Swancon currently sits at a very awkward size in terms of finding a venue. We are currently slightly priced out of the venues we would like to use, often resort to using ones just a bit smaller, and have a lot of pain as a result. An extra 50-100 attendees would make a big difference. And there is a pretty good case that we would have those extra people now if the last few cons had just been consistent about gradually trying to expand the audience.

But yeah, while I'd argue for consistent promotion and general policies of being welcoming to new people as an organisation (promotions for first time attendees, social ice-breaker events, etc) I don't think trying to either socially engineer who existing attendees talk to/drink with/eat with, or radically changing the event to one more like an anime con or gate show are the way to go.