Thanks Fred. I want to confirm that, in no way, do I resent or fault established club members for wanting to socialize with their long-time friends at the annual convention. That's part of the appeal of the convention. I hope that, in coming years, I'm able to do the same.
I do like your idea of having a greeter or some other mechanism in place at the convention to interact with non-club members and random visitors. The membership booth is great but its location on the convention floor isn't ideal for recognizing potential new members and/or greeting visitors.
I just think that the club has many friendly and interesting members who could entice others to join if they were visible and approachable. Many of these members are already busy hosting their own booths but maybe something could be done on a rotation basis to walk the floor or work with the registration desk to identify and approach non-members to start up a conversation? Maybe even conduct a short poll? Even if this didn't directly translate to immediate new memberships, the info and data collected by these conversations or surveys could benefit the club in other ways like future marketing strategies, visitor demographic data, etc.

Just my 2 cents.