make anime conventions better

[Heero]

And yet they all seem to do well, bills get paid, people attend and have fun, that's the important part, I think.

The above is the core issue. Let me pull out the "they all seem to do well" part, because how anyone defines "do well" is entirely subjective, I grant that.

I will note two important things
* "bills get paid", note the money comes first. My point was that when anime cons STARTED the first priority was promoting anime or getting together with other anime fans (even if it meant LOSING money in the process). It was taken as a GIVEN that the con MIGHT not make money and will probably LOSE money. I'm saying if you go in understanding that the convention CAN lose money, your reasons and views for doing it are TOTALLY DIFFERENT than if the bottom line is the money. (even "breaking even", but that at least is debatable in more of a "living within your means" discussion) I'm pretty certain you're still on ACML, how many people START conversations with "how do I get money" or "what is a valid price" or "where can I find sponsors".

* "people attend" instead of "anime fans attend". People on THIS FORUM have noted that they don't go to anime conventions because "they have nothing to do with me". That should NOT be the case.

Let me put it another way. Suppose you started a film festival for 60s & 70s animated classics (American, Japanese, French, whatever as long as it's old and animated). You putter along for a couple of years, maybe have a good year or two, but generally have a nice couple hundred niche audience that covers expenses. Then the Speed Racer release causes a nostalgia burst, you upsize for a year, times are good. But then, the next year you're looking at a hefty drop off, but you already signed the big theater again because they book 2 years in advance. I tell you, "it's cool, I got it covered, I've got a preview screener for 'Wall-e' and you'll get a legion in there for it, sure it's new, but it's animated and it'll bring in people". So you run that and get even more people than before to come see the movie. Sure most of them think your classic cartoon look like crap and a few of them even mock your original core for being no-life nerds, but bills got paid and people had fun, right? Now you're in full swing, maybe Kung-Fu panda will get a showing and why not throw in "Lord of the Rings"? (cuz heck, Gollum is CG and almost all of the effects are "animated", right?) Now your "core" is wondering "WTF?" and a few even complain, but its hard work organizing this crap, hey if you guys wanna watch "Hakujaden" then YOU go find a clean copy and get Toei to agree to give you screening rights. A dozen or so might leave, but they were outgrowing your show anyway, right? Now Twilight is in full swing and there's a legion of fangirls that were all about LotR that will probably transition nicely, and heck some of them might even check out "Prince Planet" or at least that's what you tell yourself. Maybe soon your film festival will take up several blocks and pull in major press and studios. None of them will give a damn about your 60s & 70s cartoons, but then, those don't pay the bills anyway so F em.

I'd say most cons are right now in the part in italics, with some probably even past that.

[davemerrill]

"Bills getting paid" is an important part of the equation. When we started AWA it was a given that we were NOT going to lose money, that we were going to be in the black, and that's how we played it; and as a result we could have paid for the first year in total on Friday afternoon, even if no walk-ins had shown up. It's a discipline that many conventions can't or won't follow, and it's been tough at times for AWA, but so far it's paid off. Bills have to be paid. Otherwise there isn't a next year and somebody's credit rating takes a beating.

I realize that people on this very board have bemoaned the state of anime conventions and anime fans at conventions. Some of these same people have, however, never actually attended an anime convention. So I don't know how much stock I can put in their anecdotal evidence. Have they been to Otakon? Have they been to Anime Los Angeles? Have they been to AWA and Youmacon and the (sole)Providence Anime Conference? There are a lot of anime conventions, you can't all paint them with the same brush. Extrapolating an entire nation's worth of convention-going out of one show in one town on one weekend is probably not going to give you a very accurate picture.

Your hypothetical situation is, well, the only thing the "Speed Racer" film inspired was a burst of confused movie reviews, but if I was running a festival for 60s animated film, which I wouldn't do because after you watch the three or four films worth watching you're pretty much out of gas, but if I was to do that and then suddenly I started showing movies that weren't animated or weren't from the 60s, then I'd probably change the focus of my festival to "animation" instead of "60's animation". In fact I would probably give it as vague a focus as possible to give me the greatest freedom of choice in terms of programming. But that's me. I like a little vague.

I actually did have a fan club for Prince Planet back in the late 1980s, when I got sick of anime in general and wanted to focus on what I liked. And in terms of putting fans of Prince Planet together it did a pretty good job, but once all twelve of us were in contact and had traded all our Prince Planet tapes with each other, we didn't have a whole lot else to do.

