KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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What can we do to improve hamfests?

Posted: 26 Oct 2016 11:54 AM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/kb6nu...m_medium=email


Yesterday, I received an e-mail from Bill, NA8M. He writes:

I read and enjoy your blog. Great stuff. Thanks.

I have a “bit part� in the annual Muskegon Color Tour Hamfest that shares a
weekend with the Kalamazoo Hamfest in mid-October. (The Kalamazoo hamfest
is on Saturday, ours is on Sunday.) It has been fun and financially
rewarding for our sponsors.

We have a good venue, the room to rent eighty tables (and we do rent them
all), wonderfully supportive vendors, a crowd of volunteers who make the
hard work of a hamfest very manageable, and pretty good guest attendance.
Well, pretty good until this last hamfest when our guest attendance was
down 30%. In a good year we enjoy 230 paid guests, but this year, we had
only 180.

That last statistic is troubling me today. I wonder if you have ever
explored what brings a ham to a hamfest? I’ve kicked around a few things
and in no particular order of importance:

I am not in charge of promotion, but I do put our hamfest brochure on a
couple of Yahoo groups and three or four Facebook frequented by local hams.
I do not know if anyone emails last year’s attendees an invitation. I may
volunteer to take that task next year.
I’m thinking maybe we could encourage attendance with a small token of
appreciation. For a buck, we could buy LED keyring flashlights that have
our hamfest name and our club name printed on them. That only rewards the
folks who come, though, and may not encourage those who stayed home, so
this idea doesn’t really excite me.
Another idea is to put a coupon on the flyer offering a discount if you
bring a friend. It’s like recruiting in any other club setting. One guy
brings another and pretty soon you’ve got more guys.


We have a full-service canteen with coffee, donuts, hotdogs, pop, and such.
So the eyeball QSOs are encouraged. We also offer a full complement of door
prizes.

Since the venue is a church gym we are not allowed to host a raffle to
raise more money. There, again, a raffle just gets more money from the
attendees. It does nothing for encouraging hams to attend in the first
place?

Have you ever kicked this one around? I’d sure appreciate your thoughts.

I replied:

This is a great question, and to be honest, I haven’t really thought much
about this, but if you’ll bear with me a bit, I’ll improvise.

I think that sharing a weekend with the Kalamazoo Hamfest is one problem.
[[Kalamazoo, MI and Muskegon, MI are less than two hours apartDan]] They’re
just too close to you. Might it be possible to merge the two hamfests into
one big one?
The successful hamfests seem to be going big. I’m not talking about Dayton
so much. Dayton is pretty much in a class of its own. Take a look at the
Huntsville Hamfest, though. It’s a two-day hamfest, and they’re claiming
record attendance.
The Fort Wayne hamfest is another two-day hamfest. I’ve never been to this
one, but those who have gone all give it good marks. Unfortunately, it’s
only a month after yours. They might be draining away attendees as well.
A hamfest has to be more than just a swap meet. Huntsville had a lot of
other activities, including license exams, meetings for the YLARC and 3885
AM Gang, awards ceremonies for the Young Ham of the Year. There was also a
full technical forum program.
At least one, if not all, of the forum tracks should be targeted at the new
ham. For many new hams wandering around a swap meet is really not that much
fun. They don’t know what they’re looking for or what prices to pay. Give
them a reason to attend.
Next year, you might consider doing a one-day Tech class. I might be
persuaded to teach that class.
Promotion is key, and I think you hit the nail on the head when you mention
e-mailing previous attendees. Many hamfests, including Findlay, send
postcards. You could even get creative and make it look like a QSL card to
get people to read it.
If you do things like license exams and a one-day Tech class, you’re going
to have to promote it to the general public as well as the amateur radio
community.
I’m not big on the token of appreciation, and you’re right about the
raffle. There’s no need for a raffle if you’ve got door prizes. (If you’d
asked me, I would have donated one of my study guides or one of my CW
books.)
I do like the idea of offering an incentive to bring a friend.



At this point, I ran out of ideas, so I thought that Id throw it out to
you. If youve been involved with hamfests,Â*what worked for you? If you
attend hamfests,Â*please tell us about why you go and what you like about
the hamfestsÂ*you attend.

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