Green Cat

The problem is here, people can't make informed suggestions regarding ticket prices as they have no idea as to cost and spend breakdown which only Showmasters will know. For example they might make more money on someone buying a £10 ticket that someone buying a gold ticket worth £195 and we can't judge as we have no breakdown as to what each spends once they get into the show. I had a gold ticket but only spend around £150 on extras and didn't do any of the "big" guests or talks but someone who brought an early bird ticket may spend more on extras - autographs and pictures which you need people to buy in numbers to get the big guests in. They may make more money on a show of 5,000 lower entrance price tickets then 1,000 high price tickets. Any changes would need careful and detailed cost analysis done, personally I didn't see any problem with the ticket prices, it was the people management that was the problem and changing prices isn't going to sort out that problem as if you do go more expensive people will only become more demanding.

Yesterday was the first public day of Farnborough Airshow which has around 50,000 visitors a day all of which have to go through airline security before they can enter the grounds. Average waiting time for entrance - 10 mins Longest waiting time for entrance - 20 mins And this was because they had prepared, all tickets advanced purchase, scanned on entrance and fully trained staff. You arrived at the ground and there were five people looking at tickets and advising where people needed to go as well as clear signs, then there were three people looking after the queue advising people what they needed to do to get through security as all bags were being x-rayed and people needed to be scanned. Total number of scanners - 4 with three people per scanner - this was what was causing the main delay and total number of people working at entrance and queue excluding scanners - 12 You had 380 people working at Comic Con, if you had just spared 10 of them to work outside and put a bit more pre-event process planning in, you could have had got people processed and in so much faster and also been prepared to stop people queuing needlessly.

I disagree with that completely. How can you possibly say that staff should be turning up at ridiculous times in the morning just because some people want to queue that early? There were set times for when each set of ticket holders could go in. SM are not obligated to have staff at the event just because some of the attendees want to queue much earlier. We were told the times and it is completely up to anyone that goes that early if they want to queue that early. I can say that staff should turn up early because that is "being professional" and "doing your job". People were not told what time to turn up, they were told what time the doors opened which is a different thing and it was very clear from forum postings that people were being told to turn up before that to queue. As I understand it, the gates at Earls Court don't open until morning anyway so it would have been easy to have someone there from say 6am to direct people. And for a similar reason proper signposting can't be done that early either. You can't just leave signs all over the place as they'll likely get vandalised, damaged, etc. And if there had been cones segregating the queues earlier on they'd have gotten in the way of the traffic going through. This is rubbish, Goodwood has signs up a week before the event, so do many other events and they don't get damaged anyway the signs in this case could have been up at around 6am each morning and this would have been acceptable for this event, and I don't think I even mentioned cones at all. From what I saw there were signs up nearer the doors telling people where to queue. If people want to arrive super early and mill around ignoring them until SM staff arrive that isn't SM fault. It's purely down to the attendees. And tbh the sort of people that queue that early are more likely to plan things out. When a queue goes around a building what use is a single sign on a door! People should never be left just to "mill around" There was a map on the forums (which can be accessed by anyone) telling people which entrances to use. So they could have easily formed queues themselves. When I arrived I didn't know which queue to join immediately but I used common sense (I wanted the left most entrance so I joined the leftmost queue). This isn't difficult. So you had to guess which was the correct queue, which is wrong regardless off if you were "right" or not But regardless you can't expect people to start queuing for the sake of it when they arrive and you certainly can't expect SM staff to be there at 2am to organise and the few people that want to turn up that early. Yes I can, explained above You arrive earlier than the opening times through your own choice. And furthermore if that time is correct (people were arriving as early as 9:30am) and milling in front of the doors for standard entry then that is just people being a pain. I was there at just before 9am on Saturday and there were several different queues. So it looks like people were more being a pain for the sake of it. But the main point is that SM aren't responsible for the actions of people queuing before the designated opening times. So paying customers are considered "a pain" when they turn up early even through they have been advised to by people on this very forum and finally your comment But the main point is that SM aren't responsible for the actions of people queuing before the designated opening times. YES THAT ARE, ONCE THEY ENTER THE EVENT ENVIRONMENT THEY ARE TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THEM AND WE ARE JUST TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE TURNING UP A FEW HOURS EARLY HERE, ITS REALLY NOT THAT DIFFICULT. At Goodwood we have to prepare for people arriving up to 72 hours before the event and I always remember that whatever the customer comes first as he/she is paying out money for us to do these events.

