Raging Technoholic

So, to make a long story short, we are holding X-Sanguin at another venue this year.

Yeah, not my first choice either, but the venue that we usually use is booked with a wedding the night of our event, to say we were a little disappointed is an understatement, however sometimes that’s just how things go, and you have to  roll the hard six.

So back in December we were talking about finding another place to host the event, and just so you know there are lots of issues around doing this since whatever venue we use has has to meet a bunch of criteria:

• Within 3-5 miles of the convention center
• Able to host at least 700 people
• Not be a “box”
• Not have an existing event planned for that Saturday Night
• Etc.

Now you might think “But there are tons of places in the Gaslamp that you could do an event like that at, it should be easy!” While your right about there being a bunch of places that fit that criteria the issue that always pokes it’s ugly head  out is that we need to do whats known as a “buy out”, in other words, we want to control the door, and only let our guests in.

The problem that this creates is that the venue has to turn away their regulars since we are only letting our ticketed guests in, so to do that you have to make it worth their while, since they are risking their regular patrons getting mad going somewhere else and not coming back.   So if on a Saturday night during top tourist seasons they normally do say 20K at the bar, they are going to want 40K to make it worth their while.  No, that’s not a joke, I have had people tell me anywhere from 40k – 60K for a buyout if you can believe that.

As you can imagine this complicates matters, since well, I don’t have 40K to give them.

So, suffice to say, it’s a difficult process to find a new venue in any situation where we have to be near downtown.   So as we are in the process of finding a new location my partner (business not sexytime) Shawn started to get really concerned since we still have no venue for the event, and it’s March.  So I had to remind him that there are always problems, and not to worry etc.

Then it struck me, that I have become numb to this type of stuff over the years.   It’s never easy to put something like this on, and there are ALWAYS 10 things that could prevent a huge event from happening, it’s like that scene in Men in Black where the character of J (Will Smith) is yelling at K (Tommy Lee Jones) that they can’t fool around anymore since there is an alien battle ship about to blow up the planet, to which K responds “There is always some alien battle ship about to destroy the planet, or an intergalactic plague about to take over, or an invasion about to happen, and the only thing that keeps this world going is that people never know!”

Over the years issues like “we don’t have a venue” or “The DJ’s equipment is not compatible with the PA”, or even “They now want twice the bar guarantee” always comes out of no where, and I guess I have just grown to expect it.   If doing these events were easy, everyone would do them, and if at the fist sign of a problem, or what looks like a critical issue, you give up, nothing would ever happen, since your bound to run into problems like that in any large endevor.

Sometimes I think people convince themselves that “If it was meant to be, it would just happens” and you could tell yourself no greater lie.  Any large project that looks difficult is going to be just that, difficult.   Problems will come up, last min critial “the world is about to end” problems are always going to be there, you just have to make a concious choice that your not going to throw up your hands at the first sign of trouble.

Having said all of that, we did find a new venue, and the person that we are working with is named…. “The Turk”, I am sure this is setting me up for an interesting chapter in my memoris with a name like that.

Sneak Peek at new venue... shhhhh