Australian Transformers Convention

[kup]

Options and ideas area always being considered and thrown around from time to time, but when it comes down to funding, I seemed to be the only one willing to donate the bulk of the hundreds or thousands required for our past Cons & Booths at other Cons.
The last one I funded (in 2006) required me to sacrifice going to BotCon and max out my credit cards, which put me off for a while. Since then, we've seen an increase in conventions in this country, so perhaps the demand is growing.

What is needed is at least a group of about 5 determined investors willing to put in at least a few thousand dollars into it knowing that there may be no return. On top of that, we would also need a proper organizer and some promotional backing not necessarily from Hasbro but in the form of outlets such as Madman, JB-Hifi, EB or some other place where geeks go.

After that we would need proper promotion - This is the key to success. If there is no promotion, there are no people, it's that simple. To succeed you have to get the crowds who don't necessarily hang around in toy collecting or geek circles but the 'everyday' guy. Events like Sabretron were also lacking when it comes to promotion as you had to stumble into it or be within the local toy collecting community to know about it. I remember back then when I had not joined any toy collecting communities and was unable to find any information about local conventions despite it being on the following weekend. I only found out about it after I joined the board and somebody pointed me out to it but that was a week after it ended.

So basically what is needed is:

- Committed financial backing
- A circle of committed organizers
- Backing from major retailers (two or three should suffice) with kiosks similar to how they do it for Supanova.
- Private toy dealers (spread word to sellers at Parra fair).
- Some celebrity backing like a voice actor or at least some sort of professional display (Glass cabinets with labels, like a museum or Toy fair).
- Good events and activities (Can't be just trivia quizzes, you need something better and fun with decent prices).
- Someone to go up on stage and entertain crowds (Comedy, narrative of the history of TFs with slide shows, videos, etc, A live toy review, etc).
- Proper advertisement (newspapers, fliers, online, if possible radio, etc).

Exclusive toys and whatnot would just be icing on the cake, you want people to first know that the event exists and then make sure they have a good time while attending.

Personally, I would be willing to put thousands into this but I need to see some proper organization and determination which is something that I am yet to see. I know that I will not get a return on my money but at the very least I would like to see it used properly.

[jazzy_josh]

So basically what is needed is:

- Committed financial backing
- A circle of committed organizers
- Backing from major retailers (two or three should suffice) with kiosks similar to how they do it for Supanova.
- Private toy dealers (spread word to sellers at Parra fair).
- Some celebrity backing like a voice actor or at least some sort of professional display (Glass cabinets with labels, like a museum or Toy fair).
- Good events and activities (Can't be just trivia quizzes, you need something better and fun with decent prices).
- Someone to go up on stage and entertain crowds (Comedy, narrative of the history of TFs with slide shows, videos, etc, A live toy review, etc).
- Proper advertisement (newspapers, fliers, online, if possible radio, etc).

Exclusive toys and whatnot would just be icing on the cake, you want people to first know that the event exists and then make sure they have a good time while attending.

Personally, I would be willing to put thousands into this but I need to see some proper organization and determination which is something that I am yet to see. I know that I will not get a return on my money but at the very least I would like to see it used properly.

Now I know that we would love the exclusive toys but that is something that once the convention has a name behind itself so hasbro can invest that. What you need to look at instead of JB HI-FI as geeks and collectors don't really go there a great deal only to get what they can't from else where is sponsors like

Gifts for the Geek http://www.giftsforthegeek.com.au/
First Contact Conventions http://www.firstcontactconventions.com.au/
and
Culture Shock Events http://www.cultureshockevents.com/

Now in regards to voice actors, I spoke to that guy in pm and he said that if any organizer wishes to talk to him about his contacts that they must directly speak to him directly.
Also you dont want to many glass cabnets as they may get broken and they take up a lot of space as well. Pop Culture conventions don't tend to have them unless that is what your stall is all about and then what would you display in them because it would be impossible to put every single transformer into display cases that would take up one or two stalls.

With trivia competition you need it to opened to any one and every one that is from beginner like myself to all the way up to some one say with your knowledge kup, so that every one feels they have a fair chance at winning. Also to have different catagories of pop culture mixed in not all questions on the one subject.

