It seems like every year people lament the fact that they did not get into some of the high demand games that they had put into their wish list.  Please consider running some of these games yourself thereby providing additional events for Gen Con to offer, which will create more gaming opportunities on registration day and possibly even earning some perks for yourself.  Personally, over the years, I have found that I can enjoy running games almost as much as playing them depending on the gaming system and the players.  One of the many benefits is that I really don't have to worry about "getting a spot" for any of the games that I run and I have made a habit of creating an extra character for many of my events for anyone who lost the Event Registration lottery but shows up at my events with "a fist full of generics" and a dream.  Just a suggestion...

At least in my case, I was hoping to play in two of my three wish list games to get a better idea how to write/run those things in the future. It helps to play before running, in my experience.

True enough.  The stuff that I run is either high demand (Call of Cthulhu) or does not have many people running it any more (DC Heroes and Marvel Super Heroes).  Like I mentioned in my email, just a suggestion, and I was hoping to motivate some experienced GM's out there to take a chance and trying running some events at Gen Con.  I started running events at Gen Con about ten years ago, organized a group of my college friends to do so as well and now we run something like 40 events of different kinds.  Also gives us an excuse to "beta test" our material within the group before taking it to Gen Con.

Do you get paid to run events?  If so, how much?  Is it worth your time and effort in general to run events?  Genuinely curious, as I enjoy running events as much/more than playing.

There have been years when I added an upcharge to my events to counter the costs of attending Gen Con and many of the GM's of our group do so as well.  How much you are "paid" would depend upon your number of players and how much of an upcharge.  I would say in most cases you would be looking at less than minimum wage but being paid to game is kind of cool.  I would definitely state that it is worth the time and effort to run events, with or without getting paid to do so...