VidCon US - 21 - 24 June 2017

[fondsmiles]

Would anyone else be interested in having a separate thread for non-D&P-related VidCon discussion? I have no one else to talk to about any of this.

yes please I'd be up for it, not sure how closely I can follow all the events, but I am definitely interested!

[somethingsketchy]

Thanks for setting up the thread, fondsmiles! I'll start by linking to the live stream for easy access.



Is there something/someone you are excited to see besides ?

[jesp]

Moderating

Since we have a dedicated {and barely used} subforum just for conventions, I've moved this thread to it from Other Youtubers.

I've also edited the title so that the thread is easier to search for.

[flarequake]

Cool, thanks for creating the thread, and renaming and rehousing it. So far I've left the stream on mute cos I don't always have the patience for a load of people I don't know and Daniel Layton posted a new video (though otherwise it's a great way to discover new people), plus they were playing Jenga and I'm tired of all these challenges. Hannah Hart just turned up, though, woo I love how she talks.

Oh, seriously, they're squeeing over "omg it's harto" on Twitter, "wow it's so great your fans are out to support you". Please calm down about the absolute basics, of course your fans enjoy seeing you

[somethingsketchy]

I wanted to listen to Hannah but had to pause the stream because my Internet connection couldn't handle me doing anything else at the same time. Now I am debating whether to listen to the keynote or go to sleep. I will definitely tune in tomorrow to watch the Keeping Online Video Diverse panel and on Saturday to watch the LGBTQ panel plus some interviews.

[fondsmiles]

Moderating

Since we have a dedicated {and barely used} subforum just for conventions, I've moved this thread to it from Other Youtubers.

I've also edited the title so that the thread is easier to search for.

I saw it, but was unsure whether it'd be right here, since we didn't want to discuss Dan and Phil but other youtubers - but i am fine with whatever!!

sooo I am watching the livestream back right now, the hank and john stuff got me intrigued. so, on the topic of them, I gotta rant a bit very lovingly:
- THEY ARE SO WONDERFUL
- I love their dynamic, so much. Hank is so silly sometimes, also so enthusiastic, and John's sarcasm and also silly passion is wonderfully complimentary (typing that out, it almost reminds me of deppy in a way?). They work so great together. I listen to their podcast regularly and they are just awesome.
- I saw them at VidconEU, and at their Q&A, Hank's wife came on stage with his tiny child, and they'd told us all to stay quiet for it - and everyone did, and both of them (more John so even, I think) got incredibly emotional at it, it was so precious. They also repeatedly stated at how different the contrast to VidconUS was, and that they'd never expected a room full of fans to be SO completely silent just to not scare the baby away. It really was so sweet, everyone just awwed quietly - god, it was so great.
- they also have such a great audience. it seems like them and their audience are very much on an equal level, more than i've seen with any other creators.
- John is so nervous and adorable :')
- he's crying oh dear god please hold me
- the book sounds interesting. mental health is something i am very passionate about, and having a book that will probably include it as a thing that influences life, but not necessarily the main focus of the story, sounds exciting to me. not sure yet if I will get it, but definitely considering.
- hank jumping in quickly with new questions as john gets all choked up again. this is so sweet.

aw that was such a good stage event. also, watching livestreams back is great as you can skip boring things i just realized.

[flarequake]

The Keynote's probably interesting. I haven't spotted it on the schedule, I'm zooming down it too quickly probably, it all looks so good, there are so many stages. Such a shame they're not streaming the Night of Community. Aside from Dan and Phil (and the sight of them alone makes my heart squee, their photos are both from Tatinof with the whiskers on the microwave in the background and everything), it looks amazing. Daft organisers, what are they streaming that's better than that?

I'm with you, fondsmiles it was lovely. I was at VidConEU too and John's bit of "thank you for being calm for the baby" was so sweet. It's lovely they can ask their fandom that and it'll happen so they can do that if they want to. Also the girl with all the books who got them signed even, as John said, that he couldn't sign anyone else's. I thought it was sweet when she asked after she'd kept waving them all. I've read them all, took me all of a few weeks one summer when I discovered he was a writer a few years ago, and years after finding them on YouTube. I love fast-paced teen fiction so he's one of my favourite writers. I was already tweeting to John about the book when he welled up, I could have hugged him right there, he's such a love.

Oh gods, Rhett and Link are doing drinking a blend of gross stuff again. They did it onstage at VidConEU, I guess it's their thing (GMM didn't grab me, but they do seem funny).

