A chat with the creator behind one of the friendliest fan conventions on earth

NORCON is a 14-year strong fan convention that provides the perfect melting pot of pop culture fandom for those who love nothing more than to “embrace their inner geek” 🙌.

At Ticket Tailor, we love chatting with the creators behind ‘Cons like these because they always, without fail, show such enthusiasm for truly serving the fans that attend their events. This shines through strongly in our chat with NORCON Director Mark Dean, who makes it clear that giving their attendees an incredible experience each year – and one that never stagnates – is at their absolute raison d’etre. 

Mark also sheds light on some interesting challenges NORCON has had to overcome in recent years, which we’re sure many event creators will relate to. There’s some invaluable advice for budding fan convention organisers, too – including one big mistake to avoid. Let’s get stuck in. 

✅Key takeaways

💡When organising an event on a large scale, it’s crucial to not only have a backup plan in place, but several. This is the only way to be able to handle the fact that things do, inevitably, often change. You need to be able to respond and stay agile when that proverbial spanner in the works shows up.

🎟️Your ticketing platform can not only help things run smoothly for your attendees, but for your traders, too. Mark talks about how Ticket Tailor’s bespoke seating plan feature helps their traders select where they want to be positioned in their arena.

⚡When you end up running an event over a period of many years – staying consistent in terms of quality is crucial. Mark highlights that they do this by genuinely taking on board attendee feedback, and changing things up each year to prevent their event from stagnating.

Let’s start at the beginning – what’s NORCON all about?

NORCON is the Norfolk TV, Film & Comic Con. It’s a place to celebrate all that is ‘Geek’. We have displays, guests, traders, photo opportunities and so much more. No matter what your pop culture fandom, we’ll usually have something there for you. Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr WHO, Harry Potter, Red Dwarf… the list goes on. In short – there’s plenty to tickle your geeky taste buds!

We’ve been running our events since way back in 2010 – although we started on a much smaller scale. Since then, things have grown year and year; fast forward to today and NORCON is now the biggest comic con in our region.

Congrats! Have you encountered any big challenges along the way?

Norfolk is a wonderful place but not without its challenges – for example, the transport infrastructure isn't the best and we don't have access to a major international airport. But we still manage to put on a great show every year.

And of course, Covid was a difficult time for the events industry as a whole. We were completely sidestepped and overlooked during the pandemic, but here we are, still going strong. That says something about our resilience and ethos.

It definitely does 💪. Can you tell us about what goes into organising a convention on such a scale?

To be honest, organising an event on this scale can be quite daunting. We have to make sure we’re very organised and that we give ourselves plenty of time to pull everything together. The main thing is, it’s crucial to always have a Plan A, Plan B and a Plan C. We have to make sure we’re prepared for a multitude of eventualities because things – say, schedules – can change unexpectedly. Over the years we’ve learned that we have to be fluid and flexible while still sticking to a plan of action.

Do you have any advice for anyone trying to organise their first ever fan convention? 

Start small! Try not to get too big too quickly… and make sure you really know your audience. It’s crucial to carry out a lot of research before making any concrete plans. For example, you definitely don't want to put a comic con on if your area already has one. This is probably the biggest mistake I’d say to avoid. Too many comic cons in the same area will almost definitely lead to confusion and attendee fatigue, affecting your footfall. So it’s important to search for a location that gives you the chance to establish your own brand. 

Wise words. Now let’s talk ticketing – why did you choose Ticket Tailor, and which features have been particularly useful? 

We chose Ticket Tailor because we could see the platform had a lot of great features that would make our lives easier.

We love that we can create bespoke seating plans, for example. We actually use this for our trader sales, as it means the traders for our events can easily select where they want to be situated within our arena.
We also love the free Ticket Tailor check-in app, which makes it so much easier to scan in attendees on the day of our events. We regularly use the app’s handy filter function, which allows us to filter out specific ticket types. This means our scanners can be set to only scan early entry tickets, for example – with any others being sent to a different queue for later admission.

That’s great to hear 😀. Finally, what does the future hold for NORCON? 

We were described by SciFi Now magazine as “probably the friendliest convention on earth.” So, I think the future for us is really about maintaining this reputation. We’ve worked hard on establishing our brand and credibility over the past 13 years to become one of the best comic cons in the UK. To keep it up, we continue to listen to the feedback we get from attendees, and always make sure we change things up every year so that we don't become stale for our visitors.

Ultimately, we recognise that our attendees are the lifeblood of our events, and so we treat them with the respect that they deserve.

That makes a lot of sense! Thanks so much for chatting with us, Mark – best of luck with the future of NORCON.

🎟️ Grab your tickets for the next NORCON here >

💡 Looking for a low-cost ticketing partner that helps streamline your event planning with tons of useful features, including a free check-in app? Learn more about ticketing events with Ticket Tailor >