My first article for Geeks Out (as Jenna Hale) is up and it’s a review of BishounenCon 2017.
Overall, I had a blast and so did the attendees. We were short-staffed, but we made it work and I think we really put on an excellent convention, especially for a first-year convention. There were some snafus, like not having a long enough HDMI cord for the panel room with AV and not being able to stream the content we were planning on from Funimation, but that’s lessons learned. Never trust streaming and no HDMI cord is long enough unless it can stretch across the room. We actually did a late-night Walmart run for a 12′ HDMI cord but that was still too short.
I’ve spent the last two weeks gathering feedback from convention-goers, staff, and volunteers, so we’re prepared to make the 2018 con, if it happens, even better. We got amazingly lucky with the staff and volunteers that applied and I’m hoping to see them all back for the next con. We had some amazing people working for us and the con wouldn’t have gone nearly as smoothly without them. I’m hoping to return as head of Programming, hopefully with more support staff to handle some of the areas that were lacking, like Volunteers Coordinator, Cosplay, Videos, and more. Our panelists were amazing as well and I heard nothing but good things about the content.
I just got in the final attendance numbers! 492 awesome people joined us for the first con. Still waiting on a definite answer for next year’s con, but it’s looking good.