 October 28, 2012 - 6:36am | I'm kicking around the idea of organizing a Star Frontiers convention here in East Boston for July of 2013 I work at a catering company and our East Boston location has a rather nice function room that can be split into two smaller rooms. In July after 4th its rather dead for us catering wise and another friend suggested that mid late July would be a good time to hold this from the perspective that it might be ideal for the largest number of people who could attend. Checking with my boss who rather likes me but doen't get the science fiction thing I discovered that the biggest cost associated with the function rooms is the turn around costs for cleaning and breaking down tables and chairs- its a flat $100 and that is his biggest concern with letting me have the room. He completely discounted food costs. But then he said, "Wait, is this for that science fiction stuff?" Now for model of running the con I figure that the Sci Cons run in '99 and '01 are a good model (see Frontier Explorer #2 for some write ups on two of those cons- that issue releases this week just in time for Halloween) that model was basically a one day event with the whole day dedicated to game play. Now the catering business closes down at 8pm though the function rooms stay open late for weddings- though that is usually with function staff present though I figure with me present if we went past 8pm its just not going to be a problem but I'll confirm that once there is a plan in place. I figure the con can be structured into 3 blocks of 3-3.5 hours time which allows for eating and bio breaks and some other minor stuff in the schedule. scheduling the day- I can arrange a breakfast, lunch and dinner and pad that cost into the convention fee- I expect to just get a 50 cup coffee urn and or wire chaffing dishes comped on the equipment side but if we did breakfast the cheapest option is certianly a continental breakfast of bagels muffins and tea breads with a fruit salad. Lunch would be typical stuff they put in the steam table to sell to the lunch crowd- SPO (a seriously tasty sausage, pepper, onion dish that also has roasted potatoes), a pasta with a red sauce, Chicken,ziti brocoli and CZB alfredo, egg plant with red sauce and possibly some rice) garden or ceasar salad and rolls. those choices simply help keep cost down as the kitchen is already doing tons of that stuff for delivery orders and the for the store but if we wanted to be crazy stuff like Chicken Limone and shrimp scampi are possible but I'd advise against it for cost reasons. We could also get a cookie sheet of pizza as well and anyone with a sweet tooth might also hit the store down stairs as the company does some crazy amount of italian pastry as well (sometimes you just have to have a canoli with you coffee-though as a small concession to eating healthier I usually limit myself to a mini canoli instead of the full size one). Dinner of course can be served as well. The point of serving food at the convention is that it keeps thing moving on the schedule and I'm only going to be charged wholesale prices. A break for lunch and dinner is a break in the schedule with people heading out for food; though the good news is that we are located at a square and there are currently 6 hispanic (I expect at least one of those to possibly close up shop within a year), 2 chinese, and one generic American/Italian resturants within 1-2 minutes walk of the function room and I could also arrange for delivery menues from around and I can recommend which are the better venues to eat at in my opinion. the other benefit to serving food at the con is that the big expense will be plane ticket and 1-2 nights stay at a hotel, though if you could time your plane flight to leave late Saturday night the function room is a 3 block walk to the Airport subway station from which you could take a free shuttle bus into the airport proper and probably get away with just paying for Friday night? Cost for me to recover would be the charge of the room, food, some printing (this is pretty nominal)- con poster, schedule, map (of local area with location of subway station and resturants), some sort of swag- patch perhaps (problem of course is that there will be extras so I think I might simply pay for this outright and each attendee gets one with part of their fee going for that one patch and I'll sell the rest as people ask for them either at the con or via mail after the fact), if spyder has his minis business going I'll likely buy some and donate them to the Con as door prizes as well as a printed issue of the lates Frontier Explorer. I'll be able to pick up sterno ahead(not absolutely required as I've delivered to many a party that has forgone the chaffing dish and sterno thing and simply put out the pans of food and let people dig in) and coffee grounds as well as a few gallons of spring water and paper and plastic ware since buying those myself will be cheaper than getting them through the company. I dont have hard numbers for registration fee but I believe $25 -$40 is probably the ball park any "profit" I'll simply donate to the local girl scouts or something. i think that planning for a minimum of 10 knocks the per person share of the room cost down to $10/person and gets us in the ball park of a reasonable con fee. I believe that the Sci Con fee back in '99 was $40 bucks so 13 years and no appreciable increase in convention fee is pretty good. So what I need know is level of interest and feed back on this idea, as for level of catering, date, organization, games. i for one would run a massive KHs game in miniature in one of the nominal time slots (simply because I live here and no one else is going to drag a collection of lead miniatures on a plane), but we'd need several game masters to step up and run games- I would think more than one in each time slot. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 October 30, 2012 - 10:15pm | Wish I could be on the east coast to help you. |
October 31, 2012 - 2:43am | Doesn't seem like much interest. Perhaps the timing is wrong. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 October 31, 2012 - 4:13pm | Doesn't seem like much interest. Perhaps the timing is wrong.
I'd be interested. But there is no way I am getting to travel to the East Coast next Summer as my wife has already blocked out June through September for several West Coast excursions. :( Well, also I don't fly commercial air, so it's either train or driving to get there. :) |
