Frolicon Con Report 2016
May. 9th, 2016 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparrThis is the first half of my post-con writing, to be followed by a post about my personal experience and weekend.
Overall, Frolicon is still Frolicon. Circumstances required the venue and date to change this year, which upset a few people, but didn't ruin the event. Every convention has growing pains, and it looks likely we'll weather this one just fine.
The new venue is a much bigger and somewhat nicer hotel than the previous location. We did not come close to filling all the rooms, nor all the convention space. That leaves lots of room to grow in the future, and I predict an attendance spike next year due to a combination of normal con growth, people returning who left due to the cramped nature of the old hotel, and people coming because of the convenient location of the new hotel. With next year already contracted (or so I hear), hopefully we can establish ourselves and make this hotel our new home.
The gamut of classes was as usual, being some combination of what the con organizers want to see covered and what the presenters are capable of and known for. There were a good number of classes and panels for rope enthusiasts, D/s folk, various other sorts of kinky toys and activities, sexual activities, littles, gamers, writers, poly folk, and light coverage of a dozen other topics. There were some gaps, of more or less importance depending on exactly what niche someone wanted to explore.
Con organization seemed to go pretty smoothly. These days I'm an outsider looking in, but it seemed like people were getting their jobs done with minimal fuss and interference. Everyone I dealt with on staff and volunteering seemed competent or friendly, mostly both.
Not filling the venue, and it being new to almost everyone, led to some minor annoyances. Room parties were very spread out, particularly involving traveling between the two separate towers of the hotel. More maps/information/signage about stairs would have improved that situation greatly, but so will simply filling the hotel. 10 parties instead of 5 will mean walking half as far from party to party, regardless of the other factors. There were a lot of vanilla folk around, including a gaggle of high school students on their way to or from prom. We convinced them to keep the pool open a bit later than their usual, but not nearly late enough to be convenient for the party-going crowd.
The public parties have been trending towards vanilla-ness over the last 6 years, and this year was no exception. Most parties had no sexy or kinky activities or space aside from people making out on a couch. A few had a bed. One had a couple of pieces of play furniture. I don't have any great ideas on addressing this change, but hopefully someone does.
For the past few years there have been some rope suspension points outside the dungeon, for use during the daytime. They were typically used for just-rope scenes, leaving rope-and-other-play scenes for dungeon or private space. Sadly those were missing this year, leaving no good alternative. I hope we see those again next year.
The wish board was operational this year, but very poorly placed. It got much less traffic than in previous years. Despite that, people still seemed to be making connections, both from the physical board and from the group discussion thread that preceeded it.
The dealer/vendor hall was in its usual form, with a decent selection of leather, lace, steel, rope, toys, clothing, etc. Little seems to have changed on that front over the past few years.
The hotel changed up their housekeeping plans in a way that was novel to me and very interesting. They made "no housekeeping" the default, requiring people to call to request service if they wanted their rooms cleaned. This was coupled with scheduled times and locations where people could go to get towels, toiletries, etc. This system seemed to work pretty well, although I never did manage to make one of the scheduled times.
All in all, definitely still a convention worth going to for those kinky and/or geeky.
Overall, Frolicon is still Frolicon. Circumstances required the venue and date to change this year, which upset a few people, but didn't ruin the event. Every convention has growing pains, and it looks likely we'll weather this one just fine.
The new venue is a much bigger and somewhat nicer hotel than the previous location. We did not come close to filling all the rooms, nor all the convention space. That leaves lots of room to grow in the future, and I predict an attendance spike next year due to a combination of normal con growth, people returning who left due to the cramped nature of the old hotel, and people coming because of the convenient location of the new hotel. With next year already contracted (or so I hear), hopefully we can establish ourselves and make this hotel our new home.
The gamut of classes was as usual, being some combination of what the con organizers want to see covered and what the presenters are capable of and known for. There were a good number of classes and panels for rope enthusiasts, D/s folk, various other sorts of kinky toys and activities, sexual activities, littles, gamers, writers, poly folk, and light coverage of a dozen other topics. There were some gaps, of more or less importance depending on exactly what niche someone wanted to explore.
Con organization seemed to go pretty smoothly. These days I'm an outsider looking in, but it seemed like people were getting their jobs done with minimal fuss and interference. Everyone I dealt with on staff and volunteering seemed competent or friendly, mostly both.
Not filling the venue, and it being new to almost everyone, led to some minor annoyances. Room parties were very spread out, particularly involving traveling between the two separate towers of the hotel. More maps/information/signage about stairs would have improved that situation greatly, but so will simply filling the hotel. 10 parties instead of 5 will mean walking half as far from party to party, regardless of the other factors. There were a lot of vanilla folk around, including a gaggle of high school students on their way to or from prom. We convinced them to keep the pool open a bit later than their usual, but not nearly late enough to be convenient for the party-going crowd.
The public parties have been trending towards vanilla-ness over the last 6 years, and this year was no exception. Most parties had no sexy or kinky activities or space aside from people making out on a couch. A few had a bed. One had a couple of pieces of play furniture. I don't have any great ideas on addressing this change, but hopefully someone does.
For the past few years there have been some rope suspension points outside the dungeon, for use during the daytime. They were typically used for just-rope scenes, leaving rope-and-other-play scenes for dungeon or private space. Sadly those were missing this year, leaving no good alternative. I hope we see those again next year.
The wish board was operational this year, but very poorly placed. It got much less traffic than in previous years. Despite that, people still seemed to be making connections, both from the physical board and from the group discussion thread that preceeded it.
The dealer/vendor hall was in its usual form, with a decent selection of leather, lace, steel, rope, toys, clothing, etc. Little seems to have changed on that front over the past few years.
The hotel changed up their housekeeping plans in a way that was novel to me and very interesting. They made "no housekeeping" the default, requiring people to call to request service if they wanted their rooms cleaned. This was coupled with scheduled times and locations where people could go to get towels, toiletries, etc. This system seemed to work pretty well, although I never did manage to make one of the scheduled times.
All in all, definitely still a convention worth going to for those kinky and/or geeky.