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First off, thank you to all of you for coming out to C4. Hopefully you had a great time, learned some new stuff, and picked up some new frags!

While C4 is fresh on your mind, we'd love to hear some feedback on how to make next year's C4 even better. We have some ideas on how to possible improve it but would love your thoughts as well.

It definitely sounds like name-tags or lanyards with our ARC membership cards would be good.

Another thought is to have the speakers and frag swap held at different times - I.E. Speakers are in the morning from 10-noon, then frag swap is from 1-4 or something like that. This way the swap and speakers aren't competing for people's attention. Also, this would shorten the duration some which may be good for those that can't hang out all day.

We're also thinking of having a frag swap only in the springtime.

So let's hear it, what's your thinking?

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I love the idea of name tags and having the speakers and vendors at different times.

I'd definitely LOVE a springtime frag swap! I might actually be able to pickup some frags. Woo whoo!

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I would say the sticker name tags would be great. We've had lanyards in the past and they easily flip around and are hanging at awkward heights. Name tag stickers = cheap and practical.

I agree that separating the presenters and the frag swap would be best. I felt bad for the presenters when people were talking in the background with the vendors. Having the swap at the end would allow people to leave and use the rest of their Saturday if they aren't interested in frags or have other things to do. I also felt like the conference was dragged out a little longer than it should have with some pretty long breaks. I feel like I made vendor rounds 3-4 times between socializing with club members and presentations. It wasn't terrible, but I wouldn't have minded having an hour or two more of my Saturday at home.

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We could definitely benefit from some parking cones (or homer buckets :)) and maybe a big sign that just says "park here" for the parking attendant to hold in case the same venue is used next year.

I noticed a lot of people that were buying frags that wanted to keep them in the vendors' tanks until they were ready to leave which potentially (I dunno) could have placed a small strain on the vendors trying to keep track of the frags and make room for them. It would maybe be good to have an ARC sponsored cooler that is very large to float frags in divided sections until people are ready to to take them. We could check the frags in and give someone a card so that we know which ones belong to who and keep them behind the counter.

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Agree...separating the two would be best. Frag check would be great. year before last I bought a frag and the vendor held it but when I went to pick it up he accidentally sold to someone else...luckily he was local and more than made up for it.

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Also, please provide feedback on the following if you can:\

* Food trucks - Shugabees BBQ, Garbo's Lobster Truck, and Uncle Louie G's Italian Ice. Which did you like? Any you didn't? Did you like have them there?

* Bounce house - should we continue to offer this at future big events?

* what you wanted to see other than Frags - Austin Aqua-Dome, River City, and Just Reef asked what you want to see our local stores bring. They primarily leave frags to the exhibitors, so what are you looking for from them?

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Ha! I like that idea, a frag check service. Although I have to say that could be really confusing to figure out who's are who's.

Possibly if each person checking a frag, or several, can be given a card with a number or something and both the card and bag have the same number. Like a coat check or valet parking

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Separating the speakers and vendor space agree on separating them. Speaker hard to concentrate with all talking going on in background. Had the bbq wasn't so bad nice to have food option there. My son personally like the bounce house was able to let the wife watch and hang out while I did the saltwater thing. Also yes a little more outline on parking. Tons of selection from vendors and in plenty really awesome to see good turn out.

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Also, please provide feedback on the following if you can:

* Food trucks - Shugabees BBQ, Garbo's Lobster Truck, and Uncle Louie G's Italian Ice. Which did you like? Any you didn't? Did you like have them there?

* Bounce house - should we continue to offer this at future big events?

* what you wanted to see other than Frags - Austin Aqua-Dome, River City, and Just Reef asked what you want to see our local stores bring. They primarily leave frags to the exhibitors, so what are you looking for from them?

I liked shugabees and the Italian ice was great. Definitely keep the bouncy house! That was the only way I was able to stay for the raffle prizes. And the photo booth guy was great fun too

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Name tags would have been a nice thing to have. I often recognize people but forget their names.

We decided to eat at about 11:30, before the first speaker. We had wanted to eat at Shugabee's BBQ but the only side they had available was jalapeno chips. I can't feed that to my toddlers. We decided to go with Garbo's Lobster Truck. Again, the only side they advertised was jalapeno slaw and my kids aren't going to eat lobster dogs. The burger was great and I was happy when it came with chips. I walked outside after the first presenter and people were complaining that they were out of burgers already. They should have been better prepared for the amount of people in attendance and the demographic of the event.