Speaking of the ACML, I don't know whether to be amused or appalled by the person trying to start an anime con at Kennesaw State University. It's kind of an example of going about things bass-awkardly. It's scary how many want-to-be con runners have zero experience in any sort of hosting of any sort of gathering - they've never run a fan club or held a big 4th Of July party or a meetup or anything like that, but by golly they wanna run a convention.

It honestly does not bother me if a so-called "anime convention" fails an anime content litmus test. I mean, I wouldn't go to it, and I'd probably make fun of it on a message board somewhere, but if somebody else does something somewhere away from me on their own dime, so what? No skin off my nose. At worst we get some funny stories out of it when they crash and burn.

[Armblessed]

I don't have a lot of knowledge or experience with the cons. Since I grew up in Alaska and there were never any around, I've only been to a few. So this is just based on my personal experience.

Some others have already touched on this, but I think the biggest problem is that if anime cons get too far separated from anime and more about whats the latest internet fad, they're treading on thin ice. They risk losing their loyal fanbase, they risk hurting their vendors and exhibitors (how much My Little Pony stuff can you actually sell, after all?), and they risk becoming irrelevant by becoming about nothing, not catching the right fad, or not maintaining enough interest in general.
Therefore, I think an effort should be made to promote an interest in anime and manga. While some could be done during cons by promoting and showing certain things, I think it would be far more effective to do it via social media in the downtime between cons. I don't think it would be too much effort, either. As a quick example, the convention could make an occasional post on their official site, facebook, twitter, etc..., just saying things like "Here are some great anime classics you should check out: "(Some cons may already do this, I dont know). Just something to try to maintain the interest of the people who are there for anime, but moreso to get those who are there for the latest fads to expand their horizons into anime and bring them into fold, as it were. Making lasting fans (and customers) out of them. The effectiveness of that is doubtful of course, but you'd get a few here and there, which would make it worth the time, in my opinion. Those converts might make others and take a stronger interest in the convention, perhaps even contributing.

[davemerrill]

I think one of the most important things anime fans can do to ensure that anime programming continues at anime cons is to step up to the plate and make that anime programming happen. Most shows aren't doing MLP or Homestuck panels because they looked at a blank schedule and said "hey, you know what would go great here, a MLP panel" - they are having MLP panels because the MLP fans contacted them and asked for panel time. Events coordinators at anime cons, they have to work with what they're given, and if all they're given is fads and flavors of the week, then surprise, that's what's going to happen at their conventions.

What anime cons need are dependable locals with the knowledge and the time and the desire to make something happen for their favorite anime show, even if it's just an hour on Sunday chairing a talk about something as easy and discussion-worthy as 'favorite Miyazaki films'. It doesn't take experts, just a little time.

What the anime cons need to do is to make it easy for the panelists - some of the conventions have these weird, complicated arrangements whereby if you do a panel you might get a percentage of your membership back. Some expect panelists to pay for a full badge, no exceptions. That's a guaranteed way to lose valuable programming. Certainly people who have a proven track record of providing interesting panels should be comped. Everybody wins.

[SteveH]

When I started Babelcon in 1979 my goal was to make enough money to pay the bills. I got REALLY lucky my first year. second year, lost some money. third year, made a little over costs (which, yes was seed money for the next). Took some time off but at that point the con seemed to be on autopilot to pay the bills, so goal met. Final year (1988), sabotage ended up putting me $1,200 in the hole.

I'm really having a disconnect with wherever Heero is coming from on this. Planning a con expecting to lose money? Where does that money then come from to pay the bills? Place you rent the video projectors from, they're not going to say "Oh, you lost money on your event? Gee, too bad, we'll tear up the bill for $10,000 you owe us". Hotel is going to want money for those suites you took out for your guests. Printers gonna wanna get paid for those program books.

See, my experience, there's a hella lotta upfront money you have to spend before person one shows up. I don't know about you, but I've NEVER been in a place where I can whip out $20-50k and carry the paper in HOPES I get it back from ticket sales. Cripes, I'd as soon go to Vegas for a weekend and throw it at some slot machines and the Roulette table. I'd probably have better ROI.

[Heero]

I was told by experienced con orgs that early anime cons LOST MONEY (ours did not), and if you go into it expecting to MAKE money you're foolhardy. The standard I was told was:
1. Make sure you have X amount of dollars, either personally or collectively
2. Figure out how many people you expect to see turnout
3. Budget for a little BELOW that
4a. If you make numbers, set aside any excess for next year
4b. If you don't make numbers, spend money from point #1

I NEVER ran a convention unless I was ready to eat at least half the cost. (either in con money or personal/board funds) You can run a convention on $10,000. I know because I've done it. If you can't pull 300 people for your con, you either shouldn't be doing it, or you better be willing to blow at least $10k on your "vanity project".

