An appeasement suggestion
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Posted by raptorov
#26

Headwound said: "I just wish the core issue (the pain of commuting) would be addressed. All I see is record breaking attendance announcements and no fixes for what is making it not fun anymore"

That is true, but that is really something that Indianapolis and Indiana needs to address not GenCon. If the city and state refuse to support this business, they will lose it That would crush me, but its true. How much economic impact does GenCon provide to the city and state? They can't dedicate a slice of that money for a modern transportation system? Not even special 24 hours (or nearly so) busses for the term of the 'con?
What if Indianapolis and Indiana invested in light rail streetcars, Bus Rapid Transit and such? Could they attract other events the size of GenCon? I heard universal praise for the region during the Super Bowl Why not expand that? The train station is attached to the housing block and the skyways. There is a perfect footprint for a new expanded station right at the tunnel between the ICC and Lucas Oil Stadium.
If GenCon would use some of its pull for imrovements, that is where it should be. It isn't 1955 anymore.
I am a fantasy gamer, so when I see that Cincinnati (where I am from) and Indianapolis are 110 +/- miles apart (160km), if there were a real high speed rail line moving 220km, like exist in nearly every other country in the world, Cincy is 45 minutes away from the heart of the Convention. Thats commuter distance.

Until then, how about several daily conventional trains and some decent bussing?
Isn't it worth considering to keep GenCon? 

Posted by fjpicone roundtop
#27

roundtop wrote:
I'm not trying to be mean... but HAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAhahahahahah.  Do you think they aren't working on things? The part that most people forget about is that negotiations between businesses are closed door. They can't announce anything until it is done.  The shuttle company from last year, yeah that isn't happenning, probably for several reasons, but they may be working on alternatives. That said, how many shuttles do you need going to how many hotels at reasonable times, and allowing for peak traffic, and do you charge each person or include it.   For the numbers involved here, the best methods would involve hiring local school-busses and running about 30 of them at any given time, but you can start imagining the cost and the work required in that.
I'm sure they are working on things as best possible, but remember Gen Con does not control Indy, nor the businesses they work with. So for hotels, shuttles, convention center, stadium... they have contracts, that are often negotiated years in advance, and they can't talk about anything until the ink is wet on the contract.  I have seen conventions lost hotels because they mentioned to the wrong people that they were in negotiations with them.
Actually, looking at how they've handled things in the past I DON'T think they're looking into it.
Sorry to have to say this but, there doesn't seem to be any pro-active planning in many areas. It really feels like they wait for the community to scream and yell before looking into problems.
A great example is the server capacity from previous years registration. I mean ok, the first year they can be surprised at the response but after that they should have anticipated the volume of participants and ramped up the bandwith and capacity to several times previous numbers. Yet for several years the system would fail. That's basic capacity planning.
It may not be a popular opinion, but while I think the general staff and volunteers are fantastic, I think the management needs to step up their game. Most people I know hesitate to come to GenCon because they say it's poorly organized for the price.

Posted by fjpicone
#28

A shuttle system is feasible. The hotels tend to be clustered so the routes would be limited. There are only 5 major transport windows (8am, 12pm, 4pm, 8pm, midnight) so these would be the targets. Also, deals with cab companies could be worked out. Hell, an uber like app for arranging transport with participating companies could probably be done in time.
But this would actually take time and personnel to plan and implement and would, initially, (here's the killer) appear to be a cost, not a benefit. It would take forward thinking to perceive the long term benefits, but there would be benefits. Make it pleasant and GenCon becomes addictive. More people will come. More people will convince friend to go; and when it finally moves to a larger venue people will follow.

Posted by hawkeye fjpicone
#29

fjpicone wrote:
A great example is the server capacity from previous years registration. I mean ok, the first year they can be surprised at the response but after that they should have anticipated the volume of participants and ramped up the bandwith and capacity to several times previous numbers. Yet for several years the system would fail. That's basic capacity planning.
If you are talking about hotel registration, those servers are NOT Gen Con's. They are Q-Room's or in the past Visit Indy's. The bottleneck was on thier servers. Gen Con's site only provided the link to them. Once you were transfered over you were at the mercy of the system hosting the housing portal. As far as Gen Con's servers go, I personally haven't had any issues since I started attending in 2011.

