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As a note, FYI: You cannot give out samples of food at a panel. It's a restriction placed on us by the Hotel/Convention Center, and not something I or my staff can do anything about. Even still packaged consumables are not allowed to be given out, as samples, as prizes, or in any other way at a panel.

The panelists are welcome to have snacks for themselves up on stage, but they cannot share them with the audience as part of the panel.

You'd definitely be able to give a panel showing video of how to make certain foods, and giving recipes, sharing tips, etc... but no samples, sorry.

Apologies for the late reply.

The Hetalia panel that was approved was the one that was submitted with a title only of 'Hetalia'. And yes, there were at least 4 or 5 different hetalia panels submitted. There may be another one approved this next round.

@Marisuga: If you need the text of your panel submission back, please send an e-mail to panelsATfanimeDOTcom, and include the original title of your panel. One of our staff will mail it back to the original contact on the submission form.

@Armored-Heart: We anticipate that several panels might need time/day changes due to the change in the masquerade scheduling. I replied to your e-mail just a bit ago.

Also: My apologies to those still waiting to hear back. I'll be attempting to contact as many of you as possible today.

Preliminary Notice of 1st Round Panel Approvals

These are the panels that were approved in the first round, in alphabetical order. They should appear on the website with full descriptions soon. (Please e-mail any questions to panels AT fanime DOT com and panel staff will get back to you as soon as we are able.)

Abridging a Series
Awesomely Bad J-Music Videos
Banzai Arcade 2.5
Banzai Arcade Lite
Con survival for Dummies
Cthulu for President
Gaia Variety Hour
Gannon-Banned
Hentai for the Ladies
Hetalia
How to Make a Cosplay Group
Intro to Memes
Jpop Vs. Kpop Battle Royale
Let's Buy Toys
Manga Censorship Hall of Fame
Naruto 101
Official Gaia Panel
Pokemon DS Café
The Dub Show
The Great Debate
Visual Kei - More than Music

Hey everyone! Here's an update!

We've done a tentative round of approvals for the first round this morning.

54 panels were submitted as of 11am this morning. We looked through them all, and tentatively chose 21 to be approved at the moment.

I'm planning to review these choices with some other staff members and announce the final list of approved panels for this round on Wednesday the 9th, in the evening. Probably you'll get a preview here in the forums first with just panel titles, and the full descriptions should go up on the website shortly after.

Please don't be overly alarmed if your panels were not approved in this first round. They'll be re-considered for the second round, which should be in approximately 1 month. If there was an issue or possible complication with your panel, panel staff will contact you via e-mail to discuss within the next week (ideally), or two (more realistically).

As a note, just because your panel wasn't approved this round, doesn't mean there was anything wrong with it. :) For this first, relatively early, round, we focused on approving panels to fill roughly 1/5 of the total available time-slots. That worked out to approximately 29 hours - so we culled 30 hours worth of programming from the current submissions for approval. We don't want to approve too much too early, as at this point we are not yet certain how many hours the GOH panels will take, nor have we received very many of the Industry panel submissions yet, so we are being cautiously selective.  ;)

If you have any questions I failed to provide for, feel free to post them in reply here, or to e-mail 'panels AT fanime DOT com' with your question.

Hisuitsume, would it be a problem if someone else were to register the panel under their name with another assistant and I co-host it with them?

It doesn't matter who registers the panel, beyond that being the point of contact me and my staff will use when setting up the panel. Basically, whoever submits the panel 'owns' it, and any changes to it have to be approved by them. Hopefully that makes sense. :)

My Co-head came up with a great idea for your panel title today, and I liked it.

How about: Pokemon DS Cafe

Adding in the console makes it more clear that you ought to bring your DS with you, and perhaps people won't be expecting food if the title focuses attention on the game system? :)

[first round of approvals in the first or second week of February]

Hello everyone!

The panel form has been live for about 30 hours currently, and I have about 19 panel submissions, with at least that many more expected within the next few days. I also have at least 4 or 5 queries as to when/how soon people will hear back as to whether or not their panel was approved. I don't have an exact time frame or date for you, but I wanted to try and give you an idea of what to expect.

We are attempting to convert our panel approval process from one that originally depended mostly on WHEN a panel was submitted into one where the quality and popularity of the panels submitted play a larger part in the approval process. Your time of submission is still important, since we have deadlines to meet, and a panel submitted in January or February will have far more chances to get approved than a panel submitted in April.

