I came across Spurge’s thoughts on NYCC last night, and the thing that stuck out at me was that he thought despite giving out 2900 press passes, the show did not get 2900 press passes worth of coverage. Now, while I might suggest that NYCC organizers Reed being able to sell access to 2900 members of the press is worth it’s weight in gold (let alone free admissions to the Comic Con), I will admit that my own coverage was somewhat anemic and so I thought I’d follow-up with my thoughts on the show.
I will also intersperse those thoughts with photographs so you don’t get bored.
My first thought on NYCC, and this is brutally unfair I know, is that Reed has utterly and completely blown it with this show. What I mean by that is that they had a chance, a real chance, at doing a book- and comic-oriented event, that engaged people with the work. There’s a lot of room within that description to have famous people and spectacle, but the promise of NYCC–to me–was that this could be a book show, a comics show, a successful event that could be the antithesis of San Diego Comic Con’s Freak Parade.
Make no mistake, New York Comic Con is a Freak Parade.
And that is exactly what the organizers were hoping for.
Like I said, this is a profoundly unfair thought… It’s not kosher to judge the relative success or failure of an event based on what you hoped it might be. Sure, that first year was more modest, with (to my recollection) less of a focus on stardom and more of a focus on creators/authors/artists. Modest, publisher-oriented booths, programming that centered equally on the business-side and fandom-side of things. Maybe it was the then-presence of a reasonably vital Wizardworld: Chicago to take some of the burden off of NYCC needing to be the North-East version of SDCC, but that first year, it looked like NYCC could turn into anything.
And anything is what it seems to have turned into.
Walking in the main exhibition entrance, one was greeted by a giant booth which blared Michael Jackson songs all weekend. There was a stage with dancers–you could even get up and dance with them–trying their best to capture and replicate the late pop-singer’s moves as directed by a videogame (out this Christmas!). It’s hard not to smile when you come across a giant stage with a Michael Jackson impersonator and backup dancers aggressively “Beat-It”-ing; it was a genuinely fun moment.
It just also happened to be the death-knell for NYCC as a comics/book event.
Massive video-game booths taking up huge swaths of the floor, give-away masks/hats/swag bags, all that was missing was a giant golden throne. Maybe they needed it on set.
So yeah, NYCC has become SDCC-East, which is personally disappointing (because I already _go_ to SDCC), but I think we’ve covered that. How did it succeed as SDCC-East? Well, the part of me that wants to be invited next year is inclined to be more charitable than I otherwise might, so let me say first and foremost that a the show was intensely marketed, and people showed up, and they had a good time. Those are, to my mind, the three most positive things I can say about the show.
Personally, I’d take issue with the way it was marketed, the number of people that showed up, and why people had a good time, but that’s because I’m kind of curmudgeonly.
Last one first: I had a great time in New York last weekend. Seriously, it was great, and the con was a good part of that, and I’m grateful for that experience. I met a lot of wonderful people and met people in person for the first time, it was valuable personally and professionally. That couldn’t have happened without NYCC being a big-enough draw to get all those folks, myself included, out to New York in the first place.
But has been pointed out online already, how much of an excuse does anyone really need to go to New York City in the first place? It’s AMAZING, I ? NY a great deal and would go every weekend, if I could afford it.
Not to discount NYCC’s good fortune at taking place in NYC , but I feel like that’s the starting point, the plateau: “Hey, this is New York City. People are gonna wanna come.” There are more people in NYC than in all of Canada; you’ve got a massive built-in audience, a massive talent-pool, it’s easy to get to, plenty of hotels, and an international tourist destination. Unless you don’t want people showing up to your event, it’s easy to get people to come to your event… or at least a hell of a lot easier than San Diego. Or Toronto for that matter. It’s easy to have a good time in New York, and hella-easy for nerds to have a good time if you throw a bunch of them in a big room together. That isn’t the best indicator of success, it might not even be a particularly good one.
Which brings us to the crowds: Thank Christ No One Died. I don’t say that lightly, I really don’t. The show was a zoo, particularly Saturday 12-4, wall-to-wall people. San Diego at its absolute worst. The aisles were too narrow in the main hall by at least 2 feet, and they were far narrower in the Small Press Pavilion on the south side of the convention centre. Worse still, the Small Press Pavilion was adjacent to artist alley, and the aisles didn’t match up creating HUGE human-traffic jams in the aisle that connected them.
Overstuffed.
