I should expand on a comment Dave made. I really don't go to cons so much anymore, because I'm out of work and have no income stream. I've been very, very lucky to have been made a guest at AWA and A-Kon (and general massive love and thank you to all involved, all those years) so that made things easier for a time.
The only other anime cons I have been to have been Anime Central in Chicago (about a 3 hour drive for me) and the locally produced 'nerd rave' called JAFAX, held at the Grand Valley State College campus.
So here's the thing. I am officially old now. Sickness has taken its toll, and I just can't do the '6 people in a room sleeping on the floor' thing anymore. I really need a bed. Room costs are sky-high compared to when I got into SF cons, so unless I'm working the Guest thing I can't even begin to afford a room. A few years back when I had a car I tried to 'day trip' ACen and boy was THAT a huge mistake. I just can't take 6+hours on the road and stuff like that any more. So that leaves JAFAX and since it's 'for the fans' there is just about zero of interest for me to see there. If not for going to say 'hi' to Dave and Amy Wilson (See Dave M's post about the Star Blazers wedding) I frankly wouldn't really bother with it.
Thank goodness the internet keeps me from becoming a complete hermit.
I wrote up a long reply, the site gave me wrecked, I lost it when attempting to post, and in the end I really don't care anymore. I'm going to summarize with my comment to SteveH:
I am well past the "evangelical" phase, I'm well aware that MANY people "graze" and or will not become anywhere near passionate about this material. Distilled to a nutshell, here is my problem, THIS is what anime cons are now:
* Convention has $5,000 surplus budget that they ARE going to spend, it's mentally committed not profit/loss scenario. (if it helps visualize, pretend someone HANDED the con $50k and said "got to town", $45k is committed to expenses, taxes, insurance, etc. this is the last $5k that IS going to be spent)
+ Option 1: Bring in 1 Japanese guest (pretend you can make this cost work if you think you can't)
+ Option 2: Bring in 1 - 2 American anime guests (depending on fees/popularity)
+ Option 3: Bring in 3 - 4 webcomic/internet famous people
+ Option 4: Bring in 1 "unrelated" celebrity (US video game voice, SciFi actor, etc.)
Again, the $5k is already budgeted, and already committed, it's not "debt" no matter the turnout.
If you go with Option 1, you might bring in 10 extra anime fans. If you go with Option 2, you also will PROBABLY bring in maybe an extra 10 fans, but they'll have 200 people in their panel rather than the 20 in the Japanese guest panel so you can imagine that they brought in more money. Option 3 is more "bang for buck", you might bring in 10-20 people per guest leading to an overall increase of people that have no interest in your base material but closer to actually gaining real ROI, some of these people might gain an appreciation for the anime they probably already knew about, but more likely you'll have lots of grazers that will now ignore your anime content for latest internet fad. With option 4, you start getting into likely real RETURN on investment, maybe you get 200 or more ACTUAL "new" people and see a gain on the original $5k you spent, but again, almost none of these will be interested in your core material and your choices are to continue trying to appease them or see them go away next year.
My concern and zealotry with regard to the "money" is because although conventions have been taking option 2 for years, option 3 is now becoming more prevalent and some cons are even moving to option 4. Option 1 is generally dismissed out of hand as BOTH too much effort and not worth the cost. This has two effects:
#1. As an anime fan, I have less options for conventions despite there being an overload of "anime" conventions
#2. As an anime con Org, I get people coming to my ANIME convention expecting options 3 & 4 and causing a ruckus, complaining, etc. over the lack of those options even though we make it completely clear that we do not have them AND they have nothing to do with the material we're promoting.
To tie it back to Dave's "AWA was all 'no Klingons'" back in the day. How tiring would it have been (or "was it" if it happened) to have Klingons and Romulans in the halls, on your forums and in your face asking about the blood wine banquet or wondering where the batleth pose contest was or getting their 10 friends to harangue you about having Michael Dorn come out to the con? What if you had 5 of them sparring outside the con because you're the local "nerd outlet". What if you had a group of 15-16 year olds in Star Fleet uniforms get grabbed by the cops on-site and now they're your problem because the police don't care that Star Trek and anime aren't the same thing and the hotel says they're in your group and are giving you nine kinds of grief because of the ruckus they were causing. (and yes, anime fans do these things too, but I am explicitly talking about people that clearly do not care about your event and it's purpose but are there anyway and are now causing you headaches)
So many what ifs! What if Ronald McDonald and the Burger King had a fight on TV with pool cues? What if grandma had wheels? She'd be a bus and we could all go for a ride. If if if.
Option #5: why do you care what other conventions do? How does it affect your life if some convention has an internet celebrity instead of a Japanese animation guest? Why do you care how other people spend their money or their free time? As near as I can tell, it does not affect me or you at all. What they "should have done" to "maybe" make what "might have been" a good convention (for you) doesn't count.
We had and have people asking for things we won't do. "No" works great for that. We had and have people showing up and causing trouble. "Cops" work great on that one. Here's the fun part: no matter how slavishly you keep to your perfect ideal of what an anime con should be, those things are going to happen anyway. People are funny like that.