[somethingsketchy]

I loved watching the Gathering of Nerdfighters so much that I had to subscribe to the vlogbrothers YT channel. I don't really know why I wasn't already subscribed considering I've followed John and Hank on Tumblr for years and have read most of John's books. All of them have been kind of meh in my opinion, but I am actually excited about Turtles All the Way Down because it sounds like something different from the previous books and mental illness is something I like to read about because of my personal experiences.

I found a short article on the book on the publishing company's website. Here is the link in case anyone missed the book announcement: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/feat ... -way-down/

[fondsmiles]

oh wow. that is intense.

[eevee]

Fake badges: Funny how they caught people faking badges, when I got my badge I was surprised that it didn't have my name on it or an identifying unique barcode. The anime conventions I've been to in the past normally had those things and also a holographic sticker to prevent counterfeit such as the above. I thought by 2017 Vidcon would get with the times, but I guess not! I was wondering if people would fake them and sure enough, yes.

Vidcon experience in general: This was my second Vidcon, my first being 2014, and my fourth Youtube convention, the past two being earlier Playlists (12 and 13 I believe). There were pros and cons to the weekend, but I overall had a lot of fun. I think Vidcon is what you make it. I didn't go in with any expectations, since I know that conventions have long lines and Youtubers become less accessible every year. I was also with lilmango who went to Vidcon 16 and was a little more aware of how Vidcons have been recently.

I made the most of Vidcon and was able to go to the panels/shows I wanted to see, and I took a lot of creative pictures in the expo hall and outside! The panel areas were much bigger this year, which improved my experience greatly since panels were very hard to get into in past years from what I've heard and experienced. I focused on my friends and myself and had a great time as a result.

I do have issues with how Vidcon went though, as it seems many do. My biggest problem is that by the end of the con, security was kicking out youtubers that caused "mobs" and apparently banning them. I have a big problem with this, because Vidcon is supposed to be a place where you can meet creators. The creators meeting their fans outside were the ones who didn't have established meet and greets, so what else are they supposed to do? Send their young fans outside of the convention to meet them? Talk about unsafe. I realize a "mob" isn't the safest thing either, but maybe instead of kicking everyone out, work on organizing the line to be out of the way??

Also, featured creators like dan and phil didn't have many appearances, and featured creators were not required to have a meet and greet at all. Dan and Phil had one meet and greet the entire con for example, which someone told me she learned from Vidcon's email customer service that 250 people were awarded. Smaller youtubers like Vsauce had two meet and greets throughout the con, and each meet and greet area was the same size (the Vsauce one I went to was small, but I think it's probably because people just didnt show). I dont understand why Dan and Phil didn't have more than one meetup. Also, a beauty guru I really like had on panel, no meet and greets, and then left. that was pretty disappointing to me, I really wanted to meet her.

I think that's all I have to say about Vidcon for now!!

[alittledizzy]

eevee, I was really hoping you'd post about vidcon! I loved following your tweets about it.

I definitely agree that the way they handled banning big youtubers was short sighted. I hope they rectify it. I know I saw that Logan Paul wasn't even on the featured creator list, so I'm not sure if that was Vidcon's oversight in not inviting him or if he didn't accept in time or what.

I think part of the problem with the lack of panels/meet and greets is that Vidcon doesn't pay their guests, so if guests only want to commit a very small amount of time to the con itself then I don't think Vidcon has much leeway to pressure them into it. I can absolutely see Dan and Phil saying they only wanted to do one meet and greet, or declining invitations to panels.

[eevee]

eevee, I was really hoping you'd post about vidcon! I loved following your tweets about it.

I definitely agree that the way they handled banning big youtubers was short sighted. I hope they rectify it. I know I saw that Logan Paul wasn't even on the featured creator list, so I'm not sure if that was Vidcon's oversight in not inviting him or if he didn't accept in time or what.

I think part of the problem with the lack of panels/meet and greets is that Vidcon doesn't pay their guests, so if guests only want to commit a very small amount of time to the con itself then I don't think Vidcon has much leeway to pressure them into it. I can absolutely see Dan and Phil saying they only wanted to do one meet and greet, or declining invitations to panels.

Aw thanks!! I def wanna talk about it haha!!

Some creators that weren't featured bought community passes to enter and meet their fans, which makes sense. But I'd love to know how featured creators are selected. There's also no option for non-featured-but-still-popular creators. The "creator" pass was accessible to anyone, and a lot of fans bought one to go to the creator panels.

I'm interested in what Vidcon guests or featured creators actually do get. The sense I got from this Vidcon was that it caters more to the featured creators than the fans. They got lavish lounges to hang out in (sponsored by Instagram, but still), big parties, and black vans to travel in. Meanwhile the fans, who paid at minimum the $100-ish price of the ticket, and at maximum thousands of dollars between plane tickets and hotels, didn't even get much chance to see or meet their favorite creators.

