U-Con Con Chair Update – 2022 May 23

Greetings! This is a long update with lots of info. Therefore, I’m going to summarize key points right now, with details for each below.

  • We are still planning an in person convention!
  • We are using Tabletop as our new Event Management Software.
  • Due to the software change and other increased expenses, we are increasing the prices of day and weekend badges.
    • We are no longer charging for tickets for each event, although tickets will be required to reserve a seat. This also means generic tickets are no longer necessary, and you will be able to register for games at the table if your plans change. 
    • With this in mind, badge price is anticipated to be $70 and includes any and all events you choose to participate in. Note that we will still have a pre-registration discount.
    • Complementary GM Badges require 16+ hours of scheduled events, and much thanks to you diehard GMs that contribute so much! Discounted GM Badges ($20 for the full weekend) require at least 8 hours of scheduled events, and we appreciate your support also!
  • Please reserve a room at the Marriott through our hotel block. We need to reach our quota, and it is also a good indicator of attendance.

And now the details.

U-Con is still planned to be In Person!

The pandemic, unfortunately, is still happening. However, we now have vaccines available, and the medical community is learning more every day about how to deal with COVID and mitigating the effects. To be clear, though, it is still out there, and we are concerned about the safety of U-Con attendees, staff, and volunteers.

Therefore, it is possible that the convention could be canceled. As Con Chair, I am moving forward completely as if U-Con will happen. I personally have attended other business conventions and gatherings, and have monitored how they are mitigating risk. I will also be attending Origins, which recently imposed a mask mandate. We have not made such a decision, and will not make one until we are closer to the con.

I am still hopeful that the situation will, over time, continue to improve.

Right now: the con is still planned to be in person. There will not be a simultaneous virtual component. 

Tabletop Events as U-Con’s new Event Management Software

For 20+ years we have been using Laura H.’s amazing event management software that she developed specifically for U-Con, and it has grown with the con itself. And as a quick aside, I would like to thank her for donating her time and skills to creating and maintaining this incredible software, along with her other overall tech and web work. U-Con would not be where it is today without her!

However, we all agree that we need to move beyond one person maintaining and improving the software, and given the 2 year hiatus, now is the best time to move forward. We spent months reviewing and evaluating potential solutions, and ultimately chose Tabletop.events. 

The Tabletop Events software has structure built in to facilitate fair distribution of event registration. For example, it limits each badge to acquiring one ticket per time slot, so one person can’t block off a table. This also means that if there are openings at a table, you can just walk up and request to join. We will work out the details of all of this as we get closer to the convention dates.

Increased Prices

U-Con is a totally volunteer organization. For quite a while now (up to 2019), our income from sales has exceeded expenses, allowing us to do things like update the games library, have more diverse and distant Guests of Honor, and improve the overall experience of the convention.

Unfortunately, while we held virtual cons for the past two years, they did not bring in significant income. And during that time, we not only had yearly expenses, but some of those expenses have increased greatly. One example is storage, which went from an almost trivial expense to a significant one.

And this year we have Event Management software expenses.

Therefore, we need to increase prices. Fortunately, it looks like the increase will be, overall, around $15 for most attendees. This is based on a comparison to our historical offering of a Play Games All Weekend Ribbon for $55 to our anticipated badge price of $70. As an improvement on the Play Games All Weekend Ribbon, our new model allows you to reserve seats in all your favorite games.

Registration for your events will require the “purchase” of a $0 ticket. There may be some special events (e.g., for special guests, charity events, etc.) that require a fee, but that will be the exception. All standard events you have participated in the past will have a $0 ticket fee solely for the purpose of capacity planning and attendance. This has the added benefit that in case of a cancellation or some other change of plans, you can unregister from one event and register for another, subject to availability of tickets. 

GM Badges

GMs who run 16 or more hours of events will receive a complimentary GM Badge ($0). We are extremely grateful for all the GMs who support U-Con, and are also a significant portion of attendees. For those GMs that want to balance play and running events,  if a GM runs 8+ hours of games, their Weekend Badge is $20. And remember, this price includes all the events you want to play.

Room Reservations

A significant cost risk for U-Con is the room block at Marriott. It would help us greatly if you could register as early as you are sure you would like to attend. That will also be a good indicator of overall attendance. Also, if you register through the room block below, we will better be able to help if there are any issues.

https://www.marriott.com/event-reservations/reservation-link.mi?id=1644954198130&key=GRP&app=resvlink

Conclusion

If you got this far, thank you! I hope this information is useful, and that it helps explain why we made the decisions we did.

The next step on our timeline (aside from updating the timeline!), is to open up U-Con for event/game submissions. Our initial goal was for June 1st, but that may slip a week or two. I intend to have the full schedule up, including the date and time for Event Registration, when we open up submissions.

I hope to see many of you there, and I’ll continue to provide updates as we go.

May the dice be ever in your favor!

– Charles J. Cohen, U-Con 2022 Con Chair

2 Comments on “U-Con Con Chair Update – 2022 May 23

  1. If things change in the future with covid, can we get our money back for our weekend passes? I don’t want to pay and then not be able to game that weekend and be out $70.
    Thanks, Bill.

    • Hi Bill! Thanks for the question. If we have to shut down the con, everyone will get a refund. Otherwise, we are still discussing our overall refund policies. We’ll post our policy before preregistration opens. Hope this helps in your decision making!