Suggestions for Fanime 2012

Started by mdarkpoet, May 30, 2011, 01:08:49 PM

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Direnkei

#20
I was annoyed with schedules . it was a publications error i heard though no fault but the printer people.
I wish the colorful programs that had info on the events also had the time  what the panels where. it always had been  to see be like oh that sound fun....what time is it??
I think fanime should make a Free official a simple Smart Phone App for it. I downloaded the 3rd Party Condroyd for 2011 Just to see what was going on since the schedule issue. It was a very cool app I could star what I wanted to go to and then if reminded me 15 mins or hour  before hand.  So id they made one for next year and announce it around the con i think it would be a hit!!So an official one would do great!!



Direnkei

I had a good GREAT Time. I think they needed to work on some things but nothing that really ruined the con for me.

show times where a little odd to much early anime showings so it was hard to wake up Sat to watch them.

also another problem(told to me) I heard was the late update of the No modern military I think less people would been mad if that was issued before the con since people already bought there cosplays at that point.

Of course  a lot of nice nice staffers as always never in 7 years had rover problems so another year clean here.
only had one problem where a staffer grabbed my boyfriend trying to go though a yellow tapper door since he had to catch his brother from leaving without his cell phone I don't know the rules but i am pretty sure they do not have the right to grab at you...BUT, on a good note when my boyfriend was done  misusing the door -_-;;. He said sorry and told he had catch him and the Person and i think they said sorry too and explained why it was not an enter/exit door.

Even with the more hiccups then 2010 i thought but you know the con people are only human and they'll do it better next year. It was my boyfriend and his brother 1st year and even with the hiccups they had a blast!!! didn't even notice and i even got them to preregister for next year so that was good.


wonderfinch

Overall, I enjoyed Fanime 2011 and will be attending next year. All of the staff I spoke with was friendly, though they seemed a little overwhelmed, and I was satisfied with the events and panels that I attended or participated in.

With that said, I have three gripes about this year's con and I would love to see them fixed in 2012. The first is the lack of schedules. I do not own a smartphone and did not have internet access at my hotel, so I had to sit at the information table with a list of the panels and events that I wanted to attend and get the times from a staffer on Saturday- only to find out that I had missed two and a third was starting down the hall in five minutes. My second complaint concerns the timing of the Masquerade and Black and White Ball. Both were scheduled at the same time on Sunday night, along with other popular events such as Speed Dating and the Butler Cafe. I would have liked to attend both the Masquerade and the Ball, and next year I'd like it if they could be scheduled for different evenings. My third issue is with the ban on outside food at events held in the convention center. I understand that it is against hotel union rules to have outside food inside the convention center, but in the past we were able to bring food and hold picnics on the upstairs patio near the Mariott. This year, we were booted from the patio and relocated to an outdoors location with no tables or seating. Next year, if this is to be the case, I would love it if some tables or chairs could be provided.

Somecoolname

CONS

Schedules-yes, I know everyone and their mother has already posted to complain about it, but it really drove me nuts, and the people I was with too. I was lucky, I printed out the site's schedule(I wish I'd thought to print out copies for everyone in my group though!) but I was really taken aback whenever we went to the Info booths, and they would say "no schedule, maybe tomorrow?" over and over, and there were numerous times when people would ask to see my schedule because I was the only one around with it. I don't really understand what happened? Why did you decide not to provide us with schedules/put schedules in the books? I would think a schedule at a con would be the first thing hammered down before anything else? I then find out the schedule is available to anyone with a wifi or a phone with internet. Really? That doesn't help those of us without a fancy phone or without wifi. I understand the schedule was made available to the site weeks ago, but what about those of the congoers who don't obsessively check the site everyday or don't have an account here? What about those of us congoers who only decide at the last minute to go with a friend to the con and then find out they were supposed to be part of some 'secret' club to get info?

Some staff were pretty unfriendly-Specifically the staff at the Fanime booth table in the Dealer's Room. My friends went to donate some money and the girl there pretty much threw the origami paper at them and demanded they make a crane. When my one friend, who has bad eyesight, said she couldn't read the instructions and was ok with not making a crane, gave the paper back, the girl threw it back at her and said 'make a crane'. What? And my other friend was trying to engage the two girls there, being friendly, but they ignored her and kept talking to each other and I THINK one might've even sneered at her. I understand people can have bad days and I am AMAZED by the staff's unflagging energy even on Monday but that one girl's blatant rudeness towards people trying to help her help a charity just disgusted me and I was tempted to tell my friends to ask for their money back.