For example, the line to Night of Community started hours before the time it began, and the arena (capacity of 7k people) filled up. Everyone was calling Night of Community "the Dan and Phil thing" since it was the only thing they were doing the whole con besides their meet and greet. They performed for a few minutes.

If Vidcon still doesn't pay their featured creators directly, they're still getting a butt-ton of perks with little return for the fans. So that leads me to wonder if Youtubers get full say in what appearances they make or not. I guess Vidcon has to straddle the line between making the con enticing to popular Youtubers and making it enticing to fans, since youtubers can choose to just not go. If Vidcon still doesn't pay them, they really should, because they had TONS of sponsors and industry people there to network buying passes at $750 a pop.

Did any of this even make a point? I'm not sure. Vidcon politics.

[alittledizzy]

Oh they're totally getting perks, no doubt about that. But I'm not sure the perks really make a difference for creators on the Dan and Phil level. They probably get the same value of stuff sent free to their management weekly, and at the end of the day they are traveling halfway across the world for something that only offers them no direct financial profit. (Indirect profit, of course, because if Dan and Phil attend then their fans show up, and if their fans show up then the merch booth flourishes.)

And it's not like Vidcon can really say 'hey, you have to do at least two panels or no Calvin Klein jacket for you!' - it's Vidcon that needs them, after all, because without featured creators on the Dan and Phil level they wouldn't be selling nearly as many tickets. If Dan and Phil say yeah, we'll come, but we're only doing one thing... I just can't imagine Vidcon being able to be pushier about it. Dan and Phil literally just showing up is enough to entice the fans.

I think the only way to ensure that Dan and Phil signed on to do more would be to start paying them and involve a contract, which I assume Vidcon isn't financially viable enough yet to do.

[eevee]

Yeah you're right, Vidcon probably just takes what they can get at this point with creators. I wish the creators would see it from our perspective and do a little more, though. But I am glad they came at all! And the merch booth was certainly blowing up, especially with martyn and cornelia being an attraction of their own.

How could I forget the Calvin Klein perk

A perk I forgot to mention for the fans, Popsockets were giving away free customized popsockets to everyone! That was rad.

Also, maybe we'd have creators who were more interested in participating if the panels were more interesting. The questions they asked were SO generic! "When did you realize Youtube was going to be a career for you?" "How do you handle online hate comments?" The same old same old. The Q&As were nice, though, when fans could tweet or even personally ask questions.

On another note, my friend Freddy and I were disappointed by how expensive the Industry passes were. I assume they're $750 to filter out fans and make it so that only companies can really afford them for their employees...but I work at a small recording studio now, and they could never afford $750, but would've greatly benefited from networking and finding some talent to work with. Freddy just wanted to network to promote himself as an actor. I wish the Industry passes were 18+ and cheaper, the requirement to get one being buying through a company or a personal statement about why Vidcon is good for you to network in.

Vidcon is such a tricky thing to run, I'm sure all of this is hard to work out.

[lilMango]

I attended Vidcon this year and I agree with all the points eevee brought up about security. I also went last year, and it seems like the way the convention runs is only getting worse as the size of the convention grows. For one, they had less space this year, because one of the hotels previously used for panels was no longer available, and of course the overall number of people there increased by like... 5k?

The mobs were out of control. Creators without vidcon badges were purposefully stirring up mobs and the security had no idea how to handle it. There was violence, including one person who straight up had their arm broken in a door by security. The mobs were dangerous but the way they were handled was scarier.

The fans were definitely more aggressive. "Black market" wristband trading was more popular this year, and again, security didn't know how to handle it. At the deppy meetup I was at, a girl got to meet them without a wristband at all. She made up a terrible lie and the guard believed her. It was honestly appalling. They need to figure their shit out.

Overall though, it was a fun week I spent with eevee and I got to meet the deppy crew, which I will never forget. Even a rushed meetup with DnP was so so valuable to me, and it's an experience that I will always cherish. I have a cute little meetup story and a truckload of pictures. The panels were fun and I got to see some smaller youtubers and I even spoke with one of my favorite for about 20 minutes! That was definitely a highlight. I loved the expo hall as well, plenty of merch and photo ops I have to say I liked last year's merch options better, though. But the photo ops were everywhere! I've literally never had this many photos of myself (and of eev lmao).

I'm gonna try Playlist next year, though, if I even have the time. Vidcon is just too big for itself now.

[Allen001]

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