But why do you run an anime con? we currently pull small, by BUDGET, we can't afford to bring in foreign guests, but we've done it anyway, why? Because I think anime fans should have a chance to meet these people and I know some of them like to meet their US fans. And yes, I'm willing to pay for them to come here instead of me going over there to make that happen on occasion. And that's why you can find references to Texas in several recent anime.

edit: My point was NEVER intended to be that cons SHOULD lose money. My POINT was that if your focus is ANIME, then you should be promoting anime. If the con can do that within budget, then that's awesome. If the con can't, then either you spend some time in the red to build your fanbase (ie. MAKE new fans) OR you don't do an anime con. I think too many people say "we can't make money doing this" and rather than figure out WHY, they just look for a new source of "revenue".

[davemerrill]

When we started AWA we'd seen plenty of first-year conventions lose money with our own eyes. Most of them didn't make it past year two. And yeah, we were told to expect some red ink. However, we budgeted carefully, and it didn't work out that way for us.

The key word for us was 'sustainability' - I know that's a trendy buzz word, but it's a trendy buzz word because it's a goal that works.

I don't care what the focus or the mission of your convention is, anime, Star Trek, Thomas The Tank Engine, whatever; it has to be financially sustainable, in that it pays for itself, and it has to be entertainingly sustainable in that it attracts attendees and entertains them enough so that they return, and it has to be a fulfilling experience for the staff and administration so that they keep working in the organization.

[Heero]

Maybe I'm framing this wrong, let me put it THIS way:

If you're NOT focusing on anime (whether because you "need to pay the bills" or ANY other reason) why run an ANIME convention? Or if we're going to stick with the whole vague "what is an anime convention", then let me use Anime North as an example. I am NOT saying Anime North is not an anime con or is not a "good" con, I've never been to AN, I'm just using them as example because Dave referenced them and I looked at their website. (end disclaimer)

AN currently lists several wrestlers on their guest list. Just for the sake of argument (again, I am NOT saying this is a statement of fact), let's say AN pulls 25k people and of that amount, 12k are wrestling fans, 5k are North American webcomic fans, 5k are video game fans, and the other 3k would self identify as "anime" fans. For the sake of argument, let's say that 5k of the wrestling, webcomic and video game fans would say they like anime, even if that's not why they went to AN.

In the above scenario, you have 3k people who are at "ANIME North" because of anime fandom, with another 5k that maybe have enough interest to come if the other stuff wasn't there. Meaning, out of 25k attendees, only 1 THIRD actually have interest in the purported POINT of the event. In that scenario WHY are you still running an ANIME convention? You can say "gots to pay the bills" but WHY do you HAVE those bills in the first place? If you're doing it for the fandom, then why are you making so much effort to grab non-fans rather than just scaling down to manageable size?

Again, I am NOT saying AnimeNorth is too far afield or failing fandom, I am aware they have an interesting lineup of anime guests also, as stated I am just using them as example.

I also want to note, that I assume (feel free to correct me) that everyone is on here because they still have an attachment (even if not super passionate) to anime and would really like to hang out with other ANIME fans that share their interest. And yet, most all of you trying to provide counterpoint have self-identified as people that "don't attend anime conventions anymore". Why? I'm going to assume because most of the people at them annoy you. (but again, feel free to rebut that, cost can be a factor, but should be manageable, and distance should NOT be a factor nowadays as there should be at least ONE anime con within manageable distance) Now, I can totally accept that the people you can stand at 20 might not be the same people you're willing to be around at 40. But for all the grief Star Trek & Star Wars fandom get for their activities they have somehow managed to retain OLD fans while also bringing in new ones. My contention is that conventions are making the EXACT SAME MISTAKE that American anime companies made of focusing TOO much on "potential", casual fans at the expense of their "core".

[davemerrill]

AN has wrestling because the guy running programming, a big steel worker from Hamilton named Norm, well, he likes wrestling. He also likes the cutesy moe shows, too. He's got some local wrestlers who dress up in anime cosplay and wrestle in character. I'm not a wrestling fan but it's the craziest dang thing, seeing the ring set up, and they have the space for it in the convention center, so it all works out pretty well. Nobody's coming to AN strictly for the wrestling, there aren't any fights or drama between 'wrestling fans' and 'anime fans'. If there more than 100 people watching the wrestling at any one time, I'd be surprised. He was trying to get Jushin Liger (the wrestler) to come a few years back, but it fell through, which was sad.