This isn’t just bitching. I mean, it’s bitching, I’m not backing away from the tone of this as unnecessarily cranky, but Saturday at the show felt legitimately unsafe at points. I really felt like very little thought had gone into the layout of the hall from a safety/traffic point of view. Whether they had a layout that needed to be entirely trashed because of the construction or whether they came up with a bad design, the layout needs to be severely changed for 2011. Wide main aisles/throughfares to move people quickly from one end of the show to the other, fewer exhibitors crammed near essential services like escalators and washrooms(!), and what the hell was with the massive, empty space at the entrance to the south hall? Maybe we could’ve spaced out some of the Small Press booths into that space?
I will say that from an exhibitor POV, it was nice that the majority of medium-to-large publishers were clustered together making it easier to browse the stuff I was most-interested in. But honestly, it’s been like that since year one, and I feel like that’s more of a hold-over from previous shows than a conscious decision for 2010.
Which brings us to the marketing: Wow. Listed as Press for the event, I was put on the list fairly early and received at least one update a week from NYCC itself, and a hundred+ PR emails, almost exclusively from film and video game producers. I don’t know if the comics pubs just didn’t want to pony-up the dough to buy access to the press list, but the majority of comics promotion happened in the body of the NYCC emails, and again, felt paid-for or part of an in-kind promotion… and even then, they were exceptionally rare. No, both inwardly to subscribers and outwardly to the public, this was marketed as a POP CULTURE event, a freak parade by and for media-friendly Geeks, and a place to come and get your geek on. Come meet Stan Lee! Come see a J-Pop Band! Video Games! B-Movie Actors Film Guests! (There was comics content in almost all of the official NYCC emails I received, but it was always after other info, and other media.)
The marketing for the show, hell the whole website if you look at it, has a Carnival Barker vibe that’s… well, it’s successful as fuck. Seriously, it’s fucking amazing how many people showed up, talked about the show before it happened. It was happening. But this is starting to get into broken-record territory here–Reed STILL isn’t good at running consumer shows.
(Kind of telling that it took 20 paragraphs to get to the thesis…)
So Reed Exhibitions have integrated themselves with PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo, a video-game show that started as a grassroots effort that topped like 70k attendees this year. They’re wholesale-running PAX East, in Boston, in early 2011. PAX has always been a well-run show, nearly seamless and exceptionally enjoyable as an exhibtor, and as an attendee.
Reed has done everything in their power to figure out why PAX runs so well, and attempted to duplicate it to the best of their ability. For example, at PAX, the volunteers are called “Enforcers” and they will bend-over-backwards to help you. This year (and I believe this is the first year), NYCC branded all of their volunteers as “Heroes” and their yellow volunteer shirts had “Hero!” on the back. The staff shirts were red… and I don’t think they had anything on them.
The problem was, every volunteer I encountered was unempowered. They had the barest of instruction, and didn’t even feel confident in that. There weren’t enough maps, and no one from one section knew anything about any other section, so no one could answer where anything was that wasn’t right in front of them. Any harder question was met with “ask my supervisor.” These weren’t random volunteers I asked either, these were people at the check-in desk. And this wasn’t just the first day, it was all weekend.
You can call your volunteer a ‘hero’ to thank them for helping out; I think that’s swell. But if you don’t give them any information, if you don’t empower them to basic questions, if you don’t even give them basic orientation, then you’ve done a poor job.
Which leaves you to rely on the convention centre security. I’ll say one thing about the Javitz Centre Security: They don’t give a FUCK. This was the antithesis of San Diego Comic Con in at least one way: there was almost no security, doing almost nothing, and by Sunday they’d given up entirely… which when you’ve got an overstuffed convention centre full of folks who’ve been invited in to stare at/be the freak show, creates more of those overcrowding problems I was talking about. A security “guard” at the south hall entrance couldn’t be bothered to tell people not to stop directly in the center of the narrow entrance way to talk. Literally looked over at them blocking the way, then looked away. I don’t like being the guy who shouts at comic book conventions, but “THERE ARE BETTER PLACES TO STAND” may have been uttered at one point. Loudly.
If one is going to be undiscerning about who one invites into their home, then it behooves one to make sure that one is prepared for what follows. I’d submit that NYCC was not, from a staff, volunteer, or security POV.
