Forum - View topicInterview: Ray Chiang, SPJA CEO, on Anime Expo 2016
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omiya
 Posts: 1849 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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Pre-signed cards/photos could help. Tickets could be issued for the number of pre-autographed items and all the ticket holders could get to meet the artist and receive an autographed item. In May 2013 I attended a handshake meeting at a Tower Records store where there was no autographing but everyone managed to meet both artists and receive a photo from each. Later that year I attended a concert at Shibuya O-East where the artist had pre-autographed literally thousands of items that were included with merchandise for sale. Sure, neither is the same as an on-the-spot autograph but may be easier in terms of knowing how many people can get to meet the artist and receive an autographed item. |
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Cutiebunny
 Posts: 1767 |
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This is a delicate balance because, of all the attendees that attend any convention, it is the sketch collectors that, as a whole, have far more buying power than that of the regular attendee. Yes, some cosplayers spend a couple hundred on a costume and some attendees will drop that same amount on the occasional figure, but sketch collectors will drop thousands on one sketch multiple times a year. For a convention, such as SakuraCon, that prides itself on how much it is able to raise for its selected charity, attracting as many high roller collectors is a necessity. If you eliminate the ability to get sketches at the convention, the sketch collector will just go elsewhere, bringing that money with them. What AX has done is have their smaller vendors bring in guests who will, sometimes for a significant fee, accept commissions, in order to alleviate the need to appease the sketch collectors. However, the guests sponsored by larger corporate guests, such as Viz, only sign pre-printed shikishi. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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I agree that its silly to fault AnimeExpo for having "too many" guests (I simply didn't elaborate on the point because I didn't think there was that much more to say). I say if one con CAN have a bunch of guests (both by guest agreement and within "budget") then why not. But I think that doing that with only the one singular event is "bad" for American fandom, but that's just my opinion. As to people arguing about autographs and autograph policy, good luck with that. You're kind of screaming in the wind. The whole REASON that all those guests go to AnimeExpo (as opposed to any other convention) is BECAUSE there's potentially 100k people there and they're at AnimeExpo to "promote" whatever title the company wants them to promote (or their own thing if they're the main creator behind it). That would be somewhat true with any event, but if people are ONLY going to Expo it's not because Expo has the most money it is because Expo specifically has the most people. Guests might only do 1 autograph session (or even "none") because they're there to wave and say "buy my product" rather than shake hands and say "good to meet my fans". I really think the INDUSTRY should be doing more to cultivate the community. Then the fans would CARE more when you tell them that animator wages are laughably low or the US company is near bankrupt. But when you only go to the biggest show in the country and see all the opportunities to interact with fans only as a glorified advertising spot, it makes fans more cynical. If you tell me that studios in Japan are shutting down or near to doing so, I care about that. But I've also met (truly "personally" interacted with) a fair number of anime industry professionals. Many of the smaller conventions are willing to shoulder the burden of cost, if the COMPANIES (and to a lesser extent, the people) could look PAST "return on investment" to have some of their people take time to interact with fans, I think that'd go a long way to improving things for the fandom. But if anything, IMO too many (if not all) conventions right now are HURTING actual fan enthusiasm for ANIME rather than helping. |
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crosswithyou
 Posts: 2899 Location: California |
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Offering sketches in charity auctions or maybe a special session for those who pay a fee (which hopefully goes at least in part to charity) isn't bad and I think those who collect such items may be content with those options. Personally, what I don't really want to see is people asking for sketches at a general autograph session because it holds up the line and significantly limits how many people can get an autograph. A quick doodle with a signature is cool, but a full-blown sketch is a bit much for a one-hour session. @HeeroTX Sorry if I misinterpreted what you said. You didn't elaborate on what you were agreeing on and instead made many points that seemed to contradict what you were agreeing with. Anyway, I've heard from guests who've attended AX and smaller cons that many prefer the smaller cons. AX feels too much like a job to them whereas smaller cons feel more like a vacation. So while AX may give their work more exposure and is better for promotion, I wouldn't go so far as to say that guests specifically go to AX because of its attendance numbers. (Of course for first-timers it works as a good wow factor though.) They'd probably consider going to other cons as long as it fit their schedule. |
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PMDR
Posts: 142 |
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The background checks sound awesome.
