...and I just recently ended it after 3 years. 
Partly because the local YMCA (who was hosting the event) decided not to do it again, and partly that participation (and factors affecting participation) was a bit of an issue.
Quoted from Phat_Jay:
I do need to figure out when everybody is dead in town. Empty hotels, no big events here or regionally, should allow me put things in place without too much arm twisting.
Quoted from LTG:
The country is show heavy now. You'll likely only draw from your area, and the people you need to run it, might be your only attendees.
The main and most difficult thing is getting people to actually bring games. Plan to bring several of your own to help boost the game count. If you can cultivate a core group of participants, that will help too.
Timing with the region's existing pinball/arcade show schedule, as well as local events schedule can have a huge impact. In the northeast, the show schedule was getting very crowded, and the local event schedule was busy as well (making hotels rather expensive), which affected participation. At least three shows in my area either sprung up in the past couple years or started incorporating a pinball/arcade feature into their show.
Timing with the seasonal weather can also affect things. People don't generally like to drag games around in poor weather.
Quoted from Phat_Jay:
As far as games, i have some and id be relying on others to bring theirs in exchange for entry and other things like dinner, raffle tics, whatever i can do. I can call in some favors and get food on site for nothing up front, just cover labor and actual food cost if it goes south.
You may find folks aren't too interested in donating or discounting stuff. I was running my show as a charity event, and there was still resistance to that. You either have to provide everything from your own pocket, or guarantee a certain amount of exposure to make it worthwhile for a sponsorship.
Rewards/prizes for participants don't really seem to motivate people too much to participate. It can be a nice perk for people who were going to participate anyway, but it's probably not going to do much for people who weren't interested in the first place.
Quoted from chuckwurt:
Power might be the most important thing you need to make sure is adequate. You don’t want to go through all the hard work of getting 100 games there and have them play poorly due to inadequate power.
This is probably one of the most difficult things to finding a good venue. Keep in mind that the sustained load on the trunk line into the building or to the panels might be too much for them to handle.
Quoted from Phat_Jay:
But I was thinking the area (Fox valley, wi) could use a “small”, I.e. not mgc or expo show.
Be prepared for most of your free time to go into preparing for the show throughout the year. It takes a lot of planning to pull it off.
Also be prepared for people to bail at the last minute. It sucks, but it happens. This past year, the food truck I lined up bailed on the event and ghosted me.
Quoted from Phat_Jay:
For vendors, I’d offer space for free for the first yr. and limit one vendor per type.
I wouldn't suggest offering space for free--there is a psychological factor at play when you do that. The odds of someone bailing when offered a free space will be high, since they will feel like they have no real personal investment in going, and may not show up if they just don't feel like going. With a small nominal fee, then they feel they have a personal stake in actually going.
You'll lose out on a lot of revenue that way. A good chunk of the audience will be families that are 3, 4, 5 or more people in a group. I only charged $10 for my show, and didn't have any complaints about it. Most other events in the area were much more than that, so $10 per person for a few hours of entertainment was pretty reasonable.
Quoted from Phat_Jay:
It would be pinball, arcade, console, board/card game. Our local university (uwo) had a good turnout recently just for board games, so hoping to tap into that to help with numbers.
It's tough to plan and organize multiple focuses inside a single event. While I thought it would be beneficial to draw upon different areas for my show, you're really just subject to what the interests of your audience are no matter how diverse you try to make the features. What works for one area or show might not work for another.
Quoted from Phat_Jay:
I have access to a large(for Oshkosh) hall, and have very close contacts in the food/hotel industry that could make this possible on a shoestring. I’m NOT looking to make a penny, this is for fun and good of the hobby and families/friends. I want to keep this cheap so more kids and families could attend, that would otherwise find it difficult to attend mgc, or expo.
Hosting an event is very expensive. Rent for a space is going to be the biggest issue, and will make or break a show. I got lucky and managed to come to an arrangement that was very beneficial for the event that made it fairly inexpensive to operate, otherwise I would not have been able to do it.
If you want to discuss further, let me know. I'm all for helping another event be as successful as possible, and happy pass along whatever info/suggestions I can.
Hopkins, MN