In Closing: I really felt like the show had a slapdash feel to it. Because Reed moved NYCC from February to October, they had more than 20 months between 2009 and 2010 to prepare the show, nearly two full years, and it felt considerably more poorly-organized than the 2009 show. I’m aware that as an event organizer (though on nowhere near this scale) I’m way more sensitive to organizational problems than the general public, and as such I try hard to pull back a little on criticism… and I did, honestly… (The programming, the integration of New York Anime Festival, the last-minuteness of their info going public). It’s tough because NYCC isn’t the show I’d run, but I can get over that to judge it in the context of the shows it’s decided it wants to be: SDCC and PAX. And honestly? It comes up short. Or at least this year it did.
So there are my thoughts on NYCC 2010. I had an amazing time, I got a bunch work done, and met some great people, but in the end I don’t think that’s going to be enough for me, for next year.
– Christopher
I’ll caption some of the photos later if I have time.
I don’t disagree with most of your points, I just wanted to make a few corrections:
That Video Games New York booth you posted a photo has been a part of the show since the first NYCC in 2006. They’re a shop based in the East Village.
Chris’s Note: I don’t have anything against any exhibitor in particular, the layout of the photos was mostly random. That booth in particular had some neat stuff.
The volunteer shirts have actually said “Hero” for several years now, long before they ever hooked up with PAX. (I have several friends who volunteer every year.)
It’s spelled “Javits” not “Javitz.”
I totally agree on the volunteers being under-trained (if at all!) and there being no security. For example, the main floor closed at 7 on Saturday, but the poor volunteers didn’t bother trying to shoo people out until 7:30! They should NOT be having volunteers do that job anyway. MegaCon, SDCC…they have actual security with authority and training. These kids were apparently told to “be nice” and not yell at people to get out. WTF?
On the “there’s not enough comics and too much ‘freak show'” I have to say: This is what people expect and there is a LOT of cross-over in interests of comic lovers. If there was no interest from the general crowd, then those exhibitors would not show up again. You said the MK booth was a “death knell” but it was very popular and obviously enjoyed. I’m not sure what the issue is for you. Elitism? Wanting the con to be less popular so there is more space? No “outsiders” to the “freak show” (Wow, insulting.)?
Hey Puck: The real issue with the MJ booth is that it marked a massive amount of space being given over to whomever had the most money, not whatever was the best fit for a comics show. People will show up to lots of stuff–people will rubberneck a car crash. It doesn’t make it desirable to have a car-crash at your comic show. Now if you’re not having a comic show, if you’re having a “Pop Culture Event”, then yeah, why not create a spectacle right? But that’s sort of the heart of my criticism–that it isn’t a comic show any more, it’s something else and that’s unfortunate.
If you’re looking for a more comics-focused show in an accessible city, I’d recommend C2E2, at least judging by its first year. There was tons of comics stuff in a well-organized area, without too much intrusion from movies, video games, celebrities, etc. Given the travesty that Wizard World Chicago has become, it’s definitely my con of choice now. You should come down next year!
I certainly don’t disagree with any of Chris’s points here. In fact I saw most of what he points out myself. Extreme overcrowding, rude and indifferent security, disorganization in the lines and so on and so forth. I do believe that with NYCC now set for October in NYC for the foreseeable future, that Lance and ReedPop will do a better a job of guestimating the crowds and how to deal with them, since they won’t be in a different space each year. We’ll see.
and while I understand that the show is offensive to many in the comics community, I think we should remember that this is in fact the kind of show Reed wants and has always wanted and they have always made that clear. They want an SDCC-like “freak show,” if that is what it is. If it wasn’t freaky–by that I mean drawing nearly 100,000 fans–they wouldn’t do the show. There would be no NYCC at the Javits center, because Reed doesn’t do SPX, Mocca or small quiet shows. They do big shows with international flavor in major venues and they bring in big revenues.
I actually like NYCC because I think the industry needs this type of show in New York. And one more thing, Tom Spurgeon dues mention something about hoping at one point that Reed’s connection with BEA would turn NYCC into something like BEA. But thats a nonstarter.
BEA is a problem child show with declining attendance and exhbitors who constantly question why they are event attending. The show is dominated by the New York big 6 publishers, who think the show is too expensive and doesn’t provide them any tangible benefits. It’s seen as a show that has lost its function in the modern marketplace. Indeed there’s more of an effort among smaller prose book presses to make BEA more like NYCC, by admitting more consumers. But the big houses do not want that to happen.
Lance Fensterman used to run BEA, now he’s been promoted to head one of their fastest growing and most profitable show–New York Comic Con. Hopefully we’ll see at better managed show in the future.
For me, the crowded paths between aisles that slowed to a crawl or even stopped completely for a few minutes (!) were the biggest problem. Honestly, the organizers really need to plan better ways of moving traffic.