Some games that armageddon play are pizza eating contests, sweet and sour contests, ice cream contests as well as cosplay contests so these are things you need to look at, no talent required contests that are fun.

A mc is given you need some one who can sell to a crowd get them riled up and won't be a stiff on stage because if they are a stiff you wont get the crowd excited. Also if you have a fanatical fan they will only focus on the things they like. This may prove good to other fans that know that person for those things that the voice actor did but what if other fans dont know him for that, they want to feel included have their favorite shows mentioned so you rile them up with the big ones that the actor did because people will know those ones. You need some one who touches breifly on the big things that people all know about and speaks clearly and lowd as that way people can hear them.

Having a transformer convention purely in Australia may be a bad idea as every one thinks that the movie line is dead because and there is nothing in the cinemas, you would need a big draw card for this to happen, that's why I say a pop culture convention is best.

Proper advertisement yes we would need to get on atleast some big web pages going on comic book shops around the country and even maybe trying to get onto a kids tv show or two as that way kids will pesture their parents to drag them to it.

Kids is where the big cash is, drag them and drag teenagers and they will spend a lot more money and that is what will make stall holders happy. Get a web page up and advertise the main stall holders and that will make people happy.

When it comes to stall hodlers you should have packages up, so that if stall holders pay more they get better locations ie closer to the door and advertisement up on the web site.

[GoktimusPrime]

What is needed is at least a group of about 5 determined investors willing to put in at least a few thousand dollars into it knowing that there may be no return.

So what we would need would be donors, really. The word 'invest' implies returns.

Also you dont want to many glass cabnets as they may get broken and they take up a lot of space as well.

For 2003 dirge and I scoured some furniture stores and found some display cabinets that were on their last legs which we got for cheap. They weren't the kind you'd keep for your own personal collection display, but for something "disposable" to use for a single weekend display, they worked just fine.

With trivia competition you need it to opened to any one and every one that is from beginner like myself to all the way up to some one say with your knowledge kup, so that every one feels they have a fair chance at winning.

That's what we've always done with triv... varying different levels of difficulty.

Also to have different catagories of pop culture mixed in not all questions on the one subject.

We've done that too in the past... mixed G1 with G2 with Beast Wars with Beast Machines with Japanese G1 etc.

Some games that armageddon play are pizza eating contests, sweet and sour contests, ice cream contests as well as cosplay contests so these are things you need to look at, no talent required contests that are fun.

We had TF related competitions at Sabretron, like Throttlebot racing (although contestants were informed to bring their own Throttlebots). The winner was a dude from Canberra who had pre-tested all his Throttlebots to see which ones would run the fastest and apparently he was still practising the night before the convention in his hotel room!

Having a transformer convention purely in Australia may be a bad idea as every one thinks that the movie line is dead because and there is nothing in the cinemas, you would need a big draw card for this to happen, that's why I say a pop culture convention is best.

...isn't that what SupaNova is?

Rather than attempting to compete with SupaNova, I'd recommend simply doing something much cheaper and easier and organising an OTCA booth at SupaNova. Organising conventions, especially full blown pop culture/media conventions is extremely difficult and I think Daniel Z does a top job every year with SupaNova conventions around the country. If you want to see any specific celebs come to SupaNova, LMK -- I'll forward the suggestion to Daniel and see what happens. If Daniel agrees then he'll do all the footwork etc. needed to get that celeb down here. We already had two Transformer celebs at last year's SupaNova (did Shane McCarthy attend any of the other SupaNovas outside Sydney?)

Proper advertisement yes we would need to get on atleast some big web pages going on comic book shops around the country and even maybe trying to get onto a kids tv show or two as that way kids will pesture their parents to drag them to it.

Again the advantage of doing the booth at SupaNova is that the promotion is already done... SupaNova itself will crowds -- all we have to do is be there.

Perhaps start with doing a SupaNova booth first before considering doing your own full blown pop culture media convention?

When it comes to stall hodlers you should have packages up, so that if stall holders pay more they get better locations ie closer to the door and advertisement up on the web site.