You're in charge of a convention; have fun running it and make it the best show you can make it, the way you want to make it, and if people come, that's great, and if they don't wanna come, that's great too, and if the guys in Dallas or Dubuque or Denver or Des Moines do a completely different show that's totally not the way you'd do it, that's fine too.
The challenge to anime conventions is how to balance the enthusiasm (and the ticket sales) of these fans with the direction they want their show to go in.
My original point is that as long as you are focused on the "ticket sales" then you are creating your own problem. You vehemently disagree with this opinion, that is fair. Please give me your opinion on how to resolve the problem you created this thread to address.
I never said conventions should focus on ticket sales to the exclusion of everything else. I don't believe that, and if I'm coming across as saying that, then I apologize for the confusion.
In our imperfect world one must have money, and that includes conventions, and if you wanna have a convention then you gotta sell tickets. Actually you don't. Momocon did great work as a free university show, and TCAF in Toronto is a world-class comic arts festival that's free to the public. I wish more anime cons would move to a 'free' model. Not workable everywhere, I know. Cons need money to operate, that's my point.
Anyway.....
"The challenge to anime conventions is how to balance the enthusiasm (and the ticket sales) of these fans with the direction they want their show to go in." That is to say, we have anime conventions with a mission to promote Japanese animation, faced with an audience for whom Japanese animation may not be their primary interest, who may take Japanese animation for granted as something that's always been there for them. How do anime conventions engage this audience?
My solution: education. Anime cons need to put engaging and interesting panels about Japanese animation on their schedules. They need to get working Japanese animation industry professionals, and educate their audience on exactly why these people are important. Their screening rooms need to be curated above and beyond what's new, to reflect the best and the most engaging works in the field, old and new. They need to work with the Japanese community to put animation into the larger context of Japanese popular culture via panels and exhibits. And they need to put the word out about what they're doing and why they're doing it.
That's my solution. I work at every convention I attend to implement this solution, whether it's doing panels about creators, about studios, about series or films, or behind the scenes keeping people in touch or finding people to do the events I can't do. And at every convention I attend, I find fans who are excited to learn new things about old shows or find out who was behind their favorite show or that their favorite creator worked on series they'd never heard of before. *I'm* always learning new things about old and new shows. It's not an end to itself, it's a process, and it's one I happen to enjoy.
davemerrill wrote:"The challenge to anime conventions is how to balance the enthusiasm (and the ticket sales) of these fans with the direction they want their show to go in." That is to say, we have anime conventions with a mission to promote Japanese animation, faced with an audience for whom Japanese animation may not be their primary interest, who may take Japanese animation for granted as something that's always been there for them. How do anime conventions engage this audience?
My solution: education. Anime cons need to put engaging and interesting panels about Japanese animation on their schedules. They need to get working Japanese animation industry professionals, and educate their audience on exactly why these people are important. Their screening rooms need to be curated above and beyond what's new, to reflect the best and the most engaging works in the field, old and new. They need to work with the Japanese community to put animation into the larger context of Japanese popular culture via panels and exhibits. And they need to put the word out about what they're doing and why they're doing it.
None of these things bring "ROI", most people think "education=school=boring", so you get panels of 5 kids playing the fool and it fills a room.
Anime cons need to put engaging and interesting panels about Japanese animation on their schedules.
Most of the people that can run these panels stopped going to conventions, the few that remain get smaller rooms because they're not as "entertaining" as the latest internet fad and the con doesn't care that they're "useful to the fandom", they care about "what fills a room".
They need to get working Japanese animation industry professionals, and educate their audience on exactly why these people are important.
We hashed this out ad nauseum, "their fandom isn't hurting you" so why pay to bring out industry pros when "YouTubeBuffon#6" gets 10x the panel attendance and everyone is happy, especially if that guy is cheaper to boot.
Their screening rooms need to be curated above and beyond what's new, to reflect the best and the most engaging works in the field
Everyone watches whatever they want online, and why sit in a dark video room when you can be surrounded by 20 people cosplaying MyLittlePony while other fans giggle and make you feel like a celebrity for 30 mins. Sure you could make the programming enticing by making it more social and putting effort into the programming, but why bother, it's much easier to just cull down to 1 video rooms because "no one goes there anyway" and sell programming to the people that come.
They need to work with the Japanese community to put animation into the larger context of Japanese popular culture via panels and exhibits.
That sounds like WORK, and probably costs MONEY. You know what takes very little effort and rakes in cash hand over fist, having 10 different disparate fandoms that can all drown each other out in the din. Throw in a nighttime dance and sell glowsticks that you can buy for cheap and NOW you're getting it.
put the word out about what they're doing and why they're doing it.
What are we doing? Whatever you want Why are we doing it? Money
You realize when I talk about panels and curated video rooms and stuff, I'm not making this up, right? These are things I've actually experienced. I've seen 'em work.
I'm...not sure where this is going anymore. I must be thinking wrong or missing something.
