Mid-Convention, thoughts.

I’m halfway through working AnimeBoston, and here’s a few interesting observations.
1) Every hotel I’ve been to that hosts a convetnion can’t handle a large scale registration burst. There’s always screamingly long lines, and a lot of annoyed attendees. Hotel, when you book a convention on a weekend, there’s going to be a HUGE burst of activity friday afternoon / evening. Prepare for it. Also. Do NOT overbook the hotel. Really.
2) CUPS is a fantastic printing system. When you have mission-critical badge printers in a printer class, pooled, and one of the badge printers shuts down, CUPS simply shunts the load to the second printer until the first one comes online again. Booyah.
3) Sleep is good.
4) 3500 attendees in the Boston Park Plaza is a helluva lot of people.
5) Some cons get things right. These guys have order forms for the staff den. For people who work 12 hour shifts on station, they can fill out a ‘dining delivery form’ which is basically an order to Staff Den, which a runner picks up, fulfills, and returns to the worker. The form shows everything the staff den has available. You just check off what you want. Neat.
6) FRS radios do NOT work. Go decent GMRS, or go commercial.
7) Using the Stanbro room for line wrangling for Reg is a good idea. Even better is not needing it, and simply moving stanchions to make more room for gaming.
8) It’s very good to hear people say “Thi s is running SO much better than last year!” (when they were not running my system)