without the whole "famous" person connotation.

My demos for Star Wars Armada had a good amount of interest, at least 5 or 6 people were excited about the models themselves, and the Big Island Armada community got at least 1 more person playing. That is very exciting.

I'll take personal responsibility for that boost in popularity in the greatest of social deduction games, Secret Hitler. Between my heavy ironic right-wing posting IRL, and the jokes others made that I made zero attempt to shut down (because why shut jokes down?), I have had a few people after the convention thank me for the great experience and asked me about where they can get copies of the game. That for me, is a big victory.

Another great thing was being able to sell off some of the things I had in my closet -- I made like, $270, which I was happy to donate 10% to the local college tabletop gaming club for their activities.

... and the not-so-much stuff.

Again, I feel like the event organizers sees gaming as a side note, something to be tacked onto an academic conference with sci-fi undertones. I had a few just "LITERALLY WHY" moments that weekend:

1. Due to how the layout of the venue is, a bigger panel room opposite one of the walls hosted a cosplay contest. This in itself is not a problem, the problem was when it was decided that the green room for the cosplay contestants (and the infiltration/exfiltration for these contestants) was through the gaming room. So you can understand my displeasure when a crowd of people wandering in with organizers shouting at them to get in a line and find the door in the middle of a room for quiet activities. I had to stop my scheduled Star Wars Armada demo for a good 20 minutes while I waited for the crowds to do their thing and leave. I could tell that the visitors that were with me were also pretty annoyed that they were unable to concentrate on the game and instead had to jostle about since the line/crowd ran completely through the center of the room. Paid VIP events off to the side were also disrupted by the crowd, and I'm annoyed that an event that those people paid to participate in were disrupted. They shouldn't have to deal with that. 
2. As a last minute, not on the gaming schedule thing, the gaming department gets drafted in some sort of charity casino night event? So participants pay money to play "board games" -- really just a couple of craps/blackjack tables and then some cards against humanity tables towards the center. I (in my stupidity, I guess) hosted a Secret Hitler table, which of course became the most popular game of the weekend when people actually play it. Anyway, I get looks of derision from a couple of the organizers, and I even get a few people come and harass the table, just because the board game has the bad man's name on it OH NOOO. Meanwhile, literally across the room is a game also made by the same people -- Cards Against Humanity. So we can't play well designed board games because the bad, scary dude's name is on it? That's bullshit. Anyway, after a few rounds of Secret Hitler, we played more social deduction games like Coup, which the table enjoyed. In this case, I just found the obvious closed mindedness very unfortunate, and I want to thank those people that gave the games a chance and had an excellent time of it!
3. I heard about a staffer that was arrested for property damage at the hotel, and was apparently allowed to return to the venue as a convention goer. I don't know exactly how much of the story is true (I know the arrest happened but did not confirm personally that the person in question got to return.), but I would have not only dropped them from the volunteer staff, but I would have asked them to just not come back, period. It caused some real questions to be asked among the other volunteers, that's all.
4. I heard about a different staffer doing inappropriate things with another person and while it was handled correctly in my opinion, I was disappointed that something like that happened and I hope that it doesn't happen again.

And for the more minor things I didn't like:

• The convention pamphlet lacked basic functions like a map of the venue, schedule of events, list of panels with descriptions, and hours of operation. You would think all these things were a simple affair, and would have been included immediately. Instead we get a 30 page advertisement that was for all intents and purposes useless for the congoer. I think there was talk of an app or something, but I'm almost certain nobody actually used it, so there's that.
• The "feedback" panel was more just a solicitation for people to praise the panel, and not actually put in some good critiques. A couple of people tried to  raise some issues, but were quickly swept under the rug with announcements about the resort fee being waved next year. WOO TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS WOO. That was embarrassing.
• Why are we spending so much money on C/D-rated celebrities, but we STILL have flimsy business cards for con badges. Nobody checks them, the badges are too small to notice them. Lanyards are a little better, but that's not saying much. I have considered a couple of times just literally wearing a badge from a previous year and just melding into the crowd.
• Volunteer staff may be differentiated by "tract" or department, but this differentiation still isn't made on the badges. In the case of a security issue, I still have no way to flag down a security staffer. Instead, I was given the number of the head of security, but that seems not very useful if he's swamped doing crowd control and I have to call him across the entire hotel for an immediate issue.
• The price is still way too high for normal people to attend. If you drop the prices on tickets, you will get way more people to attend, the volume of people that goes up, the higher the potential for sales. It's insane to have such a high entry cost for such a tiny convention. 

 Continued Thoughts on Stuff 

I suppose as it is, HawaiiCon is already a pretty great academic conference. So if the organizers want to continue in that direction, I suppose there's nothing I can suggest that can change that. If they want to move this towards the truly inclusive setting to everyone like the organizers keep on telling me that they want then I believe these suggestions may help:

• Have a convention booklet with a map, hours of operation, list of panels with descriptions and code of conduct within the booklet, not a haphazard printout made the night before the event.
• Improved, visible convention badges large enough for convention staff to be able to check badges easier. The staff shirts are very good, do continue with that.
• The website is in dire need of improvement. The elements are sloppy, and the sloppiness makes it hard to quickly discern needed information. It detracts from the event big time.
• Dramatically reduced prices for locals -- the kamaaina rate for entry needs to be way lower if you want more people on the inside.
• If you don't want dramatically reduced overall prices, then perhaps a reduced price for those that just want to do gaming stuff so that tournaments can fire at reasonable prices for the vendors and attendees.
• More volunteer meetings across the year for training purposes. A one-time long lecture "training" is honestly not good enough. In addition, the level of information given to staffers really needs to be increased so that we can do our jobs better.
• The volunteers need to be given some sort of actual appreciation. As much as I love reading one and literally only one thankful post on facebook, an after-party would be a great step in a better direction for the volunteers.
• For the Gaming Room: I suggest that for the gaming meetings (which are plentiful and are mostly fruitful) that they end with the people that show up actually play a board game at the end as a means of training the volunteer staff and so that they can start a board game demo on the fly if there's a lack of things going on in the gaming room. Hell, one meeting should just be hosting an RPG one shot, as an icebreaker activity and to introduce the hobby to those new to it.

Again, I think this event has the potential to really take off. I beg the organizers to find some time to actually go to a real convention and stop trying to just make this a 4 day dinner party with some C/D-list celebrities while you sprinkle some sci-fi stuff on it that seems cool because you read about on some webpage. It's embarrassing and I have no desire to give up 2 days of badly needed paid work to work a 40+ hour weekend with little to no appreciation from the higher ups. It's one of the reasons that made me leave the KawaiiKon volunteers after many years of loyal service. This event isn't even nearly that big.

A Final Word on Other Things and Stuff

Now that I've gotten my word vomit finally on paper, here's some more positive stuff that I'm looking forward to:

As of the writing of this article, I am throwing some of my support behind a new gaming lifestyle venture, known as Slow Your Roll. I'll be starting out with blagpoasts (which will be mirrored here) and YouTube videos, and I intend to eventually start hosting a regular podcast if I can find someone with a good mic and some time to just shitpost on a microphone. It's pretty exciting stuff, and I ask that you follow them on Instagram as well as on Twitter and Facebook. Bonus points if you buy some of their apparel, or perhaps some cards from their TCGPlayer account! There are a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head, and I am looking forward to working with the Slow Your Roll team to organize and execute these ideas.

Until next time, may your ventures be successful, you critique and accept good criticism, and you live life to the fullest.