Silicon Valley Comic Con 2016 – Recap

I really enjoyed attending the inaugural Silicon Valley Comic Con in San Jose, California.  This convention is the brainchild of Steve Wozniack and Stan Lee to merge technology and comic book/pop culture into a single convention.  I ordered a 3-day badge about a month before the convention, and my wristband was mailed to me two weeks before the convention started.  I didn’t receive the wristband until 4 days before the convention, and I had been getting a little nervous about it not arriving in time.

The wristband had an RFID inside which would need to be tapped when entering and exiting the exhibition floor, but it wasn’t required to tap when entering/exiting the various panel rooms.   The RFID worked okay, but I think it could have been better.  I had to retry scanning my wristband on several occasions.

Room 1 was located in the convention center’s Grand Ballroom and was located on the upper level which was across from the exhibition floor.  There were 4 smaller panel rooms (Rooms 2-5) which were on the lower level (1 floor below street level) which is also where you could purchase/pick up wristbands, autograph tickets, etc.  Room 6 was clear on the other side of the convention center on the street level floor, and it was located inside the gaming room.  It was really difficult for me to find it for a panel I attended on Sunday morning.

The line setups for Room 1 were extremely inconsistent.  They really didn’t have a designated area for the line overflow which became a huge issue for the Back to the Future panel.  Also, when you were let into the room, there were two entrances, but anyone could have walked into the farthest set of doors without being in line, because it wasn’t blocked off from the rest of the hallway and only had 1 volunteer to manage that large area.

I don’t know about the smaller panel rooms (it may not have been necessary), but they cleared Room 1 between panels.  I wouldn’t have had a problem with that if it had been posted or announced somewhere before the panels/convention.  The inconsistent setup of the line for Room 1 made challenging to exit the room and get back in line because they would change where the line began/ended for various panels.  Only VIP badges didn’t have to clear the room.

I had bought my wristband a few weeks after they had announced the Back to the Future panel, and I had checked the ticketing page several times after I had purchased my wristband as more guests were being announced.  About 1-2 weeks before the convention, I noticed a price of $10 for the Back to the Future panel.  At that time, someone had asked about that fee on the convention’s Facebook event page.  That question was never answered.  I bought my ticket for that panel during the Jeremy Renner panel, so only a few hours before the Back to the Future panel started.  (This ticket requirement also helped the clusterF%$k of a line for the BTTF panel because there were many people who were in line who hadn’t purchased a ticket—which were also sold out by that time.)

At somewhere between 25,000 – 30,000 attendees, this convention was the largest event ever held at the San Jose Convention Center.  This was apparent by the heat and stuffiness on the exhibition floor.  I bought a cheap folding fan for $5 from one of the vendors, which were selling quite well that day, to cool off.

Overall it was a very fun convention, and I’ll definitely be returning next year.  Hopefully, they’ll fix the RFID glitches so that they work smoothly, and fix the way they handle the lines, and better communication on their Facebook page to answer legitimate questions.

Also, the program didn’t have a map of where everything was located so you had to download the app, which was only partially effective (it didn’t show were room 6 was located).

Did you attend Silicon Valley Comic Con?  What was your experience like?  I know it was the first comic convention for many of the attendees, so they may have a much different point of view from mine.

TTFN,

Veronica