Venue: Great (but big) venue in an awesome part of Denver, with lots of options for food, printing, public transit, and plenty of hotels. Strict rules regarding wagons and carrying in set-up stuff though, so read the emails carefully. TIP for those flying: There's a train that takes you from the airport to just a few blocks from the con hall! Save the money if you can (taxi and uber are super expensive for that distance).
Staff: Hit or miss. VERY hard to get a hold of until closer to the con dates for a while and some really important information for vendors was was kinda buried in the emails. Con and venue staff seemed confused about which entrance to send vendors to on Friday, which was frustrating. Everyone I met in person, inside the con hall, however, was helpful and understanding!
Layout: There were ok spots, and then there were AWFUL spots. I got an awful spot- far off on one of the wings where people only wandered to when they were looking for a spot to sit down and take a break. Traffic in the main areas was great though (though from what I heard that didn't always translate into sales). It's just a TON of artists, it's easy to get lost in it.
Attendance: Lots of people, they aren't kidding when they say this show is huge.
Affordability: Depends how local you are. Flying in and with cost of hotel (and crummy spot) I barely broke even, even though I usually do great at comic/mixed genre cons. That, and a very pricey table/badge, make me hesitant to recommend to out-of-state artists who have to fly and/or pay for a hotel. Unsure of how parking was for the driving crowd.
Overall: Sales (especially for prints) were real low for a con this big and expensive, which was disappointing. Part of it was the iffy layout, but from what I heard from others in prime spots, people just weren't buying as much this year. Sold tons of small merch- but had to fight for each sale. Networking was awesome, though- lots of talented artists, and got a steep uptick in online followers on instagram and twitter. And I had fun! Great con to meet other artists from all over the US. Just wish the sales were there.
Pros: Denver is a very art friendly city, Easy parking, friendly staff
Cons: No easy way to handcarry items to the exhibit floor, same weekend as a downtown Denver art show
Denver is an art friendly city and people come ready to spend money. The staff is friendly and the layout is well done. This year there was a little confusion caused by the sign placement for the aisles in Artist Alley, but nothing that significantly impacted attendees being able to find their way around.
If you plan on hand carrying your items in there is no easy way to do it. You can pay to have the convention center workers transport your items if need be.
This year there was an artshow that occurred literally two blocks from the convention, which caused a lot of traffic congestion and seemed to impact how much people were spending. Even with that sales were still good and I'll be returning in 2016.
