Getting my geek on

I spent this weekend helping out my sister by selling onigiri at the Calgary Comic Expo. For those who recall, last year was a bit of a fiasco, when they oversold tickets and had to turn people away at the door.  It was great for The Onigiri Co. though, we had a line-up for most of Saturday and a good chunk of Sunday.

In response to the increased interest, this year the Expo expanded to two buildings on the Stampede Grounds.  Unfortunately, their organizers are apparently just not used to thinking on that scale and they made some interesting choices and missed out some organizational "best practices" that would have made things run more smoothly.

I was mostly in the booth, not out trying to get into panels and autograph session and things, so go hunt down reviews if you want "the man on the street" view.  For us, the biggest thing is that they put all the outside vendors in the secondary building, with the kids' area and photo ops downstairs.  If the program had been better designed, it wouldn't have been such a big deal, but it wasn't.  So since people weren't streaming passed us to and fro their events, our sales went down.  I'm sure the Stampede vendors in the main building and the food trucks between the two buildings did really well though. 

The other thing I found is that when I did try to move between the two buildings, the "allowed" doors kept changing.  I never knew whether I could use the closest doors or which other doors I should be walking around to.  The third thing I found is that we apparently wore out the security personnel on Saturday and no one explained anything to the new shift on Sunday. The vendors were given big passes on lanyards, while paying folks got a small badge and wrist band; when I showed up on Sunday, it took me 10 minutes and desperately flagging down a supervisor to convince him that I didn't need a wrist band to get in.   

There was some pretty cool cosplay to see though.  There were a fair number of Dr. Who's of various vintages and an outstanding Weeping Angel. The cast from The Walking Dead were there and the place was awash in zombies. There was a Captain Jack, a smattering of Dr. Horrible's and all kinds of game and anime characters.

I did wander around the autograph area, but I just couldn't convince myself that it was worth paying $40-100 to stand in line for 30-60 minutes to talk to an actor for a minute or two, at most! John Barrowman was asking $40, Nathan Fillion $80, Stan Lee didn't even have a price list up, if you're not willing to give up your soul, I imagine you shouldn't join the line. And the line-ups for the sessions I'd have liked to see were starting 2-3 hours in advance, so I couldn't take that much time off from working.  Sigh.  I did buy myself a Sooba plushy and a grammar Dalek t-shirt from the Blind Ferret booth, so that was cool.

This is the start of our third season of onigiri selling and we're definitely getting it down. The actual process and patter varies a wee bit depending on the particular individuals working together, but we can sure keep the line moving!