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Sailor S
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I thought people have been saying that Otakon has a cap on attendance, but it's been increasing in number for several years now, so I guess that's no longer the case? Anyways, shame I couldn't attend this year, but 3 conventions in one year just isn't financially possible for me. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5933 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I pre-reg'd and picked up my badge on Thursday night. I am grateful that I did. The pre-reg line on Friday wrapped around the convention center all morning and into the afternoon. I can believe the three hour wait just to pick up badges.
The gaming hall seemed lack luster this year. There seemed to be less gaming gear in the hall and larger open areas. I could be wrong, and I would like to hear what others have to say on this one. Not much you can do about filled up panels and workshops, other than putting them in bigger rooms, which cannot be done easily or perhaps at all, without moving the venue. My biggest complainant is with Funimation and their fake Geneon Retrospective. When we walked in Hetalia was up on the big screens, nothing about Geneon. No videos and no graphics. Just a ten minute talk about how they love the Geneon titles, and that HellSing Ultimate and Serial Experiment Lain were coming. Then straight into all things Hetalia. After a late con Saturday evening, I get up early to attend a 9:30 am Sunday morning Geneon panel, just to get the bait and switch. I don't begrudge the Hetalia fans their enjoyment, but if Funimation is going to advertise a Geneon Retrospective, then they better deliver a Retrospective. This was a disservice to Hetalia fans also, who probably would have loved this panel if they knew about it. |
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penguintruth
 Posts: 8501 Location: Penguinopolis |
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Oh really? I hadn't been to Otakon since 2006, and I only went once before, the year before, but both 2005 and 2006's Otakon seemed far more organized than this year's. This year's seemed like a pretty big mess. Yeah, I know there's more people now, but still. The staff is incompetent at best. They are ill-informed, many are ill-mannered, disorganized, they guess at things instead of getting confirmations, and it feels like they play most things by ear. And things kept getting cancelled, delayed, moved back, and mismanaged. Autograph lines were especially mismanaged. It was a total sh*tfest as far as organization. I still had fun despite Otakon staff, but it's probably the last time I'll attend. They are offensively bad at their jobs. |
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Maidenoftheredhand
 Posts: 2634 |
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My 6th Otakon but my first time back since 2009. This was definitely one of the best cons for me: great panels, great guests, and a terrific Sunday musical guests.
The licensing announcements were kind of lame this yr but that's not the fault of Otakon. My only real issue was the Friday pre-reg line. It was ridiculous. The issue is they let people register to the very last minute & a line that ends up being longer than your regular registration line happens. |
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jvowles
Otakon Representative
 Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
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We had an attendance cap in 2005 and 2006 only, because in the wake of L'Arc and our pace of growth at that time, we were concerned about our ability to manage another year of 20% or better growth. (We'd also been advised to do so by the fire marshall at the time.) Since then, we've expanded to engulf another entire convention building in the Hilton, made our Arena use permanent for Masquerade, forged a deal on many more hotels for members to sleep in, re-arranged the layout a few times, and adjusted our room use. |
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jvowles
Otakon Representative
Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
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I found out about this on Sunday -- apparently the person from Funimation overseeing the retrospective had a family emergency and they substituted their other prepared panel instead. I wish I'd had notice, but even then apparently the emergency happened Saturday night and they either had very little time to communicate a change to us, or simply forgot in the scramble to cover the missing person. (EDIT TO ADD) In fact, after talking to them, it turned out that Funimation was waiting on some approvals from Japan anyway, so they wouldn't really have been able to do the panel they wanted to, and they'd attempted to give notice but it didn't get to us in time. Again, a shame, but sometimes these things happen. I understand that they covered as much Geneon territory as they could anyway, both at the beginning of the hour and during the Q&A. In any case it's a bit unfair to characterize it as a bait-and-switch, as there was clearly no intent to mislead. Last edited by jvowles on Wed Aug 01, 2012 11:53 am; edited 1 time in total |
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jvowles
Otakon Representative
Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
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Your experience seems to be at odds with the many other folks who have singled out autograph line management for kudos (with the sole exception of Jason David Frank's sessions, which were complicated by attempts to satisfy overwhelming demand -- we share the blame with his management for not communicating those very well). I have yet to encounter a convention that doesn't have last-minute scheduling changes, but *ALL* of ours were posted at the rooms and blasted through the website, live feeds throughout the con, and official Twitter. We canceled only one panel that I recall, because the panelists never showed up. And I've already addressed the situation with the Geneon retrospective. That said, you've gone out of your way on these and other forums to communicate your lack of pleasure in the most mean-spirited fashion possible, and you've been especially rude about staff who worked themselves to exhaustion keeping up with crowds and last-minute surprises from our industry partners and guests. I'm sorry your impression of our staff is not a good one, but you are pretty much trolling at this point and I will ask that you stop doing so. |
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Yoda117
Posts: 406 |
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I got to witness this one first hand and there's good and bad to take away from it. Bad: the line was wedged between his booth and one of the cafeterias. This blocked traffic to other booths and really fouled the traffic up for the whole corner of the dealers' room. The lesson which ought to be learned here is that if a headline guest has a booth of some kind, some arrangements need to be made to have part of the line in a less traveled area (for example, there was plenty of space on the wall directly behind his booth, and lining folks up there with a staffer to escort small groups from there to the booth would have made things much easier). Since you've already gotten a lot of the bad, I won't harp on it (and frankly, it wasn't nearly as bad as I saw things get in 2008 - 2009 with some of the autograph lines in that room). Good: Fans were pretty accomodating, and picked up the slack where needed by staff (that's my only real complaint about the situation; they didn't seem to be controlling the crowd very effectively... it was less of a space issue and more about that). That said, staff were very courteous and apologetic to other booths which were affected by the disruption. Additionally, based on the situation they were very accomodating to attendees as the dealers' room was closing (i.e., very obvious that they wanted to make sure everyone got an autograph or picture with the man). Mr. Frank and his management also deserve some kudos for this. It was obvious that he had something to get to, but both he and his management made sure that they were able to get time with everyone, even after the room had been closed for some time (and then made sure to stop by the local booths to thank them for their understanding... little things like that go a long way with me). FWIW: I've been to nearly every Otakon since it's started (scary, but I've only missed 2 so far). This is one of the smoother run Otakons I've been to, based on my observations, and everyone involved deserve a lot of credit for that. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8501 Location: Penguinopolis |
