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just thought I would come on here share some of what happened at the weekend and what worked and what did not and how we plan to improve the things that need improving.
Well the weather this needs to be improved a lot but thats a little out of our hands i think
First to some of the points people have brought up:
1 Jake Lamotta. This guest was brought in by his own team of people like a lot of the boxers from the US like Tyson. They have a team of people that they work with all the time and go around with. We provide a venue and staff if its needed, but the way it's run and the people around him are his team and they run the signing for Jake. We had a space inside if it was needed but his team wanted to be with the other sports guests. I know he was an older person but they kept an eye on him and made sure he was ok. At one point he wanted to go off and when he got into the hotel fell unwell. At that point his team came into action and took him to the local hospital where later on he was released. We do look after all our guests and have things in place if they need any extra help. All I can say is his team wanted to do the signing their way and that was agreed to before the event. So we provided all that they asked for over the day .
2 Car park. This year we had less space than the year before as some of this car park was being re surfaced. So we lost around 30% on the day. We had been told that this would have been open or at least usable by this weekend but it was not. On friday it worked and there was no issues so we thought it was going to be workable. But on Saturday we have around a 30% increase of people attending the show than last year which created some issues that we had to deal with on the day as they came up.
Sunday we paid for car park marshals to direct traffic and help the public use the space we have and on sunday the event worked much better and there was little problems with the car park.
How to fix this:
Well by October this year the car park will be fully open. The building work around the stadium will be done. The upper seating will also be down and the stadium ring and new upper ring will also be open and fully undercover so for the May show next year. The car park space will be fully open and new car parks for the new M&S will also be available for people attending the show. So next year i think we will have around another 50% more space for cars to park. We will also have a alternative car park were the buses will stop if the main car park gets full next time. So yes, we were caught out this time on the Saturday but we did get it all under control by Sunday .
Busses
These would have been fine and would have worked if it was not for the 6 ignorant people that parked their cars over the main road entrance of the car park outside door 4. These 6 cars blocked the way in and out to the car park and meant no one could leave the place. I personally took over the clearing of these cars and managed to get them cleared after around an hour and we kept it clear for the rest of the day. But because of this the Buses we paid for to give you all free bus service over the day could not drop off or pick up because of the really dumb people that had parked across the road. The bus people did not inform us of this issue for around an hour. As soon as we found out we got on top of it and organised a new pick up point the other side of KFC. This was not perfect but was the best we could come up with on the hoof and we soon got people on their journeys again. We paid for marshals to also do this job on the sunday all day and this issue was resolved for sunday .
Saturday photo op A Queuing system override on Saturday
We have a Queuing system that we have used many time in the past that has worked very well for us. But at this show we had some factors that created an issue for the Karen Gillen photo ops. As we have said before we had an unexpected 30% more people on the Saturday of the show. That meant we had a lot more people on the stadium ring and at the same time we had few issues getting the guests to the photo ops which meant that the photo ops started late and got behind which in turn created more people standing outside of photo op A which created a bottle neck on the Stadium ring. I came in to see this was happening and felt that the only way to get some order in were people was queuing and get things organised was to use the railing and the space behind this to queue all the people that were waiting for the photo ops. So i informed as many people as we could that we would not be using the colour system or the numbers not the tickets and we would just be calling them in first in line first serve. This happened and we got everyone throughout in around 50 minutes and managed to make up some of the lost time. This is not what we would normally do but as we had things things creating this issue we felt it was right to abandon calling people up in colours or numbers and make it work as efficiently and quickly as possible I hope. I talked to quite a lot of you and I think you all could see at the end that it worked out well and helped resolve the problem for this photo op and the others later on in the day .
Photo ops being printed on site
This was the first time we used the new on site photo technology and because we used it it cut down the time it takes to get the images back and even on saturday when we had sold more photo ops than ever before at Collectormaina we still managed not to have a big back log. So after this successful test of this new photo print technology we are going to expand this aspect of the show and have many more machines on site which should do away with long whats for photos to be picked up and people hang around to pick them up so all in all. This is going the right way.
The Venue
The building work you saw at the weekend is the final part of the building of the stadium and by October the upper part of the stadium will be finished with an enclosed ring above the one we have been using. This will be enclosed. As well as this the Hotel ball room will be mirrored on the other side of the stadium. Also, there is another very large room bigger than any space there is available last weekend it will be around 3000 meters in size so with this and the two ball rooms and the two stadium rings this venue will be the best venue in the UK for such a free event as Collectomaina.
Sso thank you for holding in there whilst this venue was being built for us
and we can say that this was the last time that the weather will affect the event in this way and as we will have so much more space this will help with crowding and it will also help to allow us to put on many more activities and have more space for bigger talks and bigger parties and also as there will be many more rooms available for you to stay in at the venue over the weekend .The party
What can i say wow what a lot of fun was had. I know it was just how I thought it was going to be and the guests hung out with us all and chilled out and many of you became friends with these cool people and with having a bucking broncos, bouncy castle, Batmobile and the A team van giving rides for hours I know all the people I talked to had a great time and this is something we are going to add to in a big way at future event .
Signposts for the buses
This also will be looked at again. This time the building work at the train station did also create some issues for us. But I do not see this being the case next time. But we are aware of this issue and we will be looking into it .
After every event the pit bosses and heads of department meet up to go over what worked what failed and what we need to do to fix and the things we need to fix. We work out ways to fix them. So thank you for all your posts as constructive criticism. It does help in case we have missed something .
Well I think that covers most of the important things. I know my team will have more to add over the next week after we all meet up and they come back into the office. We will be looking at all aspects to the show and changing things to make them work. Now and again a show will grow and this weekend Collectormaina grew about 30%. So its now down to us to look at what we need to do to keep it working well for you all .
Thanks so much for attending the show and we look forward to seeing you all in a bigger and better venue in 2013 and we also plan to run the show twice a year like we used to as the venue will be ready for us to use throughout out the year what ever the weather.
See you at LFCC in a few weeks.
Now on with booking some more guests for LFCC
Jason and all the team at Showmasters