What I am seeing is a bizarre dance, where Heero throws out a global statement, Dave replies with acknowledging that while Heero may be correct in some cases it doesn't fit observed reality, then Heero says the same thing with a slightly different tangent as if it was a completely different argument, and round and round it goes.
What I am getting is Heero attends a con that doesn't do exactly what he wants them to do, and he wants us all to know that.
Heero asked Dave "what would YOU do?" and Dave responded with a very reasoned mission statement. Heero seems to think that's just not good enough because it's not what HE thinks should be done. Almost as if he wants someone to state a position just so he can be contrary to it.
I dunno. Dave has been on the front lines of con ops for over 20 years. I think he knows a little bit about that stuff.
And a point of order: It has been my experience that no con really CARES about panels that put butts in seats. Panels are a pain in the ass. Often there is a scramble to fill panel rooms with content because people who SAY they want to do (panel XYZ) drop out or were counting on someone else to carry the bulk of it or their powerpoint crashes and their hard drive gets wiped or something dog ate the homework.
I sometimes get dragged onto panels. Dave knows I'm pretty good at talking. I have never requested to have my own panel because I just don't have the confidence to play teacher all by myself.
But there is a part of me that, if I had a good support person, wants very much to run a boring ass panel about all the connections, all the linkage, how Books Nippan and Pony Toy-Go-Round in the '80s dictated that current Japanese bookstores in America mark up their books and magazines (and model kits and toys) to the point that people, gaijin fanboys, stopped buying them, and how THAT led to the current pricing structure of American published manga, and Bandai's amazing unrealistic expectations and...
Yeah, gonna need a couple of whiteboards, lots of magnets, and several colors of yarn...
I am not responding with what *I* want, I run a con that does what *I* want (sort of), I was explaining what the problem (as I see it) is. Dave ran AWA for years, I know that, I don't think dave is some ill-informed fan. Are you giving me the same consideration? I've volunteered at/staffed conventions for over 15 years (not quite dave's 20+, I admit) and still run one. I also still listen to: con staff, attendees, vendors, artists and guests. You want to know what they say:
-Con staff (not all, but MOST) say exactly what I just noted. "Why have the useful and informative panels when 'PonyFriends4EVER' fills a room and intelligent conversation doesn't" (no, not in those EXACT words (usually) but the same message), I had a Con Org tell ME that MY con should shutter a video room and use the space for (random unrelated panels) because the video rooms weren't full and some people felt like their unrelated panel that got the small room because we had a schedule slot should have had more space then the small room they might have overflowed. I was told that would give us better ROI.
-Attendees (as I've tried to say numerous times) either have no deep interest in anime (and no desire to "learn" same) OR DON'T GO. (at least not on their own dime) It is NOT hard to find anime fans talking about feeling "out of place" at "anime cons" and I note that anime fans (even on here) seem to note that they're not "worth the money".
-vendors are disappearing and a few of the good ones have said flatly that people aren't buying anime goods as much, they're buying random plushies (not random ANIME plushies, I mean like llamas and crap) or other weird things, if anything. I've literally had a vendor BEG me to supplant another con.
-artists are selling MLP art hand over fist, not "anime" not "original" (if you think fanart shouldn't be done anyway) theyr'e selling random fandom STUFF (Ponies, Dr. Who, Hobbit, etc.) And in a relatively recent twist, are killing each other to get into artists alleys now in this new "flea market" marketplace. (selling hats, soap, steampunk creations, etc. and their primary consideration is always, yep, which cons do I MAKE THE MOST MONEY at)
-guests all have their hand out, and I'm not saying they DON'T deserve it, but I AM saying that when (anime) cons were young people were doing it for the love and promotion of the craft and many voice actors appreciated that excitement. Now you have (non-industry) people that do maybe 4-5 hours of programming (panels or something) demanding not only a per diem and travel/lodging but an APPEARANCE FEE to be at the con. And again, the argument is "I fill a room, so I should be compensated". Let me reiterate this just in case it's not clear. I'm not talking about "industry professionals" (like the ones dave said can "educate the fandom") I'm talking about people who RUN these "entertainment for bronies/tweens/overgrown-manchildren" events are going to cons and saying "I want MY money". And there are cons paying it. Why? Because it fills a room and gives SOMEONE at the con MORE MONEY.
Since this keeps being read as "do what I want or I'll bitch", let me sum up the tl;dr in a concise statement: I can say that I have heard FIRST HAND convention Orgs explain how they are running small regional cons FOR THE MONEY, and as long as that is the case "anime cons" will go to the highest bidder, whether that is anime fans or not.
I am TRYING in my own feeble way to explain what the problem (as I see it) is because that is what was REQUESTED. I am NOT trying to tell people to cater to me and my own personal whimsy. Based on his recent post dave thinks it's a problem of "education", I don't disagree "per se", but I'm saying you will NEVER solve the "education" issue as long as MONEY is the motivating factor BECAUSE there is no financial benefit to solving that problem.