Yeah, also get a flyer or something to put into the showbag that all attendees get.

Now the question is - if you guys were to organise a convention stall or booth (booths are bigger, better located and more expensive than stalls); what would you sell? At previous SupaNova there were other vendors there that sold Transformer toys - loose and sealed, some Japanese exclusives etc. What would make your booth stand out from the others?

Having things like Transformer related games like trivia might help. You could ask SupaNova to allocate a specific time on stage to run a quick Transformers trivia competition (don't know if you'd have to pay for that privilege)... if not, run the contest at the booth and ask SupaNova to make a PA announcement to tell people to come on down to your booth to play. Might need a portable microphone/speaker for the booth (I have a small mic speaker, but not a mic itself).

What I did at SMASH! 2009 was to run trivia throughout the day -- every player got a free exclusive comic book, and every correct answer got a draw to win the exclusive draw-prize toy at the end of the convention (thus the more answers correctly answered, the more chances to win the toy). At Sabretron 2004 we asked random trivia questions over the PA every 15 minutes and the first person to come to the stage and supply a correct answer would win a prize. Then we had the main trivia competition were we had several contestants sit up on stage and answer a series of questions - we had prizes for everyone, but the best prize for the person with the most points.

LMK if you need any help with trivia questions/answers.

[jazzy_josh]

The only problem is that you're thinking one genre, this day and age sorry to say Goktimus but sadly anime is what draws the kids. The kids don't know the japanese beast wars series so they want the same voice actors over and over and over again. Personally I dont like Supanova due to the fact that I find it unorganized especially last years sydney one. I know a lot of stall owners and they all said that Daniel was unorganized and that even Brisbane was unorganized for stall holders. Supanova only gets really what they want and who they think is popular at the time, ever noticed how many times Vic mignogna has came, one guy brought this up on the Supanova page and he was right the guy practicly lives in Australia lol.

Look at how many pop culture conventions are out there, you have Supanova, Armageddon and Oz Comic Con so I doubt another one is going to hurt considering that there is how many anime convnetions out there compared to the number of Pop Culture ones.

If you want a proper booth in which people will go to I would say Oz Comic Con or Armageddon as they are designed mainly around the Western pop culture where Supanova as some have pointed out focus mainly around the Eastern pop culture as that draws them more money in for them with the International MadMan cosplay comp.

Running a pop culture convention is a next step up from booth as you guys have already done it but the problem was you went mainly one culture and not around pop culture in general. A transformers convention in Australia wouldn't work out unless you have the numbers to make a profit and as you guys have said we sadly dont have those numbers and mass public won't attend unless you a big name actor going.

[jena]

This conversation just keeps going round and round in circles....

[UltraMagnus]

This conversation just keeps going round and round in circles....

Exactly. Maybe my marketing team should get involved doing this. Convention exclusives are easy providing you can have 2000+ attend.

[jena]

If people here are serious about this we need to start simple, create a team.

The first thing to be cleared up is: booth @ Armageddon or stand alone convention.

Then we need to find some investors, some people who have experience doing this, people who are willing to volunteer their time. I am a graphic designer so I can lend my skills to that department and I'd love to represent the female TF fans at a booth.

The debating needs to be put aside and replaced with some actual brainstorming and planning.

[GoktimusPrime]

I agree. Actions speak louder than words. First thing's first - someone has to put their hand up to volunteer as the lead organiser for this thing (not me, sorry).

Here's some suggestions:

+ Definitely recommend doing a booth over a stand alone convention.

+ Location: One of the major east coast capital cities: Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. Probably whichever city is closest to the majority of people organising the con. e.g. if jena were to organise this con, then I'd suggest holding it in Melbourne.

[jena]

I would love to organize something but I lack th experience. If others were willing to help and support me, then I'd be all for it.

[kup]

I would love to organize something but I lack th experience. If others were willing to help and support me, then I'd be all for it.

Lack of experience is fine as long as you have a creative mind and another person who can balance it out when it comes to practicality.

Personally, I think that enthusiasm and creativity are critical at this point as that is what has been lacking IMO.