This post is from SDHistCon founder Harold Buchanan.

Below is a summary of feedback from SDHistCon East 2024 at the U.S. Naval War College Museum from August 8-11, 2024. We had roughly 75 registrants, with most in attendance (including the Secretary of the Navy!). We sent a survey to everyone (excluding the Secretary of the Navy) and asked them to rate the convention on 22 categories and also whether they would recommend the convention, and whether they would come back. Here’s a summary of that feedback from 31 participants, and some thoughts on how that might influence our future plans.

Would you recommend/return?

These scores are outstanding and an important indication we are on track.

This question is rooted in the concept of the Net Promoter Score, which was introduced in a 2003 Harvard Business Review article titled “The One Number You Need to Grow.” High scores on this question often correlate with future attendance and positive word-of-mouth marketing, which we believe is crucial for the long-term success of the convention and the SDHist organization.

Rating on 22 categories

There’s lots of data here to parse. Note that some attendees did not attend certain components of the convention, thus responses were low in those categories. Here are some of the High and Low ratings.

Highest ratings
Overall rating of the convention (1-5 scale) 4.9
Facility rating of the convention (1-5 scale) 4.9
Designers at of the convention (1-5 scale) 4.9
Staff at the convention (1-5 scale) 4.9
Events at the convention (1-5 scale) 4.8
Value of the convention (1-5 scale) 4.8

Lowest ratings
Housing for the convention (1-5 scale) 3.7
Meet & greet before the convention (1-5 scale) 3.9
Restrooms at the convention (1-5 scale) 4.1
BB MA tour before the convention (1-5 scale) 4.2
Snacks / coffee at the convention (1-5 scale) 4.3

We also gather comments on what went best and what we can do better. We evaluate those comments to reinforce what we should repeat and identify areas of improvement. Below is a discussion of the issues we recognize as opportunities for improvement and a few thoughts on how that might develop.

Opportunities for improvement

HOUSING—Newport, Rhode Island is an expensive place to find short term housing — certainly during the tourist season. It’s also not easy to get to Newport for attendees that don’t live in New England. That makes the convention an expensive convention to attend. What could we do to address this?

• Find another venue in a less expensive town? We believe the venue (The museum on the campus of the US Navy War College) is what makes this particular event a wonderful experience. We offer other conventions that would meet the needs of those who can’t make Newport work, but we are committed to the venue as long as the host will have us!
• Get a block of rooms at a local hotel? This sounds good, but we don’t have anything to trade. The hotels sell out without us. We have asked and got prices higher than you would get online. And if they do give us a block—the convention would need to guarantee the rooms are rented—and pay for them if they aren’t. This is a risk and expense we can’t afford to take.
• Move the con to a different season but stay at the museum? This is a possibility and we will discuss this internally and with our host. There is a tradeoff related to summer schedules and weather. While this would decrease costs of hotels, is it worth the tradeoffs?

MEET AND GREET—This is the first year we have executed a meet and greet in Newport. We have the same problem as housing in that venues want us to pay a lot for space. This year we had a well-attended event and a lot of excellent pizza. The main problem was it happened to be on (a very loud) trivia night. In hindsight I wish I had just offered the trivia guy with the mic $100 to end early. I’m sure this event will be better next year, and it was a great opportunity to see attendees before we got down to business.

RESTROOMS—We had a lot of men in a venue that was not designed for so many for so long. Staff worked hard to keep things clean and picked up. It worked, but I’m sure the Secretary of the Navy had a nicer bathroom at the Ritz Carlton.

BATTLESHIP MASSACHUSETTS TOUR—We conducted three tours on the Thursday before the con. Those included the International Museum of World War II, which scored 4.6 out of 5, and Fort Adams, which scored 4.7 out of 5.

We had a great time at the Battleship Massachusetts in 2023. Battleship staff dropped the ball this year and the tour of the battleship wasn’t as strong. We’re not sure how to fix that – it may mean we don’t tour the battleship in the future. But it is an awesome battleship with an incredible World War II history (first and last 16 inch guns fired by the U.S. in WWII).

SNACKS & COFFEE—The comments around Coffee and Snacks are driven by the desire for variety. Convention staff provides free coffee each morning and a selection of snacks and drinks for $1 each during the convention. It would take some time to go off campus to buy a snack so we are happy to do this. The museum is very generous in allowing us (as attendees) to bring our own food into the convention. On my way to Newport this year, I stopped at Target and picked up the stuff I like (seeds, granola and apples) – and brought it in my backpack. We will work hard to remind attendees in the future that they can bring their own snacks.

These topics are shared to allow us to discuss them. We don’t have all the solutions and welcome a robust respectful discussion on what we can do to improve attendee experience. Please let us know what you think. Feel free to chime in on the Discord server. It’s still open and will be a while longer.

We have a number of things to work on to make the convention a better experience. We are working to create event schedules in tune with attendees, improving Discord utilization, communicating table availability and enhancing engagement. We are also fighting through a learning curve (at every con) that means the next will be better. This would be tough if our attendees were not so generous with their positive comments as well as their ideas for how we can make things better. This is a part of who we are and will continue to be.

Beyond his work as SDHistCon’s founder and a member of the SDHist board, Harold is an award-winning designer whose designs include Liberty or Death (2016), Campaigns of 1777 (2019), and Flashpoint: South China Sea (2022). He has been a historical gamer since 1979. Harold is an Adjunct Professor of Finance at The University of California San Diego. You can follow him on Twitter/X here.

Top graphs image via aytm.com.