Long post incoming...
Quoted from lordloss:I got the email this morning. Your plan was to use a sound tech to keep volume consistent and charge more to be away from the band.
You keep saying you charge less than other venues, so its ok to have problems. With each of these upcharges, at what price point will you match other venues? At that point will you listen to the vendors?
Dude, every year you have problems that you take public and complain about. No one else does. If we are so bad at listening to vendors, why do you come?
We have had vendors for years asking to be closer to the door so they get the chance to sell to people multiple times. By moving the vendor hall into three zones, we can provide that. This allowed us also to keep vendor prices cheap - they are CHEAPER this year if you are closer to the stage. They are not much more expensive to be in the middle. They ARE more expensive to be near the front, correct. We have had people offer us more money to get those spots in the past and we have always said no because we don't sell specific spots. We still don't want to sell specific spots, but this gives you the choice.
The sound tech allows us to keep all volume at the same point, and we control the sound tech. One of the problems last year was that one band - and it really was just one band - cranked up everything really loud and we didn't have direct control of turning it down. By us having that control, it allows us to keep everything at a more reasonable volume. The only thing we can't control is how hard someone is hitting their drums.
Quoted from lordloss:The bands last year got progressively worse as the day went on. If there was a compromise of some sort, maybe only have the band after 3 on Sat. By that time, the sales had slowed and the crowd thinned.
I don't know exactly what Gary sent out as he sent it, but that is actually one of the things that is changing. Now, interestingly you made two separate points here...
The first is that you said that they got progressively worse. I'd actually argue there was one band that we know of who did play really loud. The bands after that were at a more regular volume again, but as one of the guys running MGC Music said, it was like a tipping point for people.
As for your thing above, the plan is to change things up throughout the day on the stage so it isn't straight bands. Your suggestion of having bands start at 3pm is interesting, as last year only two bands played before 3pm and absolutely no one complained about them or their volume (the loud band was at 5pm, which was when the complaints started). I spoke personally with a number of vendors at about 2:45pm and they all told me that they were a great draw to keep people in the tent and they were happy with it. Some of them changed their opinion after the 5pm band. It was a situation that we couldn't change because we didn't have direct amp control. By having a sound tech in charge of the sound, we do have control of that so it is far easier to turn people down.
The second thing is the plan is to spread them out. So, if on Saturday the bands are at 1, 3, 5 and 6 for instance, then that nearly takes care of your complaint there - and that is more or less the plan already. If we had the Metroid band at 1pm again (the same one as last year) that gathered a huge crowd, I can't see many people having a problem with that.
In between those times, we'll be doing other activities there such at tournaments. We did this on Sunday and it attracted more than 100 people to some of the events being held there. The reason MGC Music exists, in part, was because vendors were complaining that they wanted to be around an event that would keep people walking past their stuff throughout the day. That was one of the huge complaints with the hall two years ago, other than the water issues we did our best to take care of this past year and I think we did pretty good with, was that by having the vendor hall "as a dead end with nothing beyond it", people would leave and "not come back."
We listened to those complaints and tried to come up with a solution, and that was the MGC Music stage where we decided to experiment by doing music on one day and other events on the other. It didn't work out perfectly. We've recognized that, we came up with a number of ways to try to fix that.
For every vendor that complained that it was loud, we had more who told us we did a great job by giving people a reason to walk back through the tent over and over. It is impossible to listen to your complaint and get rid of the bands, and still listen to the positive feelings of the other vendors who said they really appreciated what we were doing. If that isn't good enough for you, like I've always said, I understand if people opt not to come for whatever reason. There is simply no way to make everyone happy. The changes we are doing we think will get it a lot closer. Clearly, you don't think so. If you think you're going to have a bad time, just don't come. I don't hold it against you, and it's the strongest statement that you can make about how you feel about it.
I would hope you give it another shot and see just how much the changes do, but the public complaints about a show that you are attending and vending at to me isn't the way to get stuff done the best. You can always PM me and I can walk you through the stuff. I can't promise that we're always going to change it to be exactly what you want, but I can explain the thinking. If it isn't good enough, I encourage you to not attend. But doing it in such a public way makes it much harder to carry a real dialog about anything on, as when you post four things publicly about how bad we are before I have a chance to reply, it sure seems like you're cementing in the "bad" before I can do anything.
Wauwatosa, WI
Of course, it will already have been overfilled twice over. I need a new house 
)