Don't think I said that SM should buy new equipment or that you were not professional, what annoyed me was the phrase "I am just a volunteer" being used as an excuse. But as a sound engineer you should know that it often better to hire to suit environment and that's what they should have done. And if we are doing the whole "I' have worked in the event industry for XXX years". I have been running events for over 10 years and worked in the industry for over 20 across corporate, entertainment, music and promotional events. I found it very interesting to be on the "other side of the fence" for once and had to actually stop myself from stepping in to help when one volunteer just upped and left the programme stand because "she had to get a picture" leaving it unmanned.

Even when my football team were in the non-leauge they had a better sound system for their fans forums, than multimilion pound Showmasters have for paid talks - and believe it or not fans hold their microphones in various ways too. With no disrispect intended. Isn't it time they employed full-time professionals to do things like this, as opposed to running it on a shoe string with volenteers. It's time to get a bit more professional, and invest some money into some serious kit. Intended or not I am a professional and have been doing this for years. I agree that some of the kit could be better (it belongs to sm not to me). But if there is to be a super stage again I'm sure things will be different. What I don't understand is that if the equipment was not fit for purpose, why you didn't just hire a suitable rig for the weekend. Being at a venue in London,it would have been quick and easy and not too expensive! Having done both the Bass Show and NAMM, I don't think your problem was the super stage at all, it sound more like your mikes were not working correctly and the feedback to the speakers was wrong.which made the sound garbled and unclear. With the Super Stage your problems would have been boom and echo working with such a large space and I didn't hear that at all. Placement of handheld mikes should not have been a problem if they were of good quality like an SM58 for example. However for these type of presentations you should have been using clip on mikes which are pre-checked for levels.

