MattTheMinion

Well to be honest, as you have guessed the BBS is on its way out. We've done what we can, but engagement on both the attendee side and the staff side (in terms of volunteers to manage it) has declined a lot. I'm not sure exactly when it will be retired, but the day is coming soon. When it is known something official will get posted. In the meantime transitioning over to the Otakon Discord is an option (https://discord.com/invite/otakon)

In most cases declines come from address mismatches with what the card issuer has on file. In particular, Amex is a real stickler for everything matching exactly. Although a similar thing can happen if you are using a disposable card/gift card, and you haven't registered an address with it.

No, you didn't miss it. Between Covid and other life events, I haven't been able to pull it off for a couple years now. Although, I was thinking if there was enough interest I'd bring it back next year for the 30th.

My answer here is based on how things were done in the past. I don't know if they have changed recently. In previous years vendor badges were handed out on site when the vendor checked in. I don't think this is going to change. The person checking in for the booth should be able to pick up all the badges for their booth on check-in. If you know you will need more badges than what comes with the table space you can add them to your table order. However, I believe you can also purchase additional badges on site in the vendor hall. For more up to date answers keep sending things to the

Hello: Vendor badges are full badges for the rest of the event. You do not need to purchase another badge. Yes, your coworker should go to member accessibility to get priority access to the elevators. It will make things easier for her overall. I do not know the official answer as to whether or not vendors can use the exhibition hall elevators, but if you have the accessibility item for access then you are covered either way. Yes, in a case like you suggested you should have someone talk to the Otakon staff person managing the line.

At this time we are sorting through our options and playing a little wait-and-see. Our goal is that once we pick something we don't want to change it abruptly unless we absolutely have to. I believe that like last year, if we announce that vaccines are required - those who are unvaccinated and purchased their badges before the announcement was made, will be eligible for a refund.

To be honest there isn't much we can do when it's slow other than reboot the virtual server it sits on in AWS-land and hope that it starts behaving again. There is a software update coming out soon, so perhaps that will help?

Yeah I thought I got 2021 in there sometime in the last year, but apparently I did not. Things are in progress, but also I have about 100 other things to do post-con that take priority. Paying bills is never really "fun", and for that matter neither is filling out sales/use tax returns. As for this year, it will likely be early September based on other deadlines.

As probably one of the oldest semi-active account holders on the BBS (going back to the before times when it was just for gofers) it's true that the BBS has lost its luster as a social media platform. While it does have several advantages such as being fully under our control vs. something like Facebook, it requires a notably larger time and support investment than just using someone else's product that nearly everyone already happens to be part of. The cost of course being that these other products and platforms have built in limits on what you can and can't do and who controls what can be a

Yeah, it's never been free. I don't think there is a way to realistically make it free. Even if we could coordinate all the labor as volunteer work we'd still have to pay for shipping, tracking, and packaging materials and honestly that's where most of the cost lies.

Yes, it is $15. I believe it's the same price as it was last year. The price is computed based on what it costs us on average to have a package of 1-8 badges put together and shipped.

Legacy information is being handled a little differently now. In theory if your registration information remains similar enough it should automatically be complied when you re-register.

In a word the thing(s) holding it up are.... contracts. Adjustments needed to be made for a post-covid world.

We are aware of it, and are looking into pinning down whether the source is the database or a software thing.

To keep it brief there are a lot of logistical and practical considerations and trade offs that had to be considered in terms of holding a convention. And if we're being honest, there is nothing we could have done that would satisfy everyone. For example, social distancing. If you spaced out seats in the programming rooms to distance folks, the seating capacity of each room would be roughly 15% of what it was this year. It's not worth having a video room with a max capacity of 23 people, or limiting main events to a couple hundred attendees. Once you do that you have thousands of people c