Virtual Expo

I really enjoyed the first day. I hadn't set my expectations too high and was not disappointed. Being that this was something new and put together quickly I was impressed by the software's ability to bring everyone together.

As others have mentioned some exhibitors were more prepared than others. Jeremy and Ameet were both manning their booth when I stopped in, and had well organized and priced inventory to peruse. Others had cards on tables that were hard to see on the webcam. I think the thing I found most useful was screen sharing. I run dual monitors and was able to share one of them with my image folder and share card scans while still being able to see and chat with the dealer whose booth I was in. Another time, someone in chat was asking about certain cards, I initiated a private conversation where I was able to show them the cards I had available. Unfortunately no deals were made. This is where I think the sport specific areas would be helpful to help bring attendees together.

After talking to my friend who runs the LCS it sounds like he is making changes for tomorrow. They planned on spending some time this evening scanning so tomorrow they could screen share a slideshow on their page. I would imagine they will post the photos online and link to them as well.

I think people learned what worked and what was effective today and hopefully start to adapt their booth to the online platform. As people get familiar with the software I expect to see improvements. I didn't try today, but I want to see if I can run the main stage on one monitor while browsing booths with the other, that way I won't miss anything.

I'm still not sure how this is powered by eBay though. It would be neat if instead of a link a persons eBay store was loaded into their booth, and prices negotiated and sales made right from the Hopin platform. Maybe eBay integration will be an option in the future, who knows. This is a great first step, see everyone there tomorrow!!
 
Since I work 11am to 9pm Friday and Saturday I had no chance of “attending” the expo but I threw $10 at it to support something hobby related. Since I am not attending I cannot comment on the technical issues other than this event will likely become more frequent and I think there is an obvious place in the market for Zoom style interactions for buying/trading/selling. There are always going to be kinks when something rolls out.

The vast majority of people attending got in for free so the worst thing you lost was your time. Customer feedback is important though unless corporate sponsorship is guaranteed going forward you do need returning attendees to actually want to come back and pay for that privilege to do so.
 
I popped in for 10 minutes on my lunch and wasnt impressed. But to be fair I think I went in with the "this will be stupid compared to regular expo" attitude....which was wrong.

I went back in after work with more of an open mind, and my experience was 100 times better. I had some issues right off the start. I pm'd the expo's facebook page and they responded in seconds. They were more then helpful, and seemed to care about my concerns. I have pm'd the page in the past and waited weeks for a response.....but yesterday it seemed they had some there just to respond to pm's which was great. I pm'd them again half an hour later and same thing....instant response.

I went to the comc room and the guy in there was awesome. answered my questions about shipping delays to canada right away, and I could tell he was giving me honest answers and not just the company line. Went to as many rooms as I could and while I didnt find any PC cards, I would say 80% of the rooms were great, answered me right away.....1 guy searched a couple of his boxes for me and chatted with me about bobby ryan's season the entire time while doing so. I didnt pop in to ameet or jeremy's rooms as time was limited and if either one had cards I was looking for, I would be upset that they hadnt contacted me on here first :) Regardless, knowing the passion those two have for the hobby it is no surprise the amount of positive feedback they have received in this thread.

My kids are signed up for a ultra pro break today....I will be at work so my wife will have them there to watch......so the virtual expo has managed to get my entire family involved !

There were a couple things I didnt like in certain rooms, a couple things I would have changed. But I wont get into those because a lot of people put a lot of effort in to bringing us this show and I am not going to run them down. I miss the physical expo and this will never replace it for me......but its good for the hobby and a large amount of people seem to have enjoyed it and I can throw my support behind that any day
 
This has to work because it is likely all we will have for the rest of this year (at least in Canada) The booth owners who knew what they were doing were great and maybe they can help out the ones who don't. Also the organizers may want to adopt a policy where they will turf any attendee who clearly starts listing their own sales on the booth chats (some were repeating their posts every several minutes). That is certainly what would happen if they did that at the in-person event.
 
