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Prime 2015 Pin Trading Event Sunday Night
sirmrej
Seattle areaRegistered User regular
Seattle areaRegistered User regular
in Pinny Arcade
Roll call! Who was in the overflow pin room with me at the Westin for three hours... 
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Being capped out of the staff trading event this year is forcing me to re-evaluate how much I want to be collecting these pins, considering the amount of money and PAX time that's required to acquire them.
I especially agree with this. I was using it as a way to get one of each bust pins and move along. I would have been in and out in 5 minutes.
The overflow line did not get in. PA brought staff pins over for people at 8:50 but that was it.
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The line actually started behind me while I was waiting in the trading area because I assumed that was where it was going to be. A few hardcores hung around after the line cleared to trade on the tables there. I don't think they capped the line at any point (?).
Hopefully it's not that popular over here for a few years at least.. >_>
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At Prime there was a single line. All the tables were set up in an 'L' shape and it was like a conveyor belt going down the line. If people wanted to stop and trade or play games or chat to the staff it held up the entire rest of the line, especially people who were just there to 1-to-1 for staff pins. When they realized they were running out of time and only half the line had gone through they let in a smaller group of us (Thanks MerchMistriss!) to freely move between the tables like we've done in the past. That helped us get through quicker but by then the line had already been established.
Some people want to get in, trade, and get out, and that's rad, they're more interested in the pins. Some people want to chat and mingle and play games with the PA staff, and you know what that's rad too because that's the entire point of the pin trading! None of this would mean anything without the sense of community between us all as well as the staff. They conveyor belt pin trading line is a good way to trade pins quickly, but not socialize well.
Hopefully in the future we can go back to the more spread out method and anyone can get into the pin trading throughout the whole event, even if they just show up for the last 10 minutes. As long as it's easy to cycle through the staff tables and folks who are done are being convinced to move out, that end goal is not too far off.
Thanks for the feedback, we are listening.
It seems like the amount of physical space that was given to the pin trading event was quite a bit smaller than the previous trading events I had been to (Prime 14, East 14, South). Was there a reason for this, or just some kind of scheduling constraint? If there were a little more room around each table, that would give more people the ability to look at what was on each table.
Perhaps this can be accomplished with a new PAX Twitter account? PAX_Pins or the like?
That seemed to be because unfortunately the schedule worked out that the trade event occurred close in time with the Markiplier autograph session and that in and of itself seemed to eat half, if not more, of the space just for his fans.
Staff trading sounds super fun, and I'd love to get in once. But I had ten 2+ hour lines I stood in during this weekend. I'm going to have to cut out some of the lines at my next PAX so I spend more time doing things and less standing uncomfortably.
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The sheer number of pinny traders I met the following day who didn't get in tells me that next years pin trade is going to require an even earlier arrival, however, hopefully they will change their process and get more people in next year.
2015 PAX Prime Omeganaut (I will forever hate Katamari)
My boyfriend had an interesting idea. For the Squeenix signing, he got a ticket that told him what number in line he was and at what time to show up. Half the line was to show up at like 1pm or something and the other half was to show up at 2pm. That way, they could get through people without all the fuss of line standing forever and still had the room to interact with people.
I know a lot of people say "do a fastpass system!!" and the Club PA people obviously booed that idea. I'm not sure I'm a super fan of that either, since it just rewards the people who would have been first in line anyway. However, the Squeenix line worked so well, I wonder what it would be like.
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I like talking to the staff and playing some games, though they can get unwieldy. I thought Khoo had the right idea that you could play a game once, then just do a straight trade for a 2nd pin. I understand the need to get more people through the line, but I think some of that can be resolved by a better layout, versus trying to make people rush through like an assembly line. Last time we had this discussion, I think Pedro addressed how to optimize the layout for better throughput.
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I'm going to be discussing this on the podcast, as I talked with the Enforcers running it about numbers. Every PAX has done it differently, and I know which ones felt from an attendee point like they worked the best. It would be interesting to know which the Staff felt was the best run one.
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Well, it went from about thirty people to full in about fifteen minutes.
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PAX lines has to have some infrastructure to work. Enforcers watching things, sending updates to the person doing the tweets etc. That is all in place for panels, but wasn't something we had set up for this event. I don't think any of us realized we would need it, and like others have said, by the time we did, it was capped. I had planned to have the tables in a nice U shape, reversed from previous so that the staff were inside the U and the larger surface area faced you all. But we just did not have the space for it here. Space at PAX is a constant struggle and there will always be give and take.