Posted by mattnaik suburbaknght
#30

suburbaknght wrote:
headwound wrote:
Then why was the housing portal changed if that is sufficiently random?

First, my own opinion is that the events list should be handled the same way as housing is: at noon on event reg day, everyone's wish lists are randomly assigned an order and processed.  No staring at the clock, ready to click a button the exact instant it flashes.  No watching a countdown clock.  Just an autoamtic processing and an e-mail later saying, "Here's what you got.

I'm against this idea. When my wishlist processes I tend to have to make adjustments. I may put in for 20 true dungeon events and get 4 of them. I only want 1 of them so I have to cancel 3 of them. Unless there was some way to mark an event as being "grouped" with others so to only get one in that "group"

If that functionality was added I might be on board but I have a feeling there are a number of other scenarios that would need to be handled as well which would quickly make the "wishlist editing" a pretty complex user experience.
 

Posted by fjpicone hawkeye
#31

hawkeye9723 wrote:
fjpicone wrote:
A great example is the server capacity from previous years registration. I mean ok, the first year they can be surprised at the response but after that they should have anticipated the volume of participants and ramped up the bandwith and capacity to several times previous numbers. Yet for several years the system would fail. That's basic capacity planning.
If you are talking about hotel registration, those servers are NOT Gen Con's. They are Q-Room's or in the past Visit Indy's. The bottleneck was on thier servers. Gen Con's site only provided the link to them. Once you were transfered over you were at the mercy of the system hosting the housing portal. As far as Gen Con's servers go, I personally haven't had any issues since I started attending in 2011.
It's hard to write this and not sound too negative. I've rewritten it several times now. So:
There have been serious issues, but also, at least some good response to those issues.
Up until this year the Hotel registration was actually not bad (for me anyway. I've heard horror stories), but several years in a row I had or directly knew people who had horrible experiences with the event registration. Aside from a questionable logic flows, interfaces and instructions, the servers and bandwidth just weren't up to snuff.
Peoples sessions hung and wouldn't restart for minutes to hours and in that environment minutes, let alone hours meant everything in terms of getting events.
Forgiveness is granted for the first year, but after that it's their fault for just being cheap an not paying for enough bandwidth and capacity to handle 60-100,000+ simultaneous entries. The #'s were predictable. Good IT practices would have prevented most of the problems. Site capacity just should not be an issue.
Going back to the original point, even if the servers aren't GenCons, it's STILL their responsibility to choose an adequate provider! It's not ok to say "Oh we outsourced it so it's not our fault!"
I'm trying to be even handed about this. I can't/don't blame GenCon for being so popular that it's outgrown the city. But I can gripe when they don't do everything they can to offset that excess. That's product/service support.
I will give credit to their at least attenpting something to even out the housing demand. A lotterty my not be a popular choice, but it was worth a try to see how it goes.
Hopefullly they're getting into a 'lessons learned' mode and will continue to improve the experience every year. I know most people involved are fantastic and try very hard to make GenCon great.
 

Posted by marimaccadmin
#32

Why on earth are people bringing up bandwidth issues from years past?  There were no reports of any time outs this year.  I guess if there's not enough that went wrong this year, people need to complain about past years.  

Posted by fjpicone marimaccadmin
#33

marimaccadmin wrote:
Why on earth are people bringing up bandwidth issues from years past?  There were no reports of any time outs this year.  I guess if there's not enough that went wrong this year, people need to complain about past years.  
It's relevent. There were issues for several years. That demonstrates a prolonged lack of concern or inability to take corrective action. Things have improved ,  but only after a volume of requests/demands. This is certainly a commendable step in the right direction, but not absolution for past issues (and registration is yet to come).
Now, in solving one problem, another has occured. As it developed as byproduct of popularity, the organizers are in no way responsible, but again, good business practice would be to address the problem when recognized, not when complaints rise to excessive levels.

Posted by marimaccadmin
#34

It is astounding to me that a situation that has resolved is cited as a lack of concern.  