I hope you don’t mind me doing this but there are things which just don’t make sense and not what I expected from experienced event managers. The venue was full on Saturday by around 12 noon. Why was there no announcement of this to the waiting crowd, it would have stopped so many of the problems you now face. 5-10 people walking down the line just saying we are now full, you can wait if you wish but access will be limited to going in as people leave would have let people make informed choices. We took on more crew, we went from 250 trained crew to 350 and for the first time ever we also took on volunteers that helped with things like holding doors open and running, etc, so the total was around 380. Don’t understand this statement, are you saying that you had in total 380 staff and of these only 30 were “untrained” in which case it must have been the height of bad luck for me that every time I met one of your members of staff it was an untrained one. Also what “training” do these people receive? These two aspects we felt would cope with the EXPECTED demand from the fans over the weekend. All well and good, but what about your planning for unexpected demand? We also kept an eye on the pre-sold ticket sales as this is a good guide to what to expect, numbers wise. This should just be taken as read, of course you check pre-sales and do forecasting, but where there also checks made against people buying auto tickets and no entry tickets as well. As it appears that a lot of people brought autograph tickets but waited to buy entry tickets on the door. We are all there to help deliver what they want out of the weekend, but some things are out of our control and things in life do change. We do this every day at LFCC and we are on top of as much of it as we can. Yes things do change and I don’t think that you were on top of it as much as you could have been The crowds outside of the venue were very large this year and also there seemed to be many people that felt it was a good idea to wait outside the main doors for the standard entrance to be let in. Some of these people were there from 9.30am and this did not help when we needed to get people in lines ready for the opening. This is not the crowd’s fault, this is your fault. They queued where they did because there was no good signage telling where they should be. Of course they queue outside the doors, if there are no signs that makes perfect sense. People should be in the right queue from moment they arrive, not arranged retroactively. If they start to arrive at 2am, then staff should be on site to deal with that or have signs up a 10 year old could understand. This did continue to create issues for our crew up to 11am, as some standard ticket holders would not move on down to where the Transformers vehicles were parked even when asked several times. This did not help us keep the entrance clear so it was not easy for people to see what doors to go to or where to line up. Again this is your fault not the crowd, it’s like a farmer blaming his sheep for his sheepdog’s inexperience and failures. Next time we will have more crew to move people along and communicate this, we had around 25 out there in total and more will be needed next time. 25 people should have been enough if they were trained correctly The Early pre-paid ticket holders line all gained entrance by 10.45am on Saturday The Standard pre-paid ticket holders line all gained entrance by 12.15pm on Saturday All Golds and Silvers had a dedicated Entrance and were let in first as normal. Bit of advice don’t make statements like this unless you are 120% sure they are correct. The entrance to the gates at Earls Court are manned by their staff and in the past we have been kept waiting in our car as the other door is opened first. This is not something we have control over and we have tried in the past to get them to open at the same time, but as we are not the only people in the building they will not agree to this happening. So you knew this was going to happen, then make plans to deal with it, don’t use it as an excuse. We had spare capacity on the day on Saturday for several thousand tickets, however these were used up by many more Early entry walk ups on the morning than was expected. So what was your plan for people, once tickets were fully sold, as there didn’t seem to be one In the future and this whole section should be a separate post – it feels a bit like – hey look at the shiny thing to take attention away from other issues. What you decide to do in the future, needs a detailed cost analysis planning doing not just random ideas thrown out . Stan Lee's manager and his crew had the last word over what Stan does and will not do Well,yes of course, and again this step by step account of his weekend should have been a separate post. Everyone understood that he is an old man and plans would change. What you need to have in place were plans to deal with this and how it would be communicated to customers and I’m not sure that you did I hope that helps you understand what was going on behind the scenes now Yes, it appears that you didn't do your pre-event planning work correctly If you feel that we have not acted correctly then do please contact us via email and we will respond to you personally. Already done We at Showmasters do listen and we do not make the same mistakes twice. we will take on board all your points and fix the things that need fixing and improving like we do every year. New things have to start somewhere and be improved till they are running well , just like we did with our photo ops, and VQ systems. In the end we will get it running to the standards you expect from us. What standards are these; do you have published service level agreements? On a personal note we only ever want to run the best events that are safe, fun and something to look back on and be proud of. this weekend I did not get to see much of the event as it was so busy and things needed attention so there was little time to stand back and see what we in the office have been working towards for the last year. This always makes me laugh, you are the event organiser of course you don’t get to see it as a customer. You should be back-stage making sure that the toilets work and all the other unpleasant tasks which need to be done at a large event. Thank you for taking the time to read all this and i hope you see we do care and do want to get it right for you all. I think that you care, but I just think that your team's project management and customer service skills need work

Curtis Armstrong "You will learn to love me ... or else! Metatron" - We were talking about how Metatron was really just misunderstood. David Hewlett signed my photo shoot picture: "work suits you, love David"