Friday's Asian Films-I really wanted to see this movie, the first one being shown on Friday(I forget the exact title, something like J'aime Taipei?) and when we went to see it, the room was locked, and no film was showing, and we went to tell the Info Booth, and this nice man actually ran to see what was going on, but as it was, the movie was like, half an hour or more late starting and we had other things to do, but everything else ran smoothly, so that was just the one set back.

Semi Con/Semi Pro

Panels-I went to 4 panels and two were AWESOME and two were NOT awesome. The Awesome was: BookBinding and WigMaking, on Friday, at 10 and 11 pm were amazing. The people running those panels were smart, knew their topic, funny, sweet, I adored the man from BookBinding who actually had us get in a circle and made things more personal and was talking to us and made it feel less like a panel and more like a..conversation. The woman running the Wig panel was hilarious! She played around with the screaming from the room next to us and whenever they started screaming something, she'd go 'yes, yes I know, it's amazing, wigs!" and was just really personable and lovely. Can those two people come back?
The two I didn't like was 'Weird Manga' and 'How to Make a Webcomic". Maybe my expectations regarding the webcomic was way off base but I thought it was going to be about how to make a webcomic in terms of where to go to post it, resources for webartists, copyrights, making a name, whether or not we need to shell out money for our own site or if we can use a free one, how to get hosted on a site like keenspot or whatever. Instead, he talked about what he was currently doing on his computer("I'm going to click here and make it black, and then I'll make this white"..) and I was like, 'this is more of a how to use corel painter than how to make a webcomic' and I was disappointed. The Weird Manga one..UGH. The one blond who did the talking was a mumbler, and kept calling herself stupid and said, she actually admitted, that she only started looking for stuff for the panel 15 minutes before the presentation. They didn't really SHOW or EXPLAIN why the mangas were weird or anything, they just said like, 'he draws guro. Weird!" "She draws incest. WEIRD!" and didn't really go into details like: WHY is this considered weird? If this is weird, why is it published? What happened to make this manga so well known? Some of the examples they shared as 'proof' it was a weird manga was like..Standard fare. My friends and I left saying 'did they really just pick mangas that they think is weird and decided to tell us it's weird?" They didn't back up their statements, or bring proof to show what's so weird about the mangas. Also, they talked amongst themselves more than to the audience so I felt like we were intruding on their personal social time.

PROS

The Staff The majority of the staff were super nice, we even had one staffer run from the Info table to both video room hallways just to double check that the rooms were labeled correctly and staffers were willing to accommodate my deafness, I was worried they'd think I was lying or something (deafness IS the invisible handicap) but they were like, 'Sure, here'.

Water dispensers Were these new? Or have they always been there and I never saw them? I loved that there were water dispensers in the panel rooms and hallways, it was a real life saver for when I drank all my water in the water bottle and didn't want to shell out 4$ for another one.

Discounts at the restaurants Whoever's idea it was to have restaurants give discounts should get an award! Every congoer knows how great it is to be able to save even the smallest amount of money and the discounts really helped.

ONE PIECE I am a huge huge fan of One Piece and LOVED the cosplays, the merchandise, the movie and the marathon. It was a One Piece-ful Fanime this year!

Artist Alley All my money went to the AA, I loved it, I loved the variety, and the number of people willing to do commissions, I loved the atmosphere, I loved the friendly artists and I adored everything about it.
Also, I want to give a special shoutout to the artists who had the Loki 7-11 cup and told us EXACTLY where to go to get the cups, thank you!

Overall, Fanime was great, some setbacks  but overall, keep up the great work!

Jelly Soup

#24
You guys do realize this is last years thread, right?

EDIT: Or not, thanks to Ewu's mod magic.



eHash

I'd suggest a cosplay halloween dance to act as a fundraiser for the dance and maid cafe.

Himeno

Quote from: PLUMPKIN on May 30, 2011, 10:46:36 PM
"Is it possible to just mail out badges?  Fanime grows in attendance each year, and at this rate 5 staffers handing out badges to thousands of people may not cut it.  Is there a reason that badges aren't mailed out?  I understand that IDs are checked when badges are picked up, but only if you're a group leader or group of one.  I think that charging $5-$10 to have badges mailed out would be a great way to make profit, since postage for a single badge isn't going to cost $5.  I would be more than happy to pay that much (or more) if it saves me from 3 hours of standing in line.

