David Glanzer Unpacks CCI’s Take On Pro Registration

Comic-Con International's David Glanzer was nice enough to write in with a more thorough take on the Con's positions regarding professional registration.

This was a subject on the blog yesterday. Basically, a few folks writing in to CR had complained about a few elements of this week's launch of professional registration for the July show. First, that the e-mail in advance of that registration arrived suddenly and without much of an advance warning period. Second, that professional (and to a lesser extent, press) registration comes after the ticketing process means that anyone that fails to get in with a professional pass doesn't have much of a chance to buy a ticket to attend. Third, that the registration process come late enough in the year that travel plans have to be made without really knowing what's going to happen, and that this specifically was troublesome this year because Comic-Con changed its policy regarding the registration of teenage children of professional guests -- thus saddling people already committed to the show with an additional cost.

"My apologies for not offering more background on your questions," wrote Glanzer in an e-mail received last night.

"Basically there are two major factors we are faced with. Actually, there are a number of factors we are faced with but these two speak directly to registration.

1) Our attendees were very vocal in wanting us to remain in San Diego when time came for contract negotiations some time back and
2) In order to remain in a facility that has limited space, we simply cannot accommodate everyone who would like to attend.

This leaves us with having to find ways to best accommodate the most amount of the public who would like to attend as well as accommodating, in a fair way, those members of the press and professionals. To meet this goal we have had to make certain decisions.

"One example is that in the past press were allowed to bring a guest. We never really publicized it, but it was a courtesy we could afford. However, each complimentary guest pass for a member of the media results in one less member of the general public who could attend. In the end we began to see some of our press badges for sale on Internet auction sites, and more so, heard many stories about how simple it was to 'game the system' and get a press pass for oneself and a guest.

"The decision was made to limit press badges to only those who are actually reporting on the show. Additionally, over the last few years we've made credentialing more stringent. I know it's not an easy process, and this has resulted in a great many complaints. But it has also resulted in far fewer press badges for sale on Internet auction sites and more stories from reporters who genuinely report on the event.

Glanzer continued. "With regard to Junior Badges for professionals; The decision was made to remove the discount for Junior badges because the number of professional Junior badges appearing on Internet auction sites was staggering. We are seeing more and more professionals registering for admittance to the show. While we are still allowing guests for professionals, we would also like to admit as many professionals as possible.

"The process for registration has been a difficult one for some time. You'll remember that general registration took over seven hours last year. This year the process took under an hour and a half. This is the result of lots of hours of trying to find the best solution to the registration issues. Did it go as smoothly as we would have liked, no, but we hope it was a better experience for most than the previous year.

"Press and Professional Registration opened later than in years past because we were working, up until the last moment, trying to make sure any loading issues were kept to a minimum. The result is Press and Professional registration opened with little incident. We did have to close Professional Registration the first evening for general maintenance, but it was reopened the following day.

"So basically we are faced with trying to find a way to accommodate as many people as we can in the most equitable way as possible. Will there be problems in the future with registration? Yes, I imagine there may be, but that doesn't mean we've stopped working on it. We really do want, and are working on, trying to find a solution that works best in the long run.

"The expansion of the convention center, by all indicators, is moving forward. Our hope is that an expanded facility will offer more room breathing room in any number of areas. Until that time, our task is to try to accommodate as many people as we can in a way that is as fair as possible."

I'm grateful to David Glanzer for taking the time to provide a fuller response.

My take in general remains pretty much what I outlined yesterday. Comic-Con is taking the relatively stable-sized show they have no to make institutional improvements. One of those improvement areas has to be registration because of the premiums of entry and how badly the system was gamed in those areas. There are going to be growing pains going from old to new policies. There may not be a lot of sympathy for Comic-Con in terms of those growing pains because there's a lot of stress involved with getting to that show, and there's a narrative out there by which it's become much more difficult for comics people in particular, at least compared with some version of "the good old days."

So basically I get both sides of this; Comic-Con has to make these improvements, and some of them are going to cost some people whether intentionally or unintentionally.

It also occurs to me that people auctioning off press access is the kind of thing that needs to get talked about in terms of comics being less exploitative and weird and kind of gross up and down the industry. I mean, I can see squaring away a buddy because I did a lot of that, but it's hard for me to see gaming the system for a buck, particularly when having any sort of relationship to Comic-Con yourself is practically a public declaration that you're not totally hurting for cash.
 
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