Convention Poll

[GoktimusPrime]

I'm currently considering abandoning the effort to make a dedicated Transformers convention in Sydney, and instead holding a stall or booth at an existing convention. Reasons for this consideration are:

1. Sabretron 2004 and OzToyCon 2006 were financial losses. With a stall/booth we have less to lose.

2. Lack of funds. Many thanks to those who have already made financial contributions to the project, but we're barely 1/6th of the way of reaching our target for a venue and it's already March. Doesn't look promising if we are to have a convention in September. I want things organised ASAP so we can begin promoting awareness of the convention.

3. Effort. Due to recent unfortunate circumstances in kup's life he's decided to pull out of the team. And while I completely understand and support his decision to do so, it basically means that the convention project is now a one-man show. Trying to organise an entire convention on my own would be very time-consuming and I'm really not sure if it's worth my time and effort (those of you who know me well know that I'm going to be obscenely busy the middle of this year (-_-)).

We have done stalls and boothes at conventions before - the first being the OzFormers booth at Sydney SupaNova 2003. We also had a stall at Animania 2003 and a booth at Animania 2004.

I'm currently thinking about getting a stall (they're cheaper than boothes) at Smash!. Some of my year 9s (now year 10) had a stall there last year, and I figured that if a bunch of kids could afford it then it shouldn't be too hard for me.

I'm concerned with establishing a viable means of running a regular TF convention in Australia. As many of you long time members know, I've been talking about this since 2003. Since then we've only had two dedicated TF conventions (Sabretron and OzToyCon), and as I mentioned before, they financially ran as losses. And these conventions were entirely funded by fans such as myself, dirge and most of all, griffin. It's just not right that fans should continue to lose money in an effort to run conventions for their fellow fans.

So anyway, I just want to know how the rest of you would feel if I scaled the project back and aimed at running a stall or booth rather than a full convention. I would like to dedicate at least half the stall or booth for selling toys. Exactly how this can be achieved we can discuss later on the 2009 convention thread, but for now I just want to know if the rest of you would be cool with that idea.

Humble beginnings: the OzFormers booth at Sydney SupaNova 2003


Australia's first dedicated TF convention; Sabretron 2004. Bigger, better but a financial loss


P.S.: for those of you who have already made financial contributions, those funds will still be used for the convention project - i.e.: to pay for the booth or stall.