If this isn't possible, maybe have more than 5 booths open during pre-reg pickup.  If there's difficulty obtaining bodies, then provide incentives for volunteering, such as picking up your badge without having to wait in line.  Do they still provide double hours on Thursday?"
Mailing out badges is really not a good idea. It creates far too many problems (they will get lost/forgotten/stolen and provide a chance for people to create fakes - just to name a few)

Yes, they need more booths open on the Thursday. Make use of the entire reg area on the Thursday, not just half of it. Staffing pre reg pick up should not be an issue. By Thursday afternoon, the rest of the con has been getting set up since Thursday morning (possibly Wednesday). There should be staff available in other departments to go help reg.

raltga

WiFi

Not sure if there actually was free WiFi in the convention center, but if there was I didn't see it. I seem to remember fanime used to have free WiFi in the convention center in the past, and if the direction the con is going to to have more of it's facilities online (like schedules etc) it might be a good idea to provide access to these resources to those without 3G enabled devices.  My group had no problems since we all had smart phones, but I'm sure we're not the typical fanime attendee.


Anime Hell

I don't know why Anime Hell was not at fanime this year, but hopefully it will be back next year because this is one of my favorite events and it not being at fanime this year was a bummer.


Video Programming

I thought the video programing could have used a little more variety in the shows it was presenting.  One idea I had was to have just one more room where each day would be dedicated to a different genre and show 2 or 3 episodes of various shows within that genre so fans can discover new shows they never would thought to try.  You could even have themed blocks.  For example: Friday is Mecha day where all the shows are Mecha themed, and from 6pm to 9pm you have a special "If you like Gundam you probably will like..." block.


Live Programming

I'm not saying to get rid of them, but many of the panels seemed like high school book reports or drama class sketches.  Not that there is anything wrong with these per-se, and I'm sure many folks enjoy them so that's fine, but maybe there could be a room dedicated to industry panels or panels that feature pros and/or guests of honor or have them marked in the schedule so people know a little bit more about what they are going to.


Music Fest

This is one of those "you can't please everyone all the time" kind of things, and I understand that, but I would like to see more variety in the musical guests fanime brings.  Two years in a row with 2/3 of the same musical guests makes me hope for something new at fanime 2012.


Gaming

Only complaint was no Naruto Shippuden UNS2 tournament.  Every time the game was being played on one of the TVs it drew a big crowd of folks wanting to play.  I understand everyone wants tournaments for the mainstream fighting games (SF/MK/BB/GG/SSB/etc), but this is also is an anime convention and there should be tournaments for some anime themed games.  I would say even themed tournaments where cosplayers play as their character and fight it out for prizes would be excellent entertainment on stage0 or in the gaming hall.

lyricaldanichan

Quote from: raltga on May 31, 2011, 07:16:20 PM
Anime Hell

I don't know why Anime Hell was not at fanime this year, but hopefully it will be back next year because this is one of my favorite events and it not being at fanime this year was a bummer.

From what I understood (I could be wrong) that the cost of hotel/air fair for Ryan was too expensive. Unless there is a drop for air fair from Indianpolis to San Jose, don't think we will see Anime Hell for quite a while. Only thing possible is to have a west coast branch run a version created by the Anime Hell guys...but that wouldn't be the same. IDK. :(

raltga

Quote from: lyricaldanichan on May 31, 2011, 07:45:39 PM
From what I understood (I could be wrong) that the cost of hotel/air fair for Ryan was too expensive. Unless there is a drop for air fair from Indianpolis to San Jose, don't think we will see Anime Hell for quite a while. Only thing possible is to have a west coast branch run a version created by the Anime Hell guys...but that wouldn't be the same. IDK. :(

I hope you are wrong :(
My partner and I were pretty big fans, this had become like a must-see event every fanime the last few years.

Maybe the thing to do is invite a 4 member band from Japan instead of 5 so we can get him out here ;P

lyricaldanichan

Quote from: raltga on May 31, 2011, 10:32:06 PM
Quote from: lyricaldanichan on May 31, 2011, 07:45:39 PM
From what I understood (I could be wrong) that the cost of hotel/air fair for Ryan was too expensive. Unless there is a drop for air fair from Indianpolis to San Jose, don't think we will see Anime Hell for quite a while. Only thing possible is to have a west coast branch run a version created by the Anime Hell guys...but that wouldn't be the same. IDK. :(

I hope you are wrong :(
My partner and I were pretty big fans, this had become like a must-see event every fanime the last few years.

Maybe the thing to do is invite a 4 member band from Japan instead of 5 so we can get him out here ;P

LOL don't think that would work too well. I was disappointed as well since Ryan does a awesome job hosting Anime Hell at fanimecon. Only thing I can suggest is have people let the higher ups know to get him back for next year and beyond.

