Anybody know how to get around those problems - short of cloning?
Try the next best thing: Get some help. It's not ideal, but technically feasible to find a helper to either a) watch your table for a while and handle business in the Den while you're gone, or b) go buy or bid for art on your behalf.
For dealers who basically only sell on-site commissions, option a) is a bit more difficult to manage, but a helper is still able to take names, the rough concept and contact info for later. It's not like you'd be drawing while sitting in the Auction, anyway, so those hours are lost either way for profit generation.
I understand that "getting a helper" is easier said than done, but frankly, even our full-time staffers (Mystifur, Nightfox, EosFoxx, TaniDaReal, Loewi, etc.etc.)
somehow manage their Den tables, and I know for a fact I didn't share my cloning facility with them!
It really boils down to priorisation. By far, not every dealer actually *stays* in the Den until it closes! A consirable amount packs up much earlier, for example those who already have much more commissions in their queue than they can manage to finish, anyway. Or dealers who don't expect the profit of the few people trickling by to warrant the hassle of manning the table. Seriously, if you're so sure that nobody's going to be in the Den anyway while the auction is running... why are you?
Anyway, I do agree that the PPS and auction is positioned more problematically this year for dealers. However, that's not going to change, so I'd suggest to find methods how to deal with it, rather than contemplate how the schedule is problematic. The auction has been moved to this (earlier) slot to take a SERIOUS load off of our art show team's shoulders: Usually, we closed the Art Show and our runners had to catalogize and mark any auction pieces, and RUSH them over to the stage to let the auction start on time! This, frankly, didn't work too well for reasons beyond our control, mainly bidding wars being fought during the panel closing instead of during the auction. So we changed this to try our luck with a different setup.
Regarding the Art Sales.. those were running from 14-18 last year, fully in parallel to the Den. This year, you've got an hour extra, until 19:00, to fetch your art, for precisely the reason that Dealers HAD to decide between closing early, or getting someone to fetch their art for them! Seriously, that's an
improvement over last year's schedule. Granted, the PPS could've just started an hour later, but then it's running quite long already, and we didn't want to shove it even further back in the schedule. Might be worth considering for next year, though, I'm personally not aware of the reasons for starting it at 19:00 as opposed to 20:00.
TL;DR: Get a helper, or close your table for a short while. That works.
Hope to help, and see you on EF!
Gyro