Category Archives: Kickstarter

Kickstarter

Our Kickstarter Experience

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If you’ve been following us online, you know that Farpoint Convention ran a Kickstarter project over the last few weeks. Our goal was to raise $30,000 in order to invite and fully fund a guest from the wish list we’ve compiled from member suggestions. This would be names like Ming-Na Wen, Grant Gustin, Stephen Amell or Haley Atwell. Fully funding the appearance ourselves would have meant that you would have received an autograph and at the table photo as part of your convention membership.

Overall, running a Kickstarter project was an excellent learning experience. Feedback we’ve received showed us that our regular attendees like that Farpoint Convention is small and provides a casual atmosphere for members to interact with our guests and each other. Many of you were concerned that if we brought in a big name guest that the Farpoint experience would be affected. It would not be the same relaxed, informal atmosphere when the big name guest brought in an influx of additional members. Our intent, of course, would have been to preserve the traditional “Farpoint vibe” but whether we would have been successful doing so will remain unknown.

We enjoyed talking to people about our Kickstarter at the conventions we attended during our project timeframe. We gained new social media followers and appreciated everyone’s support through their pledging and sharing of our project. And we continued making plans for #FarpointCon2016. Tesla Motors will be providing one of their Model S sedans for test drives. We will be welcoming several new authors to their first Farpoint Convention. Whitehurst Films will be attending Farpoint for the first time with the East Coast premiere of their film “Legend of Zelda: Oblivion Rising”, an independent film exploring the future adventures of the characters from the “Zelda” gaming series. The 50th anniversary of Star Trek will most definitely be celebrated! We are going to have a great time this February, and having Sean Maher from “Firefly”, along with one or two other celebrity guests, is icing on the cake.

Please continue to share the news about Farpoint Convention. Thanks for your support.

Kickstarter, Uncategorized

Announcing the first-ever Farpoint crowdfunding event – Farpoint Convention Turbo!

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FARP_MAGNETFarpoint Convention is proud to announce that we have initiated a special crowdfunding project on Kickstarter.com https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/svanbl/farpoint-convention-turbo. This project was started in response to convention members’ feedback from recent events on what they wanted to see at future Farpoints.

Why Kickstarter and crowdfunding? One of the biggest pieces of feedback we’ve received in recent years was multiple requests to bring more prominent celebrity guests to Farpoint and we decided that our 2016 convention will be the year to give this a try. We investigated the costs of bringing in some of these guests and found that on average guests at this level cost $25,000 at a minimum and many are in the range of $30,000 and up. Right now, we have funding in place to stage Farpoint Convention 2016 at our regular level of activity. And that’s okay, but to reach out for more prominent guests means a need for additional incoming funds. Our two main options for funding are (a) raise membership prices or (b) fundraising. Our weekend membership price has stayed the same for the last 4 years. We appreciate our members are spending their hard-earned money at Farpoint each year and the 2016 prices have already been announced. This brought us to raising money through a crowdfunding project, our #FARPStarter!

We have designed reward levels at multiple price points. The rewards will provide attending convention members the opportunity to “turbo charge” their Farpoint experience through special rewards and activities or allow long-distance members the chance to participate as never before via live-streaming some of our main events. We appreciate your help and interest; every contribution is important, whether you can donate or simply share our project page link with your social network. Thank you for supporting Farpoint Convention!