Mantaray3000

#31
Schedules: I"m not really going to into much detail about this since I'm sure the staff at fanime is aware of this but.. please bring back the pocket guides! or if you really want to save time and effort, make a bulletin on the website saying there are no pocket guides available and that you must print out your own schedule.

Midnight Madness: This is was my biggest gripe of the whole con! I was planning and hoping that I would get to see True Naruto Style the movie but instead we had a two hour video screening of fake trailers and whats worst is there was no schedule on what was going to be playing! I also complained about this last year when nobody told us that the Berserk parody was three hours long and whats worst was that it was already available on youtube where as True Naruto Style is not played anywhere but at cons! I know the event lasts all night long but my point is that there are people who have no plans on actually staying up all night especially if they have plans early the next day! Please improve this by actually showing showtimes schedules for midnight madness in advance.

Video Screenings: Need to work more on screenings. My friend was actually hoping that to watch the break blade movies only to find out that it was going to be played really late at night which seriously dissappointed him. Might want to decide what could be worth showing during the day or late afternoon. "The best of series" such as AVGN was not the best of but a marathon from the earliest works to the lastest which essentially means that it was never a best of series to begin with. I was also surprised that there was no screening for the Gundam 00 movie considering how the director was there and all. My friend was also looking foward on seeing that as well.

Guests: I really don't have much to say because I was actually quite satisfied with this year's guest but there is always room for improvement isn't there? The only problem I had was that most of the guest were not requested from the forum so it really puzzles me at times on how fanime acquires guests and that if having a guest suggestion thread is really worth having on the forums since I sometimes feel that staff is just ignoring fans and just doing there own thing. But staff has already informed that they are listening so I'm not going to elaborate more on the matter.

Gaming room: My only pet peeve was What happened to the melty blood arcade machine!?

Those are my suggestions.

PLUMPKIN

Quote from: Himeno on May 31, 2011, 07:01:00 PM
Mailing out badges is really not a good idea. It creates far too many problems (they will get lost/forgotten/stolen and provide a chance for people to create fakes - just to name a few)

Yes, they need more booths open on the Thursday. Make use of the entire reg area on the Thursday, not just half of it. Staffing pre reg pick up should not be an issue. By Thursday afternoon, the rest of the con has been getting set up since Thursday morning (possibly Wednesday). There should be staff available in other departments to go help reg.

At the same token, I noticed that this year's at-con registration badges lacked the holographic "original" sticker and shaped hole punch (mine was a flower in 2009) used in previous years.  Without the sticker and the shaped holepunch, the at-con badges could have been easily counterfeited if one found matching paper.

If we were to mail out badges, counterfeiting can be prevented by using safeguards like those custom holographic stickers and shaped hole punches.  Yes, there is always going to be concern about counterfeiting, but I think the revenue lost from the handful of people who actually attempt to counterfeit a badge/hole punch/custom holographic sticker can be recouped the the amount charged to mail out the badges to the exponentially greater number of non-counterfeiting people.

Forgetting/stealing/losing a badge are already things that happen at Fanime.  People who lose/forget a badge can bring proof of payment and get a paper badge.  By mailing out badges, the at-con lines will be way less congested.  In my previous post, I wrote out ideas on how to incentivize the whole process, so I won't regurgitate that.  I'm pretty passionate about this; I'll seriously volunteer or staff next year to see if we can make this work! How do I sign up? :)

I completely agree with the 2nd half of your comment, if mailing badges is ruled out as an option for next year. :-)

kookiekween99

I say that if a few of the people who complain about Day Zero lines actually volunteered/staffed reg, it would improve things a lot. Just my opinion. If just 5 more people staffed reg on Thursday, wait times would be cut in half.
ASAHiCon Registration Head - '10-'12
ASAHiCon Web Head - '11-'13
FanimeCon Attendee - '10-Forever
FanimeCon Info Desk Minion - '14

Yuu

Fire whomever was in charge of harassment security/peacebonding.

Is there anyway we can install some sort of electric field for those people who do not weigh anything and can totally fit themselvers and three friends onto an elevator already bursting at the seams?

Other than that. No complaints. Had a wonderful time.
" Your aren't taking sides if you spread out violence evenly"

PLUMPKIN

Quote from: kookiekween99 on June 01, 2011, 12:52:06 AM
I say that if a few of the people who complain about Day Zero lines actually volunteered/staffed reg, it would improve things a lot. Just my opinion. If just 5 more people staffed reg on Thursday, wait times would be cut in half.