Posted by fjpicone marimaccadmin
#35

marimaccadmin wrote:
It is astounding to me that a situation that has resolved is cited as a lack of concern.  
THe situation has not resolved. It has transformed. The lottery is a stopgap that treats everyone fairly, but does not resolve(well) the issue of access to the convention in a timely manner.
As to calling the matter a lack of concern, I stand by the claim. When an issue happens repeatedly, is pointed out and little or no action is taken then I attribute that to a lack of concern. If action was attempted and was unsuccessfuil then there is still a to properly communicate the status.  That the housing portal problem was mostly resolved by the lottery does not address the event registration issues. I don't know how last years went but the years prior were, and I'll be polite, disappointing. This year remains to be seen.
I think if the same attempt is made to use a lottery for event registration then things will go poorly indeed. Event registration is much more time critical than even housing. A lottery will NOT be a popular solution and certainly won't work well with the 'wish list' scenario that I remember.
Again, GenCon management cannot be held resposible for the amount of events ort their popularity, but a lottery for event registration would effectively DOOM anyone more than a few dozen minutes out.
I think the only solution will be a system that can handle the throughput and let everyone on at the same time and we take our chances together.

Posted by dballing fjpicone
#36

fjpicone wrote:
marimaccadmin wrote:
It is astounding to me that a situation that has resolved is cited as a lack of concern.  
THe situation has not resolved. It has transformed. The lottery is a stopgap that treats everyone fairly, but does not resolve(well) the issue of access to the convention in a timely manner.
As to calling the matter a lack of concern, I stand by the claim. When an issue happens repeatedly, is pointed out and little or no action is taken then I attribute that to a lack of concern. If action was attempted and was unsuccessfuil then there is still a to properly communicate the status.  That the housing portal problem was mostly resolved by the lottery does not address the event registration issues. I don't know how last years went but the years prior were, and I'll be polite, disappointing. This year remains to be seen.
I think if the same attempt is made to use a lottery for event registration then things will go poorly indeed. Event registration is much more time critical than even housing. A lottery will NOT be a popular solution and certainly won't work well with the 'wish list' scenario that I remember.
Again, GenCon management cannot be held resposible for the amount of events ort their popularity, but a lottery for event registration would effectively DOOM anyone more than a few dozen minutes out.
I think the only solution will be a system that can handle the throughput and let everyone on at the same time and we take our chances together.

Posted by truelink
#37

Wow... this topic got off track. But regarding the bandwidth issue: was there one last year?

I remember a stutter during the Great Submitting, but I don't believe it actually crashed. Actually, I remember clicking once at first, getting slot 2, then clicking again and panicing as it stuttered. A moment later I was slot 6500, so I panicked at my new position at the end of the line. But what I came to find out was my slot 2 position had already processed before clicking again. Effectively, I got to be both slices of bread in the submittal sandwich without any crashing. So that sounds like it worked to me.

.

Getting back on topic: I do think some kind of shuttle system is necessary to stay in Indianapolis, especially from the airport. If there was an effective public/event transportation system for outside of downtown proper, it would allow for more growth and lower costs for attendees. And then maybe people wouldn't be as upset about not getting a downtown hotel room.

Aww... who am I kidding. People would still be upset and demand we go to Vegas. It's tradition.

Posted by marimaccadmin
#38

There is, as far as I know, no plan to move event registration to an official lottery, however, even with infinite bandwidth, it's still essentially random when thousands of people are all clicking in exactly the same milisecond.

I never envision a time when you will click your event wish list, along with thousands of your fellow attendees, at the same time, and get your answer to what events you got in 5 seconds.  It's just not going to happen.  There's a lot of queries involved there.  If that's what you want, I'm sorry but it just cannot happen.

Posted by dreamitdoit
#39

Nor is there a system that can be conceived where people get all their first picks for events. Whatever system it is will suck as long as you don't randomly get lucky and get everything that you wanted. There's too many people for things to work out that way, and the fact that the convention is in Indianapolis is not going to change that.  Move it to another location and you'll be fighting for spots with people from that location, since those of us in the midwest won't be able to go anymore, but that's about it.