This post should be listed as two separate subjects. 1) Review of the show - what was good, what was bad, what we learnt and dealing with unanswered questions 2) Ideas and proposals going forward as it is at the moment, people are discussing too many subjects and good and valid points are getting lost and people are getting annoyed that outstanding queries are not being addressed. However i would like to address two points made by someone else; They said 2. Water : Bring your own, simple as that, Showmasters are NOT there to provide or sell this to you, Can you imagine the cost and resource in doing this ? and where do you think that cost will be passed on to ? Don't know where you got this fact from but you can make a killing on water sales, the profit on a bottle of water is massive, done right it could be a nice little income earner. 3. Health and Safety : This is as much the VENUE's responsibility as it as those hiring the venue, But I feel it takes both parties to be observant in this aspect and raise it accordingly. True it is equal responsibility, but it is often the venue hirer who has to provide the insurance for the event and complete documented risk assessments to the venue prior to the event. Finally the old chestnut - 6. Crew : They are volunteers just like you or I, I personally wouldn't have the patience to deal with some of the things I witnessed over the weekend, but if you feel so strongly , why don't those referring to the crew offer to crew? .I have personally either run or volunteered at over 300 events, so I do know what people face and the people this last weekend appeared to be under-trained, and lacked knowledge and with all the best will in the world, a nice smile and eagerness to help can not make up for lack of experience in dealing with customers especially when things go wrong.

Oh I'm on that side of the fence still really. For the extra costs of venue time, crew, having to start setting up thursday instead, paying guests for an extra day and anything else you can think of, the amount of attendees who could actually make it all day on a friday (due to work, school or whatever) would seriously hinder SM costs-wise. The big US cons are already at 4 days, they wouldn't do so if it wasn't financial viable. Turning people with cash to spend is a bad business move. But they dont have as many costs, and their venues are made for big events, as I said earlier. Their guests are mostly US-based, and so flight/travel prices arnt as much as SM have to pay to get people over here. And also you never know if agents/managment ask for more due to it being overseas work, and therefore taking more time out of a guests busy schedule to attend the event. And we have no idea how much venues cost in the US. It might be way cheaper in comparison to the UK's venues. And Green Cat, they DID plan for the walk-ups, just the walk-ups exceeded their predictions by way more than normal. It went up WAY more than they predicted and planned for. Well then clearly they didn't plan correctly, that's the point of disaster plans, it's for the unexpected. What they should have down is sat down and said How many advance tickets have we sold? How long will these take to process on the day? What is our procedure for processing - create flow chart What problems can we forsee and then you can work out how walk-ups you need to sell or want to sell (or are you suggesting it should just a free for all, stuff them in?) Then work out what is the max number of walk-in we wish to sell? How long does it take on average to sell each one? What do we do once these have been sold? Once you break it down into steps, it's easy to plan and make the event work so much better

I just don't understand this comment which keeps coming up "well you can't plan for unknown people turning up" Yes you can, it is called forward planning or disaster recovery planning and it is where you plan in advance for the unexpected and it's what every good event planning company should do. You sit and prepare for the unexpected and 99% of the time you don't need these plans but the 1% you do, it can make the difference between a great event and an event leaving people unhappy. You make sure that your team are trained, you make sure that you have clear lines of command and good communication. You have not only plan B, but plan C, D & E ready.

You appear to be calling me to task for something I never said, where did I say that they should have provided free water. I have suppliers on speed dial who would have been delighted to get a call to come down and sell stuff to the crowd which would have made life easier. There were even stall holder inside selling drinks who would have been delighted with the extra opportunity. No what I said was they should have had a plan in place to deal with what happens if too many people turn up and they clearly didn't. They should know down to single figures exactly how many people can come in, footfall and had plans in place to deal with turning people away or at least explaining what was happening so customers could make an informed choice. .