OilDrop said:
I didn't try today, but I want to see if I can run the main stage on one monitor while browsing booths with the other, that way I won't miss anything.
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Jeremy was doing that in his booth yesterday, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

One thought that occurred to me would be the addition of a new tab, maybe named Marketplace. It was kind of annoying to see people’s advertisements of what they were looking for in the chat sidebar (I’m talking about people who weren’t actively participating in the chat, not people who were interacting with the dealer or other visitors). Kind of like the old idea of the bulletin board at the local store, where people would post what they were looking for. Maybe even work out something so that dealers could respond and say “I’ve got 100’s of Iginla cards (I wish :laugh: ), stop by my store.” I realize that most dealers have vast inventories, but this could help make a connection for further sales down the road.

I also want to applaud the dealers that had contests and giveaways to increase the traffic into their booth. Don’t know if that’s a regular part of expo, but to me it showed they were “thinking on their feet”, and it certainly drew me in for a look at their booth.
 
quincy said:
I popped in on it today. It LOOKS experimental. And that's fine...but personally, I'm not interested in being the experimental animal on either side of the table. I'll read the postmortems closely to see what does and doesn't work, and make notes.

I suspect come Fall expo, we'll be doing the same schtick.
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This is where I'm at as well. If I do something, I tend to want to be extremely organized. I felt I didn't have the inventory or the desire to prepare for this show. I'll keep an eye on the comments and discuss with other dealers and perhaps I'll be in for Fall Expo since I'm pretty sure there won't be a live show :(
 
Feel free to stop by the COMC booth. I'm giving Barry a hand running it. We're giving away some free stuff, including a Walter Payton autograph!
 
The concept is a good one and one that will get better in time. As a low tech guy, it was easy to navigate. My complaint is that most of the dealers are so disorganized. Jeremy and Ameet were two that I thought were organized and had knowledge of what they had.

There needs to be a consistent display method (Jeremy's should be the standard) for someone to come in and browse what you have. I'm a guy who loves interactions, but sometimes I just want to look at not talk to anyone. I'm sure there are people who are not comfortable with conversations at all.

Lots of room to make improvements, but a decent enough concept. Hopefully this is a one and done and we're back to something resembling normalcy in November.
 
I think its a good start, and commend the organizers for pulling this first one off. I don’t have much interest in web chat - do it all day for my reg job so not my thing off time. But I did see lots of people connecting so that was cool.

One thing I would like to see for Fall Expo is cards displayed when visiting the booth. Getting pushed off to an ebay site is not the experience I’m looking for. I’d like to browse through cards while in the booth, even if its just a listing with images where appropriate.

But overall while not my style, I see lots of potential here!
 
Triple B said:
The concept is a good one and one that will get better in time. As a low tech guy, it was easy to navigate. My complaint is that most of the dealers are so disorganized. Jeremy and Ameet were two that I thought were organized and had knowledge of what they had.

There needs to be a consistent display method (Jeremy's should be the standard) for someone to come in and browse what you have. I'm a guy who loves interactions, but sometimes I just want to look at not talk to anyone. I'm sure there are people who are not comfortable with conversations at all.

Lots of room to make improvements, but a decent enough concept. Hopefully this is a one and done and we're back to something resembling normalcy in November.
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I think a hybrid expo concept is something he could see form in the next year or so. Nothing can replace the face-to-face interaction that the tradition expo brings, but I feel like the extra admissions a virtual expo can bring in would be a smart thing for the Expo to at the very least consider. Dealers could have a laptop setup for chat, etc. while being available to their face-to-face customers. They will also have more inventory on hand to make available for their online viewers too.
 
I see a sort of hybrid of the live and virtual shows in the future. Someday things will be back to normal, but perhaps they could give the option for booths to set up live feeds to interact with those that can't make it.

Having never attended an Expo before, I was excited at this opportunity. I was a little limited in what I could do. I was working from home on Friday and my PC doesn't have a camera/microphone, but I spent some time browsing booths and listening to some conversations.

