We're breaking up the Regional Convention event by going each of the days to a different weekend session.
The Tsongas Center Lowell MA was a bit hard to find, we got lost and got there after the first song and prayer (just in time for the first talk)! We ran into so many from our home congregation who aren't even assigned to this RC!
I think it's quite common for publishers now to break up the convention weekend and attend at times when their congregation isn't assigned.
Some families (3) were attending this particular Convention so as to meet up with family members who are in another part of the Region. Others just because they wanted to check out the fresh meat on display in the concourse hallway during the lunch break. (Yup, I know, I was a hormone crazed youngster myself back in the day.) And were staying with friends outside their home circuits.
The total attendance was laughable for a Sunday session 3,582. I turned to my wife and said "We must be the two in that figure" since we arrived so late. Actually there was more than one count in the afternoon. I know that if the day's chairman or another bigwig doesn't think the figure is high enough there's another count taken, usually it is higher, and attendants are told to count people who are not in their seats but in the hallways for quite an extended time, and to count the empty seat if they saw someone get up during the count, that had previously been sitting there in the audience and there were books or bags still there at the seat.
This means that people getting to the bathrooms may be counted when sitting, when walking "to" the bathroom and then counted again when returning "from" the bathrooms--this includes cleaning volunteers and those who just wanted to stretch their legs, or meet up with a love interest, or to pacify a crying or squirmy infant who's had way too much sitting time. And of course there are those sad brothers and sisters who are assigned to go into the smelly bathrooms to count those "present" there. So double, triple and quadruple counting some attendees for higher figures' sake.
I was attendant overseer in Hallways for a number of years in my District, I know what goes on. (So, yeah, they have their tricks to increase attendance figures without an obvious crisis of conscience hitting them while doing so ;-)
I missed the baptism figure. I was cruising the hallways and ran into more people from our local congregation--those not assigned there--and we were chatting so I missed the previous day's baptism figures. I'll have to ask my wife and see how these measure up with past conventions.
Overall it was an easy Convention day to get through. I was either napping, promenading to the bathrooms, or chatting through most talks and videos in the concourse hallway. I complained to my wife that the box of raisins I snacked on while driving to the Tsongas Center made it "difficult" to sit through the program. (I know, TMI.) But there was more sh¡t coming from the stage than getting flushed down the toilets--just saying!