The webcomics blog about webcomics

Numbers


I hadn’t mentioned this before, but the final attendance for the inaugural PAX East: 52,900, capped largely by space availability. Given the size differential between the Hynes Convention Center (ignore the little text label, it’s the building on Boylston that has the round structure in the northeast corner) and the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (site of future PAX East iterations), I’m predicting the attendee count will flirt with 100,000 before the current three-year deal with the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority expires.

To put this in perspective, the BCEC in 2008 (the most recent year I could find numbers for, and prior to the economy pitching a wobbly) listed its most economically impactful conventions as having attendances between 3800 and 35,000 attendees (PDF, page 3), from a total attendance of 444,000 – 489,000 (depending on whether you count fiscal years or calendar years; PDF, page 17). Any way you care to crunch those numbers, PAX East has already significantly increased the convention attendance of a major city, and will only do so to a greater degree in the future.

  • Other numbers: 4 and 1000. The former is the number of years that Chris Hallbeck’s The Book of Biff has been running as of today, and the latter would be the update number that Mr Eyebrows will hit on Monday.
  • Still another number: 7. Or, more precisely, 07, as in Eben07, shadowy master of espionage and general master of tradecraft. Process documents regarding Mr 07’s working methods are rumored to have surfaced, and in a stunning example of hiding in plain sight, will be displayed in a public art event in Sacramento, CA tomorrow.

    The organizers of the public art display claim no knowledge of this occurrence, but we’ve intercepted written documentation that we believe to be credible. Investigate thoroughly, and remember — the safety of the free world depends on … <signal lost>

[…] I wouldn’t mention that particular milestone, but I perhaps made less of a deal out of #1000 than I could have, and anyway Hallbeck has other news today. Namely, Biff is not the only […]

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