Major props to those that took the time to scan and post a listing of your cards. That's incredibly time consuming and I hope it benefited you. As someone who doesn't always have specific targets in mind, I often like to just browse and see if anything catches my eye. Obviously things aren't going to be 100% perfect the first time, but I have to think it's a lot better this way than skipping the show entirely.

Perhaps this was in the Networking area that I couldn't access without a camera, but it would be cool to have a place where attendees could post their wants. It's basically the suggestion for specific chats. There could be a Hockey room, that leads to teams and then I could post in the Devils page that I'm looking for Scott Stevens. Or I could go to the Upper Deck page and post which sets I'm working on and what I need from there, etc.

Adding - I will say that one of the majors benefits of attending from home is immediate access to my many checklists and inventory!
 
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Expo just wrapped up, gotta say it was a HUGE success for me personally. I will likely do a S&T post about it in the near future to share about the experience.

Huge props to both Jeremy and Ameet for running undoubtedly the two best booths at the entire show, and it wasn't even close either. Had a great time hanging out in Jeremy's booth throughout much of the weekend and was nice to put some faces to names, especially given going to the Expo in person just isn't realistic for me being so far away!
 
I had a great time on Friday and met some new faces. The most enjoyable was just having a virtual sit down with my broheim’s Jeremy and Ameet and just talking shop and having some relaxing fun. They were prepared and ready to serve the hobby, so my compliments gentlemen!

I was not Overly impressed with the other dealers that apparently had no prepared thought process on inventory or organization for that matter....obviously their sales were likely affected, which if the case is too bad as I hope everyone had some good sales during this rough time.
Linking to an eBay store is just lazy and not an expo experience...just my two cents.

I reached out to a few of the other notable dealers, and they did not seem to have any real Oilers inventory which was kind of a head scratcher. I know I did not expect to find much with my main PC guy, but not having any McDavid, Draisiatl, or Gretzky cards was a little shocking.
With that said, Kenny had some great cards but they were so darn nice that they were way out of my price range...haha

The work that Steve Menzie and his team (And the sponsors) put in to make this experience still quite enjoyable, should be greatly appreciated and acknowledged, as there was a ton of work that went into making this show a fun time for collectors.
Although it was a virtual expo, it was still Sports Card Expo live edition....and it was a ton of fun!

I hope we can do this again, as it is a great concept,
 
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Here are my thoughts on the Virtual Expo:

- This the first time it has been done and I think it was best to have no expectations other than setting aside time to explore and take things in (not like I have very much else to do lol).

- I really enjoyed the guest speakers (Ultra Pro, BGS, Sports Card Investor, etc.) and that they were open and responsive to questions from attendees. It was nice to get an aswer "straight from the source".

- I was looking forward to picking up some pieces for the PC but unfortunately/fortunately I "came home empty handed". Part of this was how some of the dealers were set up and what was available, albeit my wants are pretty specific. I found the ways that Jeremy and Ameet set up their cards that were available to be the easiest and most visually appealing other than being redirected to someone's ebay store. I realize that this likely takes an a lot of work on the dealer's end as they have to scan, individually price, upload, etc.

- Hopefully Jeremy can get someone from Ultra Pro and BGS to be guests on the Sports Cards Live show. Would love to hear more from them.

- Not sure how it could be addressed during these strange times but sometimes I noticed a considerable lag when viewing the main stage. Not sure if this was due to my internet connection or the connection on the other end or because there were so many people viewing at once.

This was my first expo experience and I think for many a welcome distraction from what the new normal is currently. I am sure if/when there are future virtual expos that improvements will be made. Hopefully once this COVID nonsense is over I can make my out to attend a traditional expo.
 
I had a great time! I really enjoyed being able to interact with multiple people over video chat. Like many others, I thought Jeremy and Ameet had a great set up (maybe also biased :D) but, their booths were so easy to navigate and they were willing to interact with everyone. As well, more of the same sentiment here but I also did not like going on to an eBay store-I just left the booth as soon as I seen it.

Anyway, overall I thought it was a great experience and enjoyed talking to people I never usually get a chance to talk to otherwise. I would definitely go back!

Naim
 

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