There are ten times as many people at Anime North watching Neil Nadelman do "Totally Lame Anime" at AN as there are watching the wrestling at AN. That's a figure that tells me what people want to see at Anime North.

Heero, it really seems to me that you have this preconceived notion of what an anime con "has to be" and anything that deviates from this preconceived notion is somehow wrong or impure or misguided. That an anime con has to start a certain way, and maintain a strict focus, and not deviate from the true path. I don't agree with this at all. There isn't a ten commandments of anime cons, there are as many different ways to run conventions as there are fans, organizers, and cities.

Believe me, I agree with you on principle. I think anime cons should be about the anime. But at the same time, I'm willing to realize that my tastes aren't everybody's tastes, and my definitions of what's appropriate and inappropriate aren't everybody's definitions. I also realize that none of this matters a teeny tiny bit. Would I have wrestling at my dream anime con? No. But AN isn't my dream anime con. It never will be. That's not what it's for. There are 14,999 other people at Anime North that aren't me. (they cap the 3-day at 15,000).

I believe you are judging conventions by a yardstick that none of the rest of us are using. I'm judging conventions by these metrics: did it pay all its bills? Did events happen on time and as planned? Did guests show up and entertain people? Were the fans happy with the show? Will there be another one next year? That's the definition of success I'm using. It seems to me that you are judging conventions by whether or not they fit your definition of "anime convention", and all other metrics are irrelevant. I don't disagree with your metric, but when we're talking about successful conventions it's only part of the picture.

Steve doesn't attend anime cons because, you know, times are tough all over. I don't attend anime cons because... well, I do attend anime cons. I don't go to as many as I used to - I think in 1999-2000 I was averaging five or six anime cons a year- but these days I hit three a year; AWA and AN and the odd Anime Los Angeles or Ohayocon or Otakon every once in awhile, when time and money permit. But the main reason people our age don't attend anime cons is.. we're 40. We're grown adults, set in our ways, with families and jobs and vacation time we spend with our families on a beach somewhere, rather than in a hotel ballroom with anime nerds. Who can be just as annoying as any other kind of nerd. There were annoying anime fans before there were anime conventions, and I predict there will be annoying anime fans in the future.

I don't believe there is any 'core' that anime cons need to pitch to. Japanese animation is part of popular culture in North America; no matter how old you are you grew up watching some kind of Japanese cartoon on TV or in the movies. It has universal appeal. If you're running an anime con you should be pitching your show to both the lifetime anime nerds and the kid who just walked in off the street with his Pokemon game and the parent who liked Kiki's Delivery Service and the high school anime club and the obsessed Marine Boy fan who can't stop talking about Marine Boy. It's a big tent, there's room for everybody. It's more fun that way.

[SteveH]

OK, I think I understand now where Heero is coming from. Maybe this revelation will help keep the heat down.

Heero seems to still be in the 'Evangelical' phase of fandom. "This stuff is SO COOL! We gotta get this out to EVERYBODY because when people see (show name unimportant) they'll be just like me, just like us! They just gotta SEE it and I'm/We're the ones who CAN do it, so we MUST do it!!". Usually along with this is an unrealistic attitude about 'getting my show on TV so EVERYBODY can love it like I do!!'.

I feel the need to point out in LOUD TYPE that this example above is NOT, is NOT about Heero or an attack or putdown on same. It's simply a showcase of the usual Anime Evangelist, a phase most of us have gone through. Heck, I sure wouldn't have nearly killed myself hauling my 42 pound Eternal Beast of a VCR and a couple hundred pounds of VHS tapes in milk crates (Steve's Traveling Anime Roadshow! The hit of a number of Michigan SF cons!) if I didn't have the desire, even the need to share, to show off, to, yes, try to 'convert' people.

But Evangelism gets old. One discovers that MOST of the people who show up aren't PASSIONATE about the medium/genre, they just want to watch something for free, hopefully with boobs and blood in it.

Shocking statement: MOST of the people who call themselves anime fans are, at best, passive grazers of a faddish pop culture event. There, I said it. Yes I did.

And that's why basing the mission statement of a convention on Evangelical roots, that is, 'exposing the magic and wonder of anime to the unwashed unknowing masses' is, to use Scientology terminology, a giant 'stop', a path to failure.

Those that have any actual passion for the medium are already 'in place'. The vast majority of 'grazers' get their fill hourly via the interwebtubes. The only reason to GO to a con is to experience something you can't download and, regretfully, that means noisome things such as cosplay chess, shouted memes, cravin' the rave and so on.

bah. not for me. surely not what *I* go to a con for.