Greater Toronto Area Milsim Airsoft Convention October 28 2006

[Brian McIlmoyle]

Originally Posted by boomer_1

I though this was a very dissapointing event.

You left before more venders arrived... and the next one in the spring will be bigger and better, thanks for you feedback, can you provide more details as to why you found it dissapointing?

[willowretreat]

Thanks must go out to Brian for arranging this event,
The day started off slow, most probably due to the lousy weather and the road closures that Toronto had this weekend.
Buy lunchtime we had a steady flow of people comming in, a lot of new people to Airsoft, lots of questions.
I personally spent a hour with one group of under 18 year olds, who by the end of our talk, were chomping at the bit to get into Airsoft, I think their X box's are going up for sale on e-bay.
Or It could be that after sometime spent Knife sparing with Shawn ( Thanks for your instruction Shawn) and myself, they couldnt hold the controlers !!

A good first turn out, im looking forward to the spring event, hopefully it will be on a weekend when we arent running one of our courses, (Hint to Brian.)
I must also say thanks to the vendors who did turn up and the teams who took part in the best gear/ equipment competition, special mention must go to the guys who showed off their WW2 gear, great stuff guys, now if I can just make more space and convience the wife to let me buy more gear, im in LOL (anyone know a good divorce lawyer !! :-))

Looking forward to the spring event..
Regards Paul Cobham
Willowretreat.com

[Farmboy]

Thanks Brian for putting this on, and to those who took part in it.

The afternoon did pick up and it was great to put faces to names.

I look forward to a spring event with a better turn out, more venders etc.

Paul

I look forward to coming up for a vacation!!

[made Man]

Airsoft Convention? COSPLAY? lol.

[counter gangsta]

If only there was an event like this in BC.........

[Brian McIlmoyle]

I have had a bit of time to review the day...

these were the good things about GMAC.

Good attendance, I expected about 60 people we got over 100
good mixing of people.. everyone mixed and talked to each other,, something that does not seem to happen at games.
Face to face meeting of different "sections" of the community.. Many people who have not played together had a chance to meet, and put a face to a name that was only a stranger on line before.
Good prizes!!

Things that were bad:

not enough venders
Not enough variety of venders
no gun sales.
No kill house

I am going to organize a gathering in the spring and I will try to address the "bad things"

Fact is I kinda threw this event together and other aspects of my life conspired to reduce the time I had to work on it..

I will start now to set up GMAC spring 2007 and it will be bigger and better than GMAC Fall 2006

Again thanks to those who supported this event...

And a special thanks to the TTAC3 regulars that helped out to keep it all running smoothly.

[Manaconda]

Thanx goes out to Brian. Dude only you could do something like this man! The paratroopers and the germans were amazing! You guys have yer shit together. I know most of us like to look cool in our new gear and look tactical but these guys realy looked the part. I would love to play a game with these guys. I met some real cool people. People who are in the sport and people lookin to get into the sport. It was great givin advice to people face to face. I think they realy enjoy it. There could have been more vendors and more teams and what not but atleast we managed to exchange cool stories and chat.

Then my hangover kicked in sorry Brian.

Thanx again mate

[Moz]

I dropped by earlier in the day with one other person, I enjoyed it but she was displeased by the lack of historical knowledge of whoever those WW2 re-enactors were. One person in Airborne gear didn't even know what the MP40 was chambered in!

There was someone (in a heer uniform I believe) who actually knew quite a bit but he went off with a SS NCO in Oak Smocks(? I don't know my Wehrmacht very well) and my companion was already beaconing for us to leave. (she wasn't impressed by the flimsiness of the K98)

She did win a door prize: Black Tactical gloves which I wasn't allowed to touch at all. (If I had won them they would have been hers anyway)

Woman, eh?

I personally would love to attend the spring one, and I'm going to start putting money aside for my first AEG.

edit: you know what I friggin forgot to do! I forgot to get age verified.

argh

[Farmboy]

Brian

Count me in for the spring event. 4 tables

[as_styles]

Count us in forsure. We will come up with some door prizes as well.

AS

[Brian McIlmoyle]

Over the next week I will be doing a detailed analysis of what went well what could be better...

I want to set the date for the spring convention soon so that people can plan.

The timing for this one was bad for a few venders due to the proximity to Halloween... and so they were not able to come...

That coupled with some teams opting out for other reasons combined to reduce the planned number of participants..

I am confident that I can get a much wider selection of venders for the spring event...

I had a lot of things get in the way of me spending more time on organization..Things that won't be an issue in the spring.

The one thing that did surprise me was that the Kit Swap did not have many participants... I think that there were maybe a dozen transactions... I got rid of about $100 worth of stuff... and purchased about $150...so it worked out for me...

I had a number of people inquire about gun sales... and they seemed dissapointed that there were no gun sales.
I chose not to allow gun sales for this one.... I may change that position for the spring show... but I will have to study the issue at greater length..

[Scarecrow]

Brian, I would encourage you to engage in a wider consultation for your spring event, and discuss and collectively agree on the media contact that might take place, or any media contact in the interim.

As a vendor, and a player, I am conflicted in one sense. Ultimately we do occupy a grey area in the legislation and there *is* real risk in these kind of events. My personal and work life comes into conflict in that area, so while some here may poo-poo the risk I refer to, please accept that from my point of view, there are risks which I need to have some assurance of control over.

As for rumors circulating that we (as a team) torpedo'd this event, those are completely unfounded, although I can accept that the position certain members with team authority (including myself) communicated left no doubt that we felt the event was ill advised given the prior media contact and the current debate surrounding that. I think the fact the the concerns were 1) not addressed, 2) we were attacked openly for those concerns is a failure that we as a community should address and resolve. But being vocal and being influential are two different things. I think our influence here is limited. As you can see, my team affiliation in this regard has no bearing on my opinion, as I am at somewhat odds with my other fellow members.

Unfortunately I don't think internet d-boards are a very good place for those kinds of discussions because its an environment that transmits 10% of ones message, leaving 90% of the communications telemetry up for grabs (ie: body language, intonation, inflection). I'd recommend a face-to-face on this at some point when people have chilled out a little and are ready to talk.

[Farmboy]

This might be a great way to bridge some conflicts and allow for a much better event.

As Scarecrow has suggested maybe a "board" or "group" made up of some team reps, venders, establishment owners could sit down together a few times to come up with a way to approach this to satisfy as many concerns as possible.

Ultimately it is Brians facility and what he does there is up to him, to establish an annual or bi-annual event though, the more input from everyone the better.

[lt_poncho]

Originally Posted by Farmboy

Brian

Count me in for the spring event. 4 tables

Bring more delicious TAN items too!

[MMMiles!]

Originally Posted by Farmboy

As Scarecrow has suggested maybe a "board" or "group" made up of some team reps, venders, establishment owners could sit down together a few times to come up with a way to approach this to satisfy as many concerns as possible.

Ultimately it is Brians facility and what he does there is up to him, to establish an annual or bi-annual event though, the more input from everyone the better.

I think it's clear that the people that showed up and supported this event, supported the conditions under which it was run - and it was a great success. You can't please everyone all of the time, but those of us that are interested in having this sport move forward can keep supporting events like this.

You bring 4 tables farmboy, we'll bring 5! It's on!

Problem is come next time I don't think I'm going to be able to resist buying an Eagle rig from you, so I think you've already won.

Originally Posted by lt_poncho

Bring more delicious TAN items too!

You said it. That Ciras was drop dead sexy. I curse you, one-shot...