It’s taken a few weeks or me to find the time to share my thoughts about the second Rocky Mountain Hobby Expo (RMHE) and the fantastic approach Scott Gentry and team have taken with this event. I truly believe their approach is the future of local scale model events.

Doog shared his thoughts last year and in addition to a hardy “ditto!” to everything he said, I wanted to share my own experiences and thoughts too.

RMHE is a different kind of show: You bring as many models as you want and put them in your spot on the table. No categories, all your models in one place. You have a big ass name plate that makes it wickedly easy to figure out who built what. The judges pick your “best” model, according to what they think is your best work and they judge just that one model on a  gold/silver/bronze system.

This makes judging fun. Yes, dear readers… fun. If you’ve ever done judging at an IPMS contest, you know it can be taxing and time consuming. And because it starts with a flaw hunt to bump as many models as possible out of contention, it has a soul sucking sad vibe.

But the way that RMHE does it, you are excited for the modeler. Seeking their best work as a first step completely rearranges the judging brain chemistry and by the end of the judging round you feel amped for doing model work.

The best part of the event, at least for me, is that with everyone’s body of work clearly marked and combined into one footprint, you get to know the modeler. You can see in what they’ve brought who they are, how they build, and what they’re into. It’s a massive and wonderful basis to start talking and building connections.

It also seems to encourage people to bring (and maybe build?) an eclectic collection of models, rather than trying to zone in on a single topic. Unlike many IPMS shows, RMHE had very few 109s and Tiger tanks. There was so truly odd sci-fi creations right next to a beautiful Phantom plane next to a unique diorama.

Like Doog said in his post: I’m done with 1-2-3 contests. I just don’t care about the awards that come from them and they don’t make me excited to participate in the category-based competition. I’d much rather just put my collection of models in a display-only category to prompt discussion and connection.

RMHE feels like a testbed for new, interesting, connecting (there’s that word again) ideas for the future of shows. I’d love to see them play with a few other things and see if they can work their magic on them. Here’s a few thoughts:

  • I largely hate award ceremonies. They seem obligatory and dull and they suck the energy out of the end of the event. We’re tired, we’re ready to go home, and there’s not a lot of fun baked into them. The Academy Awards is a production. It brings the audience into the process, gives winners a chance to share and comment. It’s fun. I would love to spend more time on them in a way that brings out and solidifies the connections and the people and the models that we’ve just spent the day celebrating. How can we bring more to these ceremonies than just handing someone a plaque and a handshake? Could we round robin discussions about our favorite models? Could the Best in Show winner share some of the build process? Could we have the event host “interview” the people’s choice winner about how they built their model?
  • Name badges are critical (and currently missing from RMHE). The great thing about the show the centralization of my models and the clear name plaque next to them. But sometimes it takes a LOT of work to connect a face to a name during the show. Last year I had to ask numerous people who David Clark was because I was dying to talk to him about one of his models. We need name badges (magnet based not lanyard based). And we need to customize them in some way. How can we encourage folks to build their own name tag in advance of the show? Imagine me bringing my American Red Cross Clubmobile project next year and creating a name badge for myself that has an ARC logo sticker on it. Or a 3D printed ARC design that ties in with the style of the diorama. Even offering folks the sticker ribbons that have common modeling vibe adjectives folks can add to their own standard badge would be great.
  • Charge more, do more. Let’s be honest… complaints about having to spend $20 to get into a model contest are moronic. If I got to the movies these days it cost three times that much and last a fraction of the time with half the value. If we were charging event a little bit more, I can’t imagine we’d be turning off large numbers of people but we would be able to do more fun, non-traditional stuff at the shows. I love a great raffle, but what about raffles with remarkable prizes or unique items or custom made stuff?
  • I’d like to see more awards that drive the behaviors we want to see. Doog has long talked about wanting to see more whimsy in the hobby and I couldn’t agree more. But we don’t award things like that. I sponsored the “Deepest Rabbit Hole Award” at RMHE this year in part to help support the show, in part to help encourage and recognize folks doing deep research and planning on complex projects. Awards should inherently drive the behaviors and culture we want to see more of. That’s why we have Best in Show (high quality craftsmanship) and People’s Choice (recognizing models that resonate with the common man, not nerdy modelers). But why are all the rest of the awards at shows typically focused around the categories or the person who sponsored the award and that’s it? We need to reward what we believe the culture of the show is working to promote.
  • And to that end… I love when shows take a position. IPMS so often just feels like a place where you go to get judged and hopefully take home a trinket. But RMHE feels like it was built for connection. So let’s create some awards that specifically support connection. Hell, let’s make all the awards focused on connection. Or on the Best Use of Table Space to encourage folks to build “exhibits” with their table space rather than just putting models down in that space.

I’d like to see our hobby looking at other types of events in other hobbies or industries and learning from their ideas and best practices. RMHE aside, most shows I go to still feel like they did when I started going to shows 30 years ago.

Where are the speed build/paint competitions, for instance? Where are the brainstorm your next idea with friends sessions? How are we working with current and potential sponsors to add some vibrancy to the events beyond just modeler-to-modelers conversations and browsing the vendors? Don’t get me wrong, those are great. But I’d love to see our hobby looking at something like PowerPoint roulette and modify it for our hobby shows.

This isn’t a blog post about how we need to bring younger people to the hobby, or how we need to reach out to Gundam modelers or how we need to fully embrace a GSB system. It is, but my point is so much broader than that. My question is a simple one: How can we bring more joy, more fun, more connection, more experimentation to our hobby overall?

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All that said, I am excited for next year’s RMHE and I’m already starting to think about how to make an “exhibit” with my space. And I can’t wait to see more shows pick up on what RMHE has started and continue to grow and learn and test and try.