If you have planned and organised an event correctly,once it has started the management team should have nothing to do except deal any unexpected problems that arise, that's how event management work. You don't sleep for days before but if you have done things right once it starts it's runs itself except for the unexpected. Unexpected numbers should have been considered and there should have been a plan in place to deal with it, that's what your disaster recovery planning is for, to put in place plans for the unexpected so you aren't caught out, not dealing with things on a wing and a prayer and "oh we will deal with it, if it happens" I left the event at 12:30 on Saturday and I saw no-one managing the queue,or even dealing with the mess of people at the doors, it was chaos, inexperienced people in blue t-shirts trying to cope. Plus if you are experienced in event management you have suppliers of things like water and other stuff already on speed dial. Then I know other Event Management teams who are completely awful! I have queued for hours after things ranging from concerts and red carpet events and at each one, it was expected that would be many people waiting around for a long time! At one event I went to, the person at the front of the line arrived over 24hrs before the event and no one offered her anything! Never have I been offered water or other things to help me cope with the wait! It was down to me and only me to do that, no matter how long a wait I am in for! If you choose to turn up and queue for ages, then it is common sense to bring water or whatever you need! I'm sorry but I really don't subscribe to the view that just because you have seen other events that are worse, that this makes something acceptable. People should aim to be the best in what they do, not say "well so and so were worse" as an excuse. Whatever customers did or didn't do, it doesn't mitigate the fact that the Event Organisers got caught out by events which they should have planned for.

If you have planned and organised an event correctly,once it has started the management team should have nothing to do except deal any unexpected problems that arise, that's how event management work. You don't sleep for days before but if you have done things right once it starts it's runs itself except for the unexpected. Unexpected numbers should have been considered and there should have been a plan in place to deal with it, that's what your disaster recovery planning is for, to put in place plans for the unexpected so you aren't caught out, not dealing with things on a wing and a prayer and "oh we will deal with it, if it happens" I left the event at 12:30 on Saturday and I saw no-one managing the queue,or even dealing with the mess of people at the doors, it was chaos, inexperienced people in blue t-shirts trying to cope. Plus if you are experienced in event management you have suppliers of things like water and other stuff already on speed dial.

Well I enjoyed the event because I made the decision where I saw things were going wrong just to go with the flow and not let it bother me, HOWEVER there were a myriad of things which I was disappointed to see. I won’t address the queues as I had a gold pass and so it didn’t affect me, but when I arrived on Friday night it took over an hour to sort out my pass and I was passed from person to person – I ended up refusing to leave the side of the person who had the passes in a bag working on the principle that the right person would turn up with the some kind of paper system to tick me off and give me my pass which with done with the whole air of this is too much bother and feel sorry for our problems. And this set the tenor of the whole event, if I heard once, I heard a million times “I’m just a volunteer, sorry I don’t know” said with the tone of “please leave me alone and ask someone else” – on Friday night I had one question – David Wenham has cancelled tonight, what do I do? and I was passed onto four different people, none of which could answer my question. In the end I decided that I would just go along to the photo sessions on Sat. I have worked and run many events including Goodwood Festival of Speed, Top Gear Live, a major £2M Help For Heroes and I am sorry to say that I have never encountered such bad staff/customer interaction. The words “I’m just a volunteer” should never be used as an excuse for not knowing your facts, you volunteered to do a job, you should do your homework. I saw one woman up and leave the programme desk empty because “she had to get a picture” despite the fact it left no-one to cover. I saw people in red t-shirts shouting at people in blue t-shirts – word of advice just because you are loud and bullying that does not make you a good team leader, I have managed a volunteer team of over 200 and never needed to shout at any of them. You also don’t air dirty laundry in public and telling someone off in front of customers he is trying to manage is just stupid. Also as a customer, I don’t care that you only had 2 hours of sleep, I just want you to be able to do your job. As I said at the start I chose to just go with the flow and stayed very friendly and very polite to all these people, not pointing out any errors, only once did I make a stand when for the Comic Awards, a blue t-shirt person asked all the gold passes to come forward and then after being shouted down by a red t-shirt person we were told to go back to the queue which I refused to do having been in the front half I didn’t see why I should be expected to go the back because of an mistake by a staff member. And again my interaction with them was just firm politeness, no shouting, no swearing, but the expectation that you have created this problem, so I expect you to sort it out without causing me - the paying customer - more problems. Finally I never did find the mythical land of gold which was the Gold Pass Room, although having seen the picture perhaps it was better I didn’t.