Posted: 04 August 2008 at 5:24pm | IP Logged

The point of the questionnaire is to get everyone's OPINIONS about Auto Assembly 2009 and it's never been out intention to turn next year into a Star Trek convention - we're just looking at as many options as we can right now.

As a sci-fi organisation, Infinite Frontiers has our roots originally in Doctor Who and then Star Trek, dating back to 1989 and our first events were for those. 2009 is a fairly significant year in a number of ways - the 25th Anniversary of Transformers, the release of the next Transformers film, the release of the next Star Trek film, and our 20th Anniversary so we want to do something pretty special regardless of what it is so we want to get the ideas of who matter the most - YOU GUYS!!

The *thought* of a more varied event was to see if mixing Transformers with other SF/Fantasy genres would allow us to add more to the programme, appeal to a wider audience, introduce more new attendees, and have guests (comic and actors) who have a wider appeal including crossover guests. However, as we stressed in the questionnaire, Transformers certainly wouldn't be sidelined and it wouldn't be a case of "Sticking us in the corner of a trek convention" - it would have been a case of adding additional content to Auto Assembly with Transformers being the LEAD element of a multi-genre convention.

As we said in the welcome letter in the pack, and the questionnaire though, it is YOU who will make the final decision as to whether it stays as a Transformers only event although *personally* I believe that it will be able to work better that way. As for the price, I won't go into too much detail here in terms of how much it costs to run an event like Auto Assembly but we NEEDED to charge £16 a head this year to break even with the number of attendees we had, especially with rising venue costs and guest costs.

A two day event, with a bonus programme on a Friday and Saturday evening (which would be a LOT more than a disco... we have a LOT of ideas already for this, trust me!), with potentially 3-4 voice actors, about a dozen comic guests, our usual activities and competitions, video screenings, displays, workshops, a more elaborate goodie bag, running much longer each day than Auto Assembly does at the moment then about £40 a head is incredibly cheap compared to any convention these days (approaching a three-figure sum for the same package), especially as we don't allow our guests to charge for autographs.

As I have said though, the questionnaire is in your packs and you've all got a chance to have your say. Just read the questions that we are asking and see the potential of what Auto Assembly 2009 can be and help us shape it into the convention that YOU want it to be.

Simon

Posted: 04 August 2008 at 5:55pm | IP Logged

Simes wrote: we NEEDED to charge £16 a head this year to break even with the number of attendees we had, especially with rising venue costs and guest costs... ...with potentially 3-4 voice actors, about a dozen comic guests..

Now, I know you think otherwise, but this is somewhere you're going wrong. One way that we differ from ST fans is we really don't give a f**k about guests, for the most part.

This year is the perfect example. Liam Shaloo - meeting him was great as I've known him online for 2+ years, but other than me, I very much doubt anyone in the hall could care less about his presence. Furman.. he's at every convention ever, and never has anything interesting to say (Though that's pretty much expected when he can't even write anything interesting...). Nobody goes to AA because of him.

Most of the other guests I had no idea who they were, even when I asked what they did I still didn't know of them. Getting whichever artist it was to sketch me Shockwave was pretty sweet, but hardly a deal breaker. If you keep raising prices just for the sake of a troupe of nobodies, especially with transport costs going up and up, people will stop coming.

Posted: 04 August 2008 at 6:48pm | IP Logged

Any1 know of a link to the ITV Central news piece? BBC piece is here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2008/06/04/ auto_assembly_feature.shtml

BBC Pics here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/image_galleries/auto _assembly_gallery_gallery.shtml?1

Posted: 04 August 2008 at 7:21pm | IP Logged

Specimen-17 wrote: Hey, I'm in the fourth photo! Who wants to touch me?! I SAID WHO WANTS TO TOUCH ME?!?

you look wracked and the bloke next ya looks as if he's gonna fall over or sneeze

Posted: 04 August 2008 at 7:30pm | IP Logged

the over seas chap looks good for it

Posted: 04 August 2008 at 9:52pm | IP Logged

Lock up your daughters...

Posted: 04 August 2008 at 10:06pm | IP Logged

I should have said hi to you Chris but Richyx had my missus's camera to take the photo and I reckon he quite liked it's pink loveliness and was keen on doing a runner with it

I've got some more photos but they're huge in size and it took me far too long to make that one small enough to upload on here! Spec is looking especially cool in them, donning his sunglasses just for the shot!