Gen Con needs to do a better job with events
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Posted by xanathon

It seems each year the event catalog comes out and then there a bunch of events added after the fact. 

This year is no different and if this wasn’t an every year occurrence I would understand why this happened this year. 

it’s frustrating that every year the events catalog is not final and in some cases events are added after we have received our badges and event tickets making it a pain to change the events we have registered for. 

I don’t understand why the events catalog can’t be completed before it goes live as there is plenty of time between the prior years event to the next years event to get this done. 

For this year I have been waiting for months for certain events to be listed and as of today they are not listed, but the company running the event has stated that they all have been submitted. 

Posted by helenbb

I believe that this is due to late submissions. Gen Con announces a deadline to event hosts if they want to be in the first release of the event catalog. Events submitted later than that are reviewed and posted after the original release, potentially all of the way up to the con.

Now in a normal year, I would say that the event hosts who submit late have dropped the ball. But this year, with the shortened timeline and so many changes happening all of the time, I can understand why some event hosts have submitted late.

Posted by xanathon helenbb

helenbb wrote:
I believe that this is due to late submissions. Gen Con announces a deadline to event hosts if they want to be in the first release of the event catalog. Events submitted later than that are reviewed and posted after the original release, potentially all of the way up to the con.
Now in a normal year, I would say that the event hosts who submit late have dropped the ball. But this year, with the shortened timeline and so many changes happening all of the time, I can understand why some event hosts have submitted late.
If this wasn’t an every year occurrence I wouldn’t think anything of events still being added since we are still in the pandemic. 

The issue is that this is an every year occurrence and there aren’t any excuses to be made on why this is. 

It’s frustrating as they are forcing me to have to go to the customer service lines to potentially refund the events that I had registered for that I want to replace with the events that are going to be added sometime between now and the start of the convention. They will also want to charge me fees to do this which I will argue against. 

I’m only one of the many people that are affected by this. 

Posted by qwaserity

Agreed. I've never understood how people, in a normal year, can file late events. What? Does GenCon just sneak up upon you or you didn't see it coming? Some companies have done this year after year (I'm looking at you Magic organizers). Come on people, put the "organize" back in event organizer!

Posted by aaronmlopez qwaserity

qwaserity wrote:
Agreed. I've never understood how people, in a normal year, can file late events. What? Does GenCon just sneak up upon you or you didn't see it coming? Some companies have done this year after year (I'm looking at you Magic organizers). Come on people, put the "organize" back in event organizer!

It seems that Christmas sneaks up on every one year after year (As evidenced by the long lines on Christmas Eve), and that has been around a lot longer than Gen Con.

If someone would just put Christmas and Gen Con on a calendar or something. Perhaps that will help!

</sarcasm>

Posted by wavester

BWAAAAAAA hahahahahahahaha <deep breath> haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

That is all.

Posted by xanathon aaronmlopez

aaronmlopez wrote:
qwaserity wrote:
Agreed. I've never understood how people, in a normal year, can file late events. What? Does GenCon just sneak up upon you or you didn't see it coming? Some companies have done this year after year (I'm looking at you Magic organizers). Come on people, put the "organize" back in event organizer!

It seems that Christmas sneaks up on every one year after year (As evidenced by the long lines on Christmas Eve), and that has been around a lot longer than Gen Con.If someone would just put Christmas and Gen Con on a calendar or something. Perhaps that will help!
</sarcasm>
Well played. 

Posted by selene314 xanathon

xanathon wrote:They will also want to charge me fees to do this which I will argue against.
Even though the policy says there is a 5% fee for all refunds, I believe that does not apply if you refund to system credit. Which is what you would do if you immediately buy a ticket to another event.

Posted by donaldbain

Because a lot of events rely on volunteers to run them and if they don't get back to the host in time, the host can't submit the event on time.

The host may get late volunteers and add events that they couldn't run before.