Posted by hope pennington fjpicone
#40

fjpicone wrote:
More people will come.

More people are already coming.

Posted by knuteski
#41

For the record.  I lost the housing lottery and got 3 1/2 hours.

But, here's my take.  You can stay at one of the non-downtown hotels and Uber/Bus/Taxi it downtown each day for less than the cost to stay downtown in block.  You can definitely drive yourself for cheaper since downtown hotel parking is a rip off.  In fact there's a "downtown" hotel about 2 1/2 miles away that can be snagged right now (King only) for $191.  I stayed there 2 years ago and it had recently been built or remodeled so it's in great shape.  It even had (and I bet still does) a free shuttle to the convention center.  They even brought in a 2nd shuttle from one of their other hotels to accomodate all of the gamers.

So there are options...just not the best options.  But for the record, it's never been like that.  I can't think of how many times I tried to land the Hyatt in Milwaukee only to fail (I never got it)...as that was the only connected hotel.

Posted by fjpicone
#42

Knuteski,
My concern, having to stay non walking distance for the first time, is the availability us Uber/Bus/Taxi. I don't know exactly how many people are going to be out in the burbs, but it's going to be a LOT. 
I'll bet cold hard cash Indianapolis does NOT have the capacity to handle that kind of volume. It's going to get ugly unless the Con organizers step up *EARLY* to make arrangements for that kind of volume.
There's going to 5 the equivelant of 2 major and 3 minor rush MINUTES (not Hours ) a day.
Some things I'd like to see are:


  1. Preemptive discussions about how many people are expected at the hotels in the block.
  2. What transportation is available in the city.
  3. Where can buses handle part of the load?
  4. Where will taxi's and Uber come in.
  5. Extending shuttles runs/schedule from the hotels involved.
  6. What the parking situation is expected to be if people decide that rental cars are an option.
  7. Maybe a forum for planning car pools.
  8. Possibly, (at least investigating) arranging discounts for some of the above.

If you're running a convention for 60,000 people these are the types of responsibilities that come with the job.

FYI, I think I got the Hyatt 2x in about 1-12 years in Milwaukee. It was GREAT. But the Con was much smaller then.
I seem to remember that they gave out maps, parking info and even cab/shuttle information during the prereg period (but I admit I could be wrong there).

Posted by njseahawksfan
#43

fjpicone,

As someone who has never stayed downtown, and has family that lives in Indianapolis out the suburbs, the City of Indianapolis has plenty of transportation.  GenCon is not the largest annual event that the city hosts, nor have there been issues with people getting to the con from outside downtown in any years past.  The company that ran the shuttles last year did a HORRIBLE job and it's not surprising that they have not been renewed.  

 

Posted by eiryu njseahawksfan
#44

njseahawksfan wrote:
The company that ran the shuttles last year did a HORRIBLE job and it's not surprising that they have not been renewed.  
They really did. The first morning they were over 40 mintues late for the first bus in the morning and I wound up late for my event. After that, I couldn't even get a spot on one if I wanted to. No thanks, I'd rather pay for a cab.

Posted by ploveking
#45

In the end, there aren't enough rooms downtown for everyone to get one. There is no way to handle registration that changes that. This system provides managable, consistant randomness, and that's as good as it can get. If you don't want to participate in the randomness, you can reserve a room at whatever rate you can get with the hotel, outside the block, first come first served, but, you may have missed that opportunity for this year. If that's a problem for you, you don't understand how many people want downtown rooms, and how much effort they will put forth to get those rooms. I'm sure there's someone out there with a room reservation for 2017, who isn't saying anything because they don't want anyone else to know how they got that reservation.

 You may feel like the old approach, click as close to 12:00:00 as possible and hope to get a room, was great because you got lucky under that system, but, that was just you getting lucky. It wasn't a better system. If you think getting a 2 hour 45 minute wait time was frustrating, try entering all your information and having the web page crash on you and dump you back to the start of the process without holding your room, three times, with more page refreshes than you can count in between failed attempts. Been there. Done that. 

 In the end  it comes down to 65,000 people wanting a limited number of downtown hotel rooms. Some 40,000 people aren't getting what they want.

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