Gauron wrote:Kiarrens wrote:Gauron wrote:
The "Bad"
For all the cosplay games, none of them were advertised on the site or elsewhere, namely the window of time for submitting. I really loved being in Deathmatch last year, & the only reason why I knew it was a thing was because it was advertised on the AB site, but this year it seemed whomever handles it didn't really advertise it whatsoever on the web site, which led me to completely miss the window for submitting. So, for 2017, please have more posts on the site advertising the submissions being open for the cosplay games.
I'm going to address this since I was mostly taking care of sending in the announcements for masquerade and cosplay games.
I'm a little confused when you say that there is nothing on the website, since there was an announcement made on January 1st when applications opened. This announcement was also broadcast through social media channels.
http://www.animeboston.com/news/article/543
I am almost certain that we made another announcement on social media the day before applications closed, and the open/close dates were a stickied post on the cosplay section of the forums.
This said, I took a look through the cosplay games descriptions and you are correct that there is no open/close date there, so we will definitely fix that for next year, as well as adding it to the Cosplay FAQ!
I checked the site multiple times starting at the beginning of the year & never saw anything about the deadline ending, maybe 1 thing about it opening & that's it. Honestly, there should be way more than just ~2 posts made about it seeing as they're easily going to be buried by other posts on various other things relating to the con. Additionally, the only thing I check the forums for is for filling/finding a hotel room & cosplay meet-ups, when there are forums at all (due to other con experiences). I never use them to find pertinent information regarding the con. That should all be on the web site, I shouldn't have to use secondary sources to find that information (*insert obligatory "back in my day, there was no social media" statement*), which also will have any relating posts buried by other more recent ones.
All I know is I found the information about the deadlines w/ little to no effort last year whereas this year I was actively looking & didn't find anything. I mean, it's only my 2nd year, so I'm still getting used to AB's site, but I find it remarkable I found hardly any advertisement for it despite actively looking for it. For panels, an email was sent out to those that submitted, both this year & from prior years, that the deadline was approaching, maybe they can do the same thing with the cosplay games.
Disclaimer: This was my first AB
I'd like to reiterate my distaste for parts of the website, since the topic was brought up. While I had previously had this conversation on social media with a member of AB staff, I figured this is a good place to keep that information instead.
First off, while social media is a good platform for notifications, remember that platforms like Twitter and Facebook use advanced algorithms that filter out some content based on a variety of reasons. I don't personally trust telling FB that "Yes, I like this page show this page on feed" and actually have it do that. So, that said, I'll speak only specifically to the site.
The descriptor I used a few months back was "counter-intuitive". The reason I say this is that the organization seems rather off in regards to how information is given. For example, I had at one point missed the announcement stating the Masquerade and Cosplay Games applications had opened, but then caught a friend posting on FB about them closing soon at the end of the month. Now, as a con-goer, when I want information about something going on, the first thing I go check is something to the effect of events. The menu on the left side has Convention Info, and then breaks out and I see Convention Schedule. Ok, that seems like the place, I go click it and (at the time) it was empty. So, now I'm confused. Signups for participation in an event are open, but the event page doesn't list anything. Ok....
To shorten the story, I was told on social media my criticism were passed to the web team, and I thanked the person for that action as it was unexpected and very cordial.
Now, having been to an AB, I understand a bit more as to why things the way they are. Cosplay games are their own category. The Masquerade is its own category. But, in layman terms for con, these are all "events" and were never listed under "events". To make matter worse, cosplay games and masquerade aren't even listed under "Programming", they have their own sections under "Cosplay" (where I would expect information to be regarding actively cosplaying during the convention and guidelines thereof).
I had to spend a good few hours getting a handle on how the website was set up, and I honestly still didn't quite understand it until after I got home from the con. I now understand why these things are separated as such, but as a new attendee, it didn't make any sense. That said, I think the website would benefit from a good overhaul to make these things more accessible to a first-time con goer. I took a rather large leap of faith by coming to AB without quite having an idea of what was going on (and it did pay off, so no regrets there), but I think I would have been in a better position to plan and enjoy the con if it were easier to review events ahead of time, the website isn't very accommodating in that department.
Finally, handling special event sign-ups using php forums is just gross. Don't get me wrong: these forums serve a great function for things like feedback and meet-up planning, and attendees swapping information and stories of experiences, but sign-ups can have an improved benefit from even with just a simple Google Form.
There's my newbie two cents.