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You need to look up the definition of the word "trolling". The intent of a troll is to provoke an emotional response from a target out of pure spite. Giving my honest (and thorough) opinion is not "trolling". Trolling does not mean "something I disagree with". Please familiarize yourself with the internet before you use it. |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5933 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Thanks for your response. Didn't blame Otakon for that one, it is laid directly on the Funimation panelists. Understand their reason for the changing out, and sometimes things happen. But the panelists didn't make any pen and ink changes to the outside panel sign and acted like everything was normal inside the panel. It was a very enjoyable anime convention for me and my family members who attended. Thanks. |
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jvowles
Otakon Representative
Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
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If you were presenting constructive, reasoned criticism, I might agree with you -- and you'll note that we have responded to such criticism, including taking deserved blame for our missteps. As a group, we have been very receptive to legitimate criticism, and in particular I have been addressing such concerns in public for most of the past ten years. So yes, I'm familiar both with the internet and with your particular schtick. Constructive criticism and alerting us to problems that may have passed unnoticed? We have always welcomed that. For example, Friday's registration suffered from some missteps this year in terms of line direction and booth re-purposing -- we were able to correct most of that a few hours into Friday, but it still made things unnecessarily slow for several hours until we sussed it out. That's our fault, and we'll fix it next time. When you devolve into personally insulting terms like "incompetent" and use other derogatory terms, refuse to consider extenuating circumstances, and repeatedly post incendiary and controversial posts on multiple forums where you know Otakon senior staff tend to participate, and specifically when you do those things instead of submitting legitimate criticism through long-established means...then it becomes clear your intent is not to help improve the event, but to insult those who run it. And that is pretty much the definition of trolling; your argument otherwise is transparently without merit. |
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penguintruth
Posts: 8501 Location: Penguinopolis |
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I've been on the ANN forums for quite a few years. I come here regularly. You think I'm plotting and planning to hit the places where Otakon staff go? Even I don't have that much free time. I'm going where I usually go to post my opinions about anime-related things. Stop thinking so highly of yourself. It's pretty reasoned criticism when the staff misdirected me at almost every turn and even getting to things hours early is meaningless when people will tell you to go to the wrong place, let people who were there long after you go ahead, and have zero answers to inquiries. What would you call this, other than incompetence? Oh, it's just a coincidence that all of this happens? It's a lazy excuse for the inability to do the job. "But... but... a lot of other people said we were doing our jobs well!" Then what are you worried about? If my opinion is the minority, why are you so concerned? So, from your perspective, I'm a troll. And so you give me more attention? You really do not know how the internet works. If my arguments are so transparent and without merit, doesn't that make you all the more guilty for continuing to engage them? You're spending a lot of time on arguments that are without merit. I actually had a pretty fun time at Otakon, but most of it was in spite of the staff, not because of them. |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5933 Location: Virginia, United States |
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In response to your edit: Fully understand about the family medical emergency and I guess this lack of approval from Japan. There was no Geneon Retrospective during the beginning of the hour. They talked about a couple of Geneon titles that they are going to bring out later this year, and how they love the Geneon titles and how they are going to do them justice. With the Hetalia title page on the two big screens, it clearly indicated this was a Hetalia panel. As Hetalia is not my thing, I did not want to spend the remaining 50 minutes listening to the Hetalia panel or the Hetalia Q & A after. Spent the remaining time watching Madoka Magica on the big screen in the other ballroom. 
The Funimation panelists who were present at the Hetalia panel had the time and opportunity to make pen and ink changes on the physical sign outside of the ballroom as has been done on other panels. They did not do so. The Funimation panelists could have explained the situation at the beginning of the panel, but they did not do so. The beginning of the panel was presented (with Hetalia clearly on the big screens) like nothing was amiss or changed. This is not an Otakon problem, but a Funimation problem. With all this post convention information from you, yes, you are right it was not a bait n switch. As to the fairness, well, that is Funimation's fault. They left it to the attendees to scratch their heads and wonder what is going on, instead of addressing the issue. Also with the additional information you provided it seemed that Funimation knew in advance that they were going to have problems with the panel already. I was looking forward to this panel, but as you said, things happened beyond Funimation's control. But the things Funimation could control they handled badly. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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If person who would have done the Geneon Retrospective was ill and they didn't have permission to do it anyway, then there couldn't be a Geneon Retrospective. It's like being surprised at getting sausages instead of a Full English when the canteen is out of both bacon and eggs. "Talking about a couple of Geneon titles" = "covering as much Geneon territory as they could". |
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Sailor S
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Except the person ordering the Full English would almost certainly have been notified at the time of their order that there were no eggs and bacon to be had. That's the point that TarsTarkas is making. It would have taken the panelists up there all of 10 seconds to announce at the beginning that "Due to factors beyond our control..." or to make a change on the sign outside the panel room apparently as had been done with other panels (I wasn't at Otakon, just going off what TarsTarkas stated). Instead they did nothing and didn't acknowledge the panel had changed, and that's what his complaint was about.
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