It's a tough event to coordinate, but I think you did a good job trying to keep everyone happy. I didn't see a reason to separate the speakers from the vendors It was a good idea to halt sales while the speakers were presenting. I think it would have been best to allow vendor sales for the first hour, do the first drawing, followed by presentations, then another drawing and allow vendors to sell until the end of the day. I didn't watch all of the auctions, but I didn't see many people participating in them. I like the idea of the proceeds going towards the scholarship though. I couldn't get close enough to see everyone's auction piece and it might have been a good idea to have each vendor set those aside for viewing ahead of time. Having a separate tank isn't reasonable, but I think they could have put it in front of their displays and labeled it auction piece.

The Fish Gallery and Aquadome people did not look happy at all; a few were glaring at us more than once. I know that you can't control the vendors, but I thought some of the prices were aiming for the stars. I can't speak for everyone, but I wouldn't imagine many people brought hundreds in cash to the event. I remember asking about a wall hammer and the guy told me $160. I thought Ty, Dan and Pham brought good stock and had reasonable prices. RCA brought good stuff, and they accepted credit cards, but I would have liked labeled prices. The clowns were hidden in those cups and I think they would have sold more if they were noticeable. The prices on the clowns was awesome! Bringing clams to a frag swap was a really bad idea. They were all agitated and closed up from the fresh sand particles in the water column. I liked that there was variety in the vendors and they all brought different things.

The bouncy house and the photo booth were definitely good ideas. It's hard to keep kids busy for six hours and they can only look at glowing sticks for so long. I think they like the neon acrylic pointing sticks better than the frags! We liked the venue and they had space where we could roam and work off some of that energy. The quality of the raffle items were exceptional! Unfortunately, we were not able to stay until the end, but we all had a good time.

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Ha! I like that idea, a frag check service. Although I have to say that could be really confusing to figure out who's are who's.

I dunno, numbered stickers and valet tickets.... good idea flux! ..what sissy said (im replying as i read down *lol*)

I would say asking vendors to do that is going to be nearly impossible. smile.png

you did it towards the end smile.png

The Fish Gallery and Aquadome people did not look happy at all; a few were glaring at us more than once.

So, this venue was kinda far away for most, so you end up w/ the moderate to diehard people that already have the hardware they want, and they are looking for a selection of frags. selling hardware to people not looking for it might not be a good use of sponsorship/floorspace. While its "easier" than having to stock tanks and such, I dont think they aimed for the right... audience. You do have to realize, these are the same vendors which are sponsors... so its awesome they were there, but it sucks they got limited sales because of limited livestock choices.

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I think splitting speakers w/ frag swap would deter people from actually listening to the speakers, and there would be lower turnout and they wouldnt want to come back.... having it intermixed is good, we just need to figure out a better "system" I had 2-3 vendors actually say "its pretty cool you ask vendors to pause while they are speaking, i like that!" ... so kinda got both sides from various vendors. maybe during the meetings we can discuss scheduling ideas.. sales for a bit, speakers in the middle, sales again... auctions/drawings in between?

RCA's fish were a big hit for the few kids around (and some adults). Might be nice to have more fish.. even though thats a little more of a risk for the vendors.

love the nametag idea. pre-print the rsvp ones, marking premium members on it, etc. write-in for non rsvp folks... something.

parking... i think we could use utility/ground marking paint to make lines or something the day before? dunno.. that was a mess smile.png

vapers... wow, so many people vape. thank you for being considerate when vaping and not blowing into people faces and such. we actually got great feedback from some folks about how this was handled and people "behaved" regarding this smile.png We almost need a vape sub-forum, hinthinthint.

awesome event, i wish the PA system was better, but i think we all mentioned that already.

something that might have been missing... a vendor q/a hour kinda thing on stage. Vendors know how to frag, know how to maintain their systems, and just really know a lot more than most. We need to be able to pick their brains without them having to cut the convo short so they dont have a line of people waiting on them. Maybe we have a bucket and paper, people write questions, and we ask a vendor to answer a couple at a time smile.png The Speakers are more the "professional" avenue of the industry.. having the vendors speaking/qa-ing might make things more informal and easier to apply to day-to-day systems.

Mike, thank you for organizing this and seeing through all the crap the comes along w/ coordination of all these months ahead of time. It was a great turnout, great variety of vendors. I think word of mouth of this year's event should makes next one even bigger!

Also thanks to the vendors that let me hang out on their chairs. smile.png

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First, I really enjoyed the swap, thank you to everyone who made this happen, Mike, Dan, all the volunteers. It felt very smooth because of you all so kudos to a job well done. I was sorry I had to leave early but I felt guilty leaving my wife with our 1 month old girl and the other two kids so I had to get back so she could get in a good mom nap. I have been told it goes wife, kids, then corals but sometimes I get them mixed up. doh.gif

I haven't been to many frag swaps but one thing I notice is a lack of customer flow around the tables. I joked with someone they should find round tables. I really am not sure what could be done about it though. I just tried to look where everyone was and went in the opposite direction.spiteful.gif

I think the talks should be optional as to wether people want to participate or not. I do understand the work that goes into setting up to sell and if I was a vender I would want the sales floor open all day. The caveat to this would be that ARC members will fill the seats as it was our club who invited the speakers to the event.

