Convention Ideas: The Contest Route

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The other articles on ideas to add more professional content to conventions is here.

There's something about competition, about challenge, that spurs us on.  The most quiet, polite person can become disturbingly focused and energized by a little competition.  Let's face it – we usually like a challenge.

Now conventions often run all sorts of events that are competitions.  Thanks to an anime art competition, I will now be unable to forget the idea of Vash the Stampede from Trigun re-interpreted as a pinup-style model, but I am trying.

At your convention, leverage the competitions – or add new ones – to add more professional content.  Art contests, writing contests, what have you.

JUDGES: Get professional judges if you can and have them critique from a professional point of view.

AWARDS: Make the prizes professionally oriented.  That manga contest could result in a gift of books on drawing or history.  The graphic art contest could result in a gift certificate to an art store or something similar.  The writing contest could result in getting published in a pro publication.

THEMES: See about making (or adding) contest themes that fit a more professional bent.  Don't have someone draw your mascot for the 50th time – have them enter 4 pages of original concepts.  Make that writing contest serious.

Contests fire people up.  If you're running them at your convention, see about adding a professional edge to them – or adding new contests.  Use that drive.

– Steven Savage

News of the Day 10/22/2009

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Career:
The key to success? Hustle. Getting moving. A nice succinct summary of a serious truth – if you want success, get moving. As a person who once spent a good chunk of a 5 hour airline flight writing columns, I can say hustle works.

Getting your hustle on in blogging may help Technorati reports on bloggers who make money blogging is interesting – I'll note that the economic situation probably skews this, but a good read – and may give you some ideas. And hey, keep up the Hustle . . .

Economics/Geekonomics:
7000 people a day exhaust their unemployment benefits. That's a million people in less than 150 days. The Senate is still holding up unemployment benefit extentions. This isn't good news for the unemployed or the economy.

The US may not be able to help the global recovery, consumer-wise. The numbers certainly don't look hot. We can expect more global economic shifts with weakness like this.

A jobless recovery looks more likely – Says the Atlanta Fed. Jobs are scare, small businesses are shedding them disproportionately, record job cutbacks, record high permanent job separations – all add up to an unpleasant picture. This may actually reflect a new trend in the modern economy as is – it seems a lot of recoveries of the recent past have been jobless.

Law:
(Yep, I added a law section. These days, I think Geek Law and Fan Law have come into their own)

Nokia files patent infringement lawsuits against Apple – Not sure why it took until now, part of me wonders if this is general Everything Wars strategy, and the recent trend has been dogpile-on-Apple as of late.

John McCain jumps into the Net Neutrality issue – and is against the FCC's rules. I think this is more symbolic than anything else (and probably a play for political relevance). Not sure it'll have much effect on the ongoing issues.

Movies:
If you thought Dune or Lord of the Rings was Unfilmable (even after the films), try and imagine the complex Culture novels adapted as movies. On the negative side . . . it'd be hard to find people that 'get' these books. On the other it's an incredibly rich setting to mine. I'm concerned an adaption of this size is an indicator that media companies are looking to mine past product even more.

Publishing:
A lot of journalists want their companies to move to digital faster. The demograhpics sound unusual as well. A good read if you're in news, and maybe in publishing in general.

Check out these Twitter Users who are shaping the future of publishing

What? Amazon.com's UK version of the Kindle is very limited and restricted – Another bad play in my book – and another opportunity for competitors. With the Nook coming out, this makes them look worse.

Technology:
OK, Windows 7 is out. Here's an obligatory review.

Video Games:
GameStop looks to jump into Digital Distribution with a mix of expand-and-acquire. Note the acquire part – it'd probably be easier for them to jump into DLC by buying a service or company than making their own. They also want to "aggregate" downloads. Clearly they're busy re-inventing themselves early. I smell job opportunities . . .

– Steven Savage