If you were at MFF 2021 you would notice something that you never saw before. It was just around noon on that Friday when the Registration was nearly empty. Oh sure some complained, and improvements do need to be made… but it was the fastest I ever seen.
Tim Woods who is in charge of MFF’s Facebook page explained why recently.
Speaking for myself and from my own perspectives and opinions alone I can say:
As “VP” for SEI, the Software arm of MFF’s parent corporation, I know and can share that MFF uses the same registration system as MAGFest, which easily accommodates 24k attendees with minimal lines.
Having been in a position of leadership (Chair, Vice-Chair, Lead, etc.) for a number of years, I saw that the problem was many-fold but I share your opinion that summarizing it as “scalability” is reasonable.
2019 was a failure, the convention admitted it, apologized, and committed to fixing it the next year… But of course, “next year” didn’t happen. Regardless, I can say that I was a small part of a team of dozens who worked on this. And the solution wasn’t fewer attendees in 2021… The solution was a commitment to addressing the problem, regardless of time, money, energy, etc. The convention could NOT continue to be enjoyable for our friends both new and old, without this problem being solved. And so all necessary resources were, and continue to be, poured into making sure that registration lines are a thing of the past at MFF.
Of course… Again, not speaking for the convention but for myself… I think that actions speak louder than words and only time will tell if the sacrifices made, were the right ones.
It’s really good to know that they are improving the system and lets hope MFF 2022 goes even better.