Having worked with another anime con for ~15 years or something, I can say we knew of or suspected or "heard about" certain unsavory or perhaps even criminal behavior from certain members of these professional groups and guests. Some were allegations and rumors, some were things we saw ourselves. Some guests have a long history of preying on con goers for one thing or another and word gets around about that. When your own staff is warning each other to be careful around a specific guest, that's great. But what about the con full of attendees out there who don't know to be on guard? We wanted to do checks like this but we had nobody to ask for a criminal history, nowhere to go for validation, no justification to take action, and even if we did ban somebody, there'd be 90 people demanding to know why we did not book some guest. We had to say they were too busy or there'd been a conflict of schedule, not that said guest had been involved in an illegal situation at our show or another one. Even when we had very good reason to believe a serious allegation was true, we had internal people who knew about it still telling us "you HAVE TO BOOK" so and so guest, period, even if they're really career criminals or felons or something, because fans have these expectations that they will see certain people at the show. And they won't come to the show if whomever is not there. It will look bad for your show! Which was fine by me. A con is lot bigger than any one guest. When you start making excuses about safety and such, and excusing guests behaving badly because it would upset fans, then things have gotten all backwards. |
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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Honest question, was this actual "reported" issues, or "known" rumors and gossip? I only ask because there's a LOT of "gossip" about a bunch of guests that possibly is "unreported" and thus, a background check wouldn't have any real impact aside from a FALSE sense of security. If everybody whispers that X is a pedophile, but X has never been "caught" doing anything, then a background check isn't going to change that all your people TALK about X being a pedophile but its all unsubstantiated allegations. If anything, the exact scenario you described is now WORSE because some of the org team says "we should have X" and you say "X is a pedophile" but after a background check the others can say "look, X is clean". |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5925 Location: Virginia, United States |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5925 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Not really, you are only checking less than 1/10th of the total population attending the convention. You are not even checking the paying attendee's who are actually the greatest threat to convention goers. What's worse is that you are making your invited guests, workers, industry, dealer's hall, and artist's alley pay for their own background checks. If you want to make that 'child safe' (false) motto, then the convention should be doing all the work and paying all the money for that.
I am sorry, but if con attendees are out wandering the streets of Baltimore and Los Angeles, looking for food, riding transit, walking from hotel to convention center, standing outside line for an event (with the public walking by), cos-playing in area, and they are not on guard; well, there is one word for that. AX had 90,000 plus attendees last year, none of them had back ground checks, none of them would have had back ground checks this year, and most likely none of them will have background checks in the future. The people AX wants to background check are a needle in a haystack when compared with the actually attendees. If there is anyone that parents should be concerned about, and that actually attendees should be on guard for, is the crowds of attendees that will be surrounding your susceptible young ones all day long, along with the normal city folk who commute, lunch, live, beg, and prey on people.
You are not the police or the court system. Allegations are just that allegations, doesn't mean they are true. We have plenty of innocent people in jail already, we don't need any more help on that front. I don't believe you are talking about known convicted criminals. If a guest is a known convicted criminal, you don't need any excuses or lies not to book them and to tell the truth in why you are not booking them. Allegations, gossip, and rumor mongering shouldn't be the basis of tarnishing your guests good name, but if you want to make sure your guests are not secretly axe murderers, then you should pay for a background check and you should do all the work to make it so. Then after doing all your due diligence, you still don't have the right to smile and say you made the convention safer, because you haven't. Because there are 90,000 plus axe murderers waiting in the wings. |
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