The new approval process is still slightly in flux, as we are experimenting with how best to do this.

For this year, our plan, is to have several 'rounds' of approvals for panels. Only a certain number of panels will be approved at each round, to leave room for GOH panels, Industry panels, and perhaps higher quality or more popular Fan panels that have yet to be submitted.

For now, I'm planning to make the first round of approvals in the first or second week of February, depending on how fast the submissions come in. There will be another round in March, one after the Program guide deadline in April, and a final one (if there are any slots left), after the final submission deadline. Any panel that is not approved in one round will be reconsidered for the next round, unless the panelist is sent an e-mail letting them know that we are for some reason unable or unwilling to host their particular panel

As has been the practice for the last couple of years, any panels that do not make it into even the final approval round, will be put on a waiting list. There are nearly always at least a few cancellations the week before the con that leave empty time-slots needing to be filled at the last moment.

We're hoping this will help us continue to improve the quality of the panels held at Fanime. ^-^

-Rena

Suggestion: Since this is an Anime convention, and Fanime's theme this year is Steampunk...

How about concocting something to do with Anime characters in steam punk costumes turning into zombies? Or... at a steampunk event... or...  I'll leave it to you from there.  ;D

Just to confirm - your real name is not listed anywhere on the website, in the program guide, or the schedule. The only time names appear with panels is when they're linked to a GOH, or the panelist puts their own name into the description that they give us for the website and program guide.

We the staff, however, need your real name, because... as I said to one panelist who submitted under the name of 'Sephiroth', I host panels given by real people, not by fictional characters. ;)

It's also helpful if you are a fan panelist hoping to take advantage of the discount offered, since you cannot receive a discount unless I am able to put a name on a discount that matches the name you have on an ID.

As a possible suggestion - you might use the panel as a meet-up perhaps Friday or Saturday morning, and then contact our e-gaming department, or our table-top games department to see about setting up tournaments or things of that sort later in the day on Saturday or on Sunday.

-Rena

[You can find the current panelist information page and the link to the form here:]

(As of yesterday.)

You can find the current panelist information page and the link to the form here: http://www.fanime.com/panelsinfo/

I've removed all the threads from last year with outdated information.

Hmmm. The color coded cards really _are_ a good idea. Joyce - I might steal your idea to use for my staff to signal panelists when their panel time is nearly up. We discussed at our last meeting how we might do this, but failed to come up with an idea of colored cards. Thanks for the idea!

-Rena

I wanna come too... with my pokewalker...  ;D

That's true. On my current draft schedule, you're on Saturday.

~Rena

I have no problem extending the panel to 2 hours if y'all want it. However, I think Aya's concern is that she wants to be sure there are enough acts to fill that space without everything being awkward and dragging on.

On my end, it would need to be requested _very_ soon. I am in the rough draft stages of creating the panels schedule right now. At this point, it wouldn't be hard to extend the time. Next week, though, or even in a few days, it'll get a lot harder, as most of the time slots will already be full.

-Rena

Unfortunately, the chairs cannot be moved. First, there is no time to do so, as already mentioned, but it's also something that's part of our contract with the facility we rent the rooms from. All room changing has to be done by them, not us, and incurs additional fees.

There was an issue last year with not having any sound? I'm not sure what happened, but we can try to have tech on hand this year to make sure it doesn't happen again. Sound is pretty basic to a lot of panels.

-Rena

We always do. We have a tabletop gaming department, y'know... just usually not any panels...

As a note: I have requests for at least two... maybe three panels focusing on TTRPG's... I'm still looking them over to see if it's possible to accept all of them.

I have not placed a panel request, so it isn't me. The only actual reason I got about what happened a few years ago when the remainder of our group backed out is that 'it was during the masquerade'....not the best excuse, IMO.

I am just glad the idea didn't go to waste.

After looking at the preliminary panel listing thread, is it Ric Meyers that is doing this, or is this a different event(I ask because of the similar but different panel name)?

Now that I remember, last year Ric Meyers hosted a similar event. The only reason I remember is cause I took pics of everything (Patricia Ja Lee <3!). It was a pretty funny event altogether though.

There's a little confusion on that point. I'm still sorting through all the various requests and e-mails myself...