Many events are run by unaffiliated people who's vacation plans fluctuate like the rest of us.  By the time they know they can go, the deadline is past.

If you impose a hard cutoff date a good chunk of events will be missing.  So do you want a set-in-stone event list or do you want more things to do?

Posted by catlin

Also, sometimes groups add events because the ones they had sell out, and they have the volunteers to run more

Posted by austicke

What you call a bug is actually a feature.

Posted by mikeinohio

I think its great that event get added up to the con date.  if, dor dome reason I'm unable to get into a lot of events on the first day the catalog is released, there's aways a chance that something new will be added.   

Posted by moosesounds

As someone who has submitted independent late events I usually don't know my business schedule until a couple month out from the gen con. So if I had a hard months in advanced deadline I just wouldn't submit any.

Posted by kellishaver

I can think of a dozen perfectly valid reasons why an event organizer may not get their event submitted by the initial deadline, but I do understand how that can be annoying.

It seems like a lot of frustration around events being added late will be resolved by moving everything to e-ticketing (which will hopefully happen soon). Then people could shift their schedules around all they wanted to without having to stand in long lines to do so and without potentially missing an event because they have to return a paper ticket that's already been printed and mailed before they can book the new event.

Ticket management is an easier problem to fix than wrangling 20k events and the thousands of EOs, hosts, and volunteers who run them and it solves 90% of the problems.

Posted by eldrad12000

My days are filled, but I always enjoy filling my events up and as new ones are added, refunding them, and adding a new one, and kinda leveling up my events with better ones.

Posted by cinnibar austicke

austicke wrote:
What you call a bug is actually a feature.

Agreed.  If you were not lucky enough to get what you wanted from your wishlist when events opened, this is a bonus for you.  These 'extra' events that show up afterwards have not been picked off by the wishlists and are available to those disappointed with their outcomes from the opening day of events.

If you have a ticket to return to get one of the new events, well, sorry.  Choices.

Posted by jedijawa74

The nice thing about this year is that you aren't stuck with a paper ticket that you can't return when you see something better pop up later.  I love the e-ticketing so I can change my mind (and maybe I find something someone else has dropped) in the weeks and days leading up to the Con.

Posted by audioslave jedijawa74

jedijawa74 wrote:
The nice thing about this year is that you aren't stuck with a paper ticket that you can't return when you see something better pop up later.  I love the e-ticketing so I can change my mind (and maybe I find something someone else has dropped) in the weeks and days leading up to the Con.

This highly depends on what events you are doing. I have 9 events over 3 days at the con, all but one of which are still in the paper ticket form. I wish more event organizers would get on board with the electronic ticket platform.

Posted by weidster

Event tickets can be returned at any time during the convention and I have seen event tickets used as generic tickets of the same approximate value all the time.  As a GM, I have always found it frustrating to have people change their minds at the last minute when there were probably many people who wanted to get into a given event but could not because it was sold out.

Posted by xanathon weidster

weidster wrote:
Event tickets can be returned at any time during the convention and I have seen event tickets used as generic tickets of the same approximate value all the time.  As a GM, I have always found it frustrating to have people change their minds at the last minute when there were probably many people who wanted to get into a given event but could not because it was sold out.
This isn’t a situation where I was indecisive and changed my mind on what events I wanted to do. 

I waited until Pastimes put up their Magic events and then selected what events I wanted to participate in. 

Two months later I learn that there is going to be a series of Championship qualifier events and a two day Championship event that is going to be added at some point between now and the start of the convention. 

My frustration comes from not having the information on these championship events, the fact that Pastimes made the announcement weeks ago and they are still not listed in the event listing for Gen Con, and that I now have to go through a potential long line just to switch my events. 

Again I don’t understand for large events like Magic, Pathfinder Society, and other long standing events at Gen Con why the companies running these can’t have everything together ahead of time. 

I get that small companies or independent GMs don’t have the amount of people helping run their events and I am not focusing my comments toward them. 

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