I would say for starters, we'd need to work out a budget and a location. It would be a good idea to have a duration in mind too. 2 days would probably be reasonable. Say you had five 1-hour sessions each day, we could have 10 speakers (or groups of speakers) with lots of time to look at exhibits etc. The major costs will be:
- renting a place - would probably need 2 rooms - an 'exhibit hall', and a 'lecture room' - electricity (sometimes this is NOT included with rent!) - travel and accomodations (1 or 2 nights?) for guest speakers (assume ten groups/individuals) - any permits, insurance etc. needed if applicable, probably depends on location - security (to make sure paying customers go in only, and keep out trouble) - advertising (if we choose to advertise anywhere other than free places) It might be worthwhile to set up a small corporation to manage the funds and keep them separate from personal funds but I'm no lawyer. The costs can be recouped by: - exhibitors (here are prices from CGexpo for comparison: Double Booth - $700 Single Booth - $400 Each Additional Booth - $300 Single Table - $100 - weekend Single Table - $30 / 2 hours - admission - how much is fair? $50? $100? Assume maybe 100 attendees - corporate sponsors, if any We need estimates on all these things to ensure we at least break even. One cool thing at CGexpo which would apply here too and draw some more people is the 'museum' - some collector's 'donate' some of their rarer items for the duration of the show. They are pooled together into a museum room. It makes quite an impressive exhibit - imagine all of our rarest items pooled together in one room! Obviously an extra security person is needed to keep watch over this too, even if the items ARE under glass. They also had a 'swap meet' and auction, which would be fun but not necessary. If John R can help track down/convince some bigwigs to come that'd be great. I think we could handle making a website for it between us no problem, and even maybe have people pre-register (for cheaper) with PayPal or something. Could sell tickets on eBay to get some free exposure. The size of the exhibit hall should of course depend on how many exhibitors we want/could find. I think if we want to keep costs low, Vegas might actually be a pretty good choice as hotels there are cheap and like I said probably most will be within driving distance of it. I'm guessing renting the rooms there wouldn't be TOO expensive either. So for starters can anyone in the area (or at least the southern US) look in to approximate prices for these sorts of things in downtown Vegas, or other suggested locations? We could find out about permits, insurance etc by simply asking the CGexpo organizers Im sure. In terms of timing, I would give at least 6 months lead time to plan something like this, especially since none of us have done this before. That would give enough time to scout out places, contact guests, and advertise to the collecting public. anyways, thats my thoughts so far.. > Thanks Howard. I'm a little uncertain how we'd get started, so any help you > can provide would be great. Just throwing out thoughts here... Need to > book a place on a date before we could do much else. Once we have a place, > I think I know someone who'd be willing to print up cool invitations > (physical or electronic) for the celebs. We'd need to start publicizing > this well in advance... anyone know how early submissions have to be made to > gaming publications? We could throw together a press release. Need to have > a website with info on the show, where/when, who's going to be there, > events, maybe a link to buy tickets. I assume we'd charge for admission to > recoup the travel costs for the guests. Need to know the legal crap > involved with that, do we remit sales tax, how's all that work? Ditto for > the dealers who are going to be selling. > > Plenty to talk about, everyone's input is welcome. -- ---------------------------------------------- Howard Feldman, Author of The Search for Freedom A Computer Fantasy Role-Playing Game Visit its Homepage at http://bioinfo.mshri.on.ca/people/feldman/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent to you because you are currently subscribed to the swcollect mailing list. To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of 'unsubscribe swcollect' Archives are available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
