ConGlomeration 2012
ConGlomeration was held over the weekend of April 13-15, 2012 at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Triple Crown Conference Center in Lousiville, Kentucky. This is the same venue where ConGlomeration was held for so many years before last year's ill-fated move, but now under new management and franchise.
We arrived on Thursday before the con began and stayed the night at the nearby Suburban Extended Stay. We thought it wouldn't be too bad for a single night, but it turned out to have deteriorated even more than when we had a bad experience with it in 2010, if such a thing can be believed.
We'd hoped we might be able to load in early, so we went over to the conference center to see if we could find the dealers' room coordinator. However, the concom had gone out to a dinner party with the guests, so we ended up heading back and spending the evening on the Internet. I also got a little writing done.
On Friday we got up early to get checked out and over to the conference center to load in. At least there load-in wasn't such a logistical nightmare as Kawa-kon, and we were even able to get a second cart and two helpers. So we got everything unloaded inside two hours and were able to set up in good time. We even had time to get checked into the con hotel and to get my art on the art show before things opened.
When the dealers' room did open, we had a couple of really good sales. Then things slowed down and left us with very little to do. I pulled out a notebook and started making notes for a rewrite I want to do.
In the evening we headed back to the room to have our supper. Then we headed down to the con suite to visit with friends before going to the Xerps party. As usual, Xerps had some really good cheese, as well as some really potent whiskey that was getting definite reactions from everyone who tried it. (Since I'm allergic to alcohol, I can't comment from personal experience, but watching the reactions of the drinkers was interesting).
Saturday morning we went down to the con suite for breakfast. Then we headed over to the conference center to get our dealers' tables open for business. I went back to the room to get some stuff and ended up getting caught by the rain that picked that moment to come through.
Sales were slow all afternoon, and we were soon having a serious discussion about what we would do if ConGlomeration were to conflict with one of the two April anime conventions we want to try next year. I also did a fair amount of work on a story I was preparing for an anthology with a rapidly-approaching deadline.
After the dealers' room closed for the evening, we headed back to the room for supper. Then we had some time before the parties started, so I did some fiction writing and started preparing my con report.
We attended two parties, both of which had good food. The Ghostbusters party, which was hosted by a bunch of guys cosplaying the characters of the 1980's movies of that name, had some spicy goldfish crackers and Fritos twists. They were also playing 80's music and showing the Ghostbusters movies. The MELO party had some fresh-baked cookies. While we were there, we got to hear about how the Xerps party got closed down shortly after midnight due to a noise complaint.
Sunday we got up early to get our personal belongings out of our sleeping room. Then we headed down to the con suite to have breakfast While I was there I heard that the con suite got a noise complaint as a result of a very animated conversation which had gone on during the wee small hours of the morning. Several people were trying to figure out who had complained, because all the possibilities of the complaining room were occupied by congoers, and several were helping host parties. I hope this is not a sign that the hotel management is ill-disposed toward cons.
Then my husband went to get us checked out of our room while I headed over to the dealers' room to get our dealers' tables opened for business. Sales were quite slow at first, but right around the time I went out to get the empty boxes for packing, we got several sales. I think those sales may well have tipped the balance to the profitable point.
Packing took longer than we expected, so I ended up carrying the first several loads out while my husband was still packing the t-shirts. That was I was able to get most of the books out before he finished packing, but it also meant that some things didn't get packed in the best spots for them. (and as it turned out, a couple of items fell from their perches on the way back and became a problem when it came time to load everything back into our storage unit).
By the time we got everything loaded, it was late enough that we decided not to go back to the con suite one last time, since most of the people we'd be saying good-bye to would've already taken off. So we just went ahead and hit the road for home, since I had a story that I needed to get finalized and off to an editor before a midnight deadline.
Copyright 2012 by Leigh Kimmel
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Last updated October 21, 2012.