I enjoyed helping with the booth. Was great to have some more time to chat with current members as well as people coming by. I think everyone hung out longer than their allotted 1-hour, which made a huge difference in making it more social and a fun atmosphere for new members to see.
First time I helped behind the booth, so you can take or leave my comments, but sometimes fresh eyes see things. My thoughts (several things already mentioned!):
- The way the raffle items were organized was confusing. Some were must be present to win, others were don’t need to be present to win, some for anyone, some members only, another was new members only, some you could put several tickets into, others only 1 ticket, some no contact info required, other required the contact info. And these groups were not physically grouped or obviously labeled. I recommend having more simple rules, like a members only table and an everyone table, clearly stated, with no name required (member raffle winners can write name or look to the website the next day for winning numbers).
- I agree the banner was awesome. I also agree the shirts would have been better displayed on hangers, at least one of each color and example of front and back. Then in at least semi-organized piles by size right underneath the display shirts.
- I agree the super frag pack should have been open to all members. 1 ticket per entry was fine for new members only, but if we were to open it up we would want to allow multiple tickets to bring in more cash. Not that I was feeling left out or anything (I bought plenty!), but we did have people who just joined like a month or two ago shut out of the contest with these rules, and it was another confusing item to have to explain. I wouldn’t be surprised if some tickets got in there from not-new-members or multiple ticket entries from people.
- If we had several people interested in donating, it would be great to have a couple different frag packs. Having high-end SPS available only to new members, many of which are likely new to the hobby, didn’t seem like the best match to me. Another pack option with nice softies/LPS would have been attractive to new members too I think. Or even the bounce mushroom by itself as another pack along those lines.
- For the raffle items, we did put some out but would have been great to put all the physical items out on the table so people can quickly see what they are bidding on. With the items out you don’t even need much of a description on the paper.
- I agree that getting more people to visit the site as guests is key to getting more members (as opposed to just pushing membership up-front). Just not sure how to do it other than emphasize how friendly and helpful everyone is there.
- I think this one’s obvious, but we needed a more organized way to record information taken down.
- Since what we are selling is mostly our website/community, I wonder if we should have a laptop at the booth facing outward for people to see our site and also sign up as new members directly? It would have the nice side effect of making it so they don’t have to write their info again on a piece of paper.
- I get that booth space is limited, but I feel like we would have drawn more people in if we setup the desk items along the sides of the booth rather than in front? Would also increase the amount of desk space so the raffle items could have more space.
- We benefited greatly by being the only booth raffling anything besides the organizer items in front.
I fully get that it’s a lot easier to be a critic than an organizer. I’m glad to have been able to participate and had a great time. Overall I think it was a real success. Huge thank-you to the organizers Bruce and Arnold!
, I think the result was for our first organized booth was pretty good. Steve Tyree even said we were great, better than he ever expected. It takes alot of work to organize all the parts of this, so big shout out to everyone involved! I agree things are be improved, so we see if/when we do a booth again.
