Youmacon in Detroit

This is really late since I haven't logged onto DA in a long time...

I went last year to try it out. They had a lot of problems at their convention involving registration and such. They also ran the event in two different locations so you had to be prepared to either walk the streets of detroit or take this transit thing that connects a few of the buildings. However, they didn't inform the attendees of the latter option. Attendees and vendor/participants also didn't get a copy of the program book until mid-way through saturday.

Now regarding the artist alley... Their artist alley is also thrown over to the back of the hall behind the dealers room. They also didn't include the artist alley in the program book map (not even a blurb about them), so a lot of people who got there found it by accident because behind the artist alley was the convention hall food vendors. Sign in started very late. And again, because the alley was behind the dealers room, they got very little traffic compared to the rest of the hall. The table aisles at either ends (the ones near the wall) had the least amount of traffic. There was also a full island of empty artist tables because the coordinator wasn't informed of the layout changes. seating arrangements were apparently not coordinated properly so some groups of friends were split up. And for some very bizarre reason... nearly all of the Canadian artists were situated against that low traffic wall/end aisle. I'm sure it was just coincidence but they were all Canadian from what I noticed.

Just to give you a vague idea, the layout was basically the entrance, then the guest/trade/industry table, then behind them is the dealers/vendors tables, then behind them were the artist tables, then behind them were the food vendors and autograph lines (tucked in a corner). The sections of dealers and trade/guest/industry tables had 8ft curtains so you can't see anything behind them unless you walk passed it. With all that curtain, the artist alley was basically hidden away.

Hopefully it won't be the same next year but my poor experience with the convention entirely has convinced me not to come back. By next year it may have improved right so the people who go next year might have a really good experience.