I did notice a lot of venders this time had price lists available and or plastic price tags in with the frags. So I thought that was mostly a good thing. And not seeing a price gives you a chance to talk and find out more about the piece if you are not familiar with it.

For me 10:30 to 5 was just to long. I couldn't stay that long but I was bummed to miss out on the other two speakers.

I didn't eat the food but it smelled good.

The Aquadome had some smoking deals on those new Radion G4's, I felt my wallet pulling hard in that direction. I thought what they brought out was what a lot of reefers are looking for so I hope they made some good sales. A.G.E. had a beautiful display and nice work on the sump. I talked to Roger and Brian last week and ordered a tank from them so it was nice to see the craftsmanship at the swap. They are some good people.

One last thing would be a nice perk for ARC members to get access to the frag tanks 1/2 hour before everyone else. They did it at the last swap in San Antonio and I thought it was pretty cool for them.

Once again, great job all the way around and I sure appreciated all your hard work and dedication.

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I'm brainstorming about the holding for the frags. What if the location was near the check in table or a designated spot and ppl brought their corals to there. Then at the holding spot they would be given a ticket, or whatever. It would be a cooler or something right? Not a tank setup? Thy would be difficult. The only reason I'm hung up on this is Because I don't want to have to carry things around with me. I would have left way sooner if I had to, even with a cooler. Ok, I'll let it rest now

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I didn't buy anything until I was about to leave. Yeah, that meant some things were already sold, but I don't want to carry a purse with corals in it. There was this one guy going to every vendor asking if he bought a coral from them. I don't know if he ever got his items. Maybe he was scamming. I don't want that to be me, even if I miss out on something. I don't think there is an answer for it though.

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There was this one guy going to every vendor asking if he bought a coral from them. I don't know if he ever got his items. Maybe he was scamming.

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Funny you mention this cause I thought the same thing...he basically followed me to 3 table in a row asking the same question.

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First of all. thank you to all the volunteers and the ARC staff for putting this together. Great event!

+1 on the speakers and frag swap at different times. speakers first then frag swap. I overheard the vendors complaining that someone asked them to turn their lights on the tanks off during the speakers time, they didn't want their coral to close up... We bought 10-15 corals and didn't want to keep them in the tiny bags for another 6 hours.

I would like all the drawing to happen at one time. We couldn't stay all day :/

+1 on organizing frags by price. I saw some vendors have little $10 $20 $30 neon disks on their frag trays. Makes it super easy to find affordable frags that you like without having to ask how much every cool looking frag is only to have your hopes shot down with a "oh that one is from a secret cave in australia so it $150"...haha!

As far as the auction. I think it would be sweet to have a separate tank with all the frags for auction that everyone can look at prior to the actual auction. We couldn't get close enough to see the frags for auction... except for the $85 frag Ty stole from dan for $45!

These are not necessarily complaints. Nothing will please everyone all the time. This was a good event and as with any, there will be unforeseen things like the wireless mic acting up. Can't predict these things, they just happen.

Again thanks for all the countless hours put in by everyone to make this happen. Cant wait for next year!

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My first time going, I did not get there until later, around 2, but I personally liked the mix of speakers and frag swap concurrently, it was nice to break the time up, it would be nice to have a separation, even just the temporary room dividers to cut down on the noise. During the last speaker there was a time it was hard to hear the speaker over the talking at one of the tables, the minor audio problems did not help that tho. A frag check is a great idea, nothing a permanent marker and a sicker with a numbering system would not address. Provide a sicker with a number on it to the person, write the number on the bag, and float it. Heck charge a buck to check, or something. To get your frag back provide your numbered sticker.

I went out to get some BBQ, later in the day and they were sold out. so can't comment on if it was good or not..

Thanks for organizing the event, and those who working it!

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Just thinking aloud, but if the event was speakers first, then swap, arguably you probably would need the "frag check". You may want a cooler / bag check just in case you didn't want to carry your bag around, but it would seem less necessary.

Speaking as a vendor, I will tell you it's hard to organize everything by price. Plus I actually want people to ask / talk because then they have to engage with me and I'm more likely to get a sale. But as a buyer, I understand the frustration of being disappointed. At the same time, if you see some stunning coral, are you really that surprised when it's expensive? That's kinda the MO of this hobby. :)

And on that note, each vendor has their own setup, their own system, and way of doing business. Many of them are hobbyists, so organizing 150 frags by price can be a challenge.

Keep the feedback coming! This is really helpful and lots of good idea.

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