YouTube - Auto Assembly News Episode 017 - Our Biggest Ever Announcement‏ Congrats BigPete and team! The future's bright for us all
Wow, that's a big step up, hope it's a success, I hope to make Auto Assembly my first convention this year (funds allowing) so it's good to know that another step has been taken to bring the love to Europe (if only Hasbro would start looking at Europe as such)
What would be the point of this merge? Organize another event in North Europe in another dear country? Or just the timing is the point?
It's mutually beneficial to both, as Simon explains in the video. Nordcon gets the benefit of the experience of the Auto Assembly team, which will "fast track" their growth as a larger convention. Think of how long it's taken Auto Assembly to get where it is now, or Botcon even. Now imagine being able to shortcut part of the learning process. That is what Nordcon gets from the partnership. Auto Assembly gets to grow as a brand, and as explained, being more than "just" a single convention in Birmingham with 600 annual attendees gives them the more leverage and more opportunities for exclusives and other items - shared exclusives between the two conventions, for example.
If anything, the "main" convention will be improved as a result of the existence of Auto Assembly Europe. There are a few things that we have planned for 2012 that are only possible because of the new levels of bulk buying that Auto Assembly Europe brings to the table. Also, with the exclusive postcards that we are producing, naturally they are more appealing to sponsors knowing that they are circulated to two conventions instead of one... and that means potentially more postcards produced every year! And that's just for starters...!
Autumn 2011 in central/eastern Sweden, that is what we can say now. We are currently in negotiations with a number of hotels to see which one can give us the best offer. And until we know exactly which hotel we decide to go with, we don't have a final date either. We should know in 1-2 weeks at the most though Definitely not. I don't think there's any way that our partnership can be harmful to the UK version... unless we do such a poor job that it hurts the main organization's reputation, but obviously we have no intention of doing that.
Great News! Finally Europe is showing that we are alive and kicking. I would wish there could be more collaboration between the european conventions and the british one. Don't forget the BOTS Convention in the Netherlands and the CONS Convention in Germany. If we could all unite, find a suitable place where pull off this event, this could be one hell of a convention. Till all are one! ... sort of ;-)
There is but most of you guys don't know about it!! I actually run a forum for every non-profit making Transformers convention worldwide where we all talk and exchange ideas. Pretty much every convention is signed up to it and we have tried to help each other out. It's still in its early days but there are ambitious plans with that as well. And you guys thought I just ran ONE convention and didn't do anything else behind the scenes...! lol