Or, as himeno said, people from other departments can help staff reg since by Thursday afternoon, the rest of the con has been getting set up since morning.  Then again, they might have still been busy setting up; I can only speculate.  Like I said in a previous post, there are certainly ways to provide incentives for people to volunteer on Day Zero, and from my understanding volunteers already get double hours that day.  I wasn't able to volunteer this year, but have helped at reg in the past.

Too late to change how things turned out, but I think it's completely healthy and productive to provide constructive criticism on how things can be run more smoothly next year.  If only 5 people were able to help pre-reg, we need to examine that carefully and positively brainstorm ways to attract/entice people to help next year.  As they say, you catch more flies with honey :-D.  Personally, I'm a strong advocate for mailing badges, as it is profitable and an at-con time saver, and will join staff if there's anyway I can help facilitate that process.  That's just my two cents, though :)

Sunara Ishi

My only suggestion(s) about the schedule thing is this:
   

           
  • Please format the (online) printable version so that it is printer-friendly. 
    A table per page is a huge waste of paper and some of those pages could have had 2 or even 3 tables per page.
   

           
  • If you release an online schedule again, could it please be easier to locate on the webpage?
    A link down on the footer under "Information" or tossed into "Events" perhaps? Searching for it after an exhausting day at con is not fun.
   

           
  • And bring back the booklets. Everyone loved those. >.<
~~~~~

Concerning the military uniform thing:

I understand the need to protect con-goers from "fakes" harassing and such. But the jerks are just going to find other ways to harass us. I was bullied by someone pretending to be a plain clothes cop back in '08. What's to stop that sort of thing from happening again? So please don't punish the actual cosplayers for the actions of a few. Or maybe allow it if they wear an armband/pin with the character/series name? 
~~~~~

But good work guys! You staff peeps are so overworked... I've been tempted to join on occasion but too afraid I won't have con time/cosplay time. O: I really respect you guys (and girls.)

As for those saying that other departments should help reg- I don't think you guys realize just how busy they all are. And how much they work to make things run smoothly. They aren't energizer bunnies. They spend most of the convention working staff; it isn't nice to force them to give up more hours of their free time so you can have more of your free time back.

As for mailing badges: My luck would be that it'd get lost in the mail and never get to me. Besides the convention has some really good (unspoken) reasons why they prefer to give the badges at con. I'm not really at liberty to elaborate.
るう~
o(≧∀≦)O
"Doesn't break even when run over by a tank! The most durable ballpoint pen in world!"-Nebula

PLUMPKIN

Quote from: Sunara Ishi on June 01, 2011, 04:17:26 AM

As for those saying that other departments should help reg- I don't think you guys realize just how busy they all are. And how much they work to make things run smoothly. They aren't energizer bunnies. They spend most of the convention working staff; it isn't nice to force them to give up more hours of their free time so you can have more of your free time back.

As for mailing badges: My luck would be that it'd get lost in the mail and never get to me. Besides the convention has some really good (unspoken) reasons why they prefer to give the badges at con. I'm not really at liberty to elaborate.


True, hence what I said about providing incentives for volunteering on Thursday to get more assistance.  If other departments are already overworked, then they're overworked.  However, the situation of only having 5 booths open should be looked at and hopefully improved for next year.

I'd actually like to hear these unspoken reasons as to why badges are given out at con.  Apparently, they used to be mailed out, but things changed.  I think that mailing badges would actually be at the benefit of everyone.  This would actually make the lines more congested, generate more profit, and lessen the load on the already overloaded staff members come Day Zero.  When it comes to planning huge events (I have experience in heading a logistics committee), I for one would prefer to divide up the work over time to reduce strain on everyone the day of.  Unfortunately, I couldn't help out this year and apologize, but how do I sign up so this can happen next year? :)

Persona

Quote from: PLUMPKIN on June 01, 2011, 02:00:02 AM
Or, as himeno said, people from other departments can help staff reg since by Thursday afternoon, the rest of the con has been getting set up since morning.  Then again, they might have still been busy setting up; I can only speculate.  Like I said in a previous post, there are certainly ways to provide incentives for people to volunteer on Day Zero, and from my understanding volunteers already get double hours that day.  I wasn't able to volunteer this year, but have helped at reg in the past.

If you're thinking of departments that are already there on Day 0, chances are they're already overworked by the time reg starts. Tech gets there around 8am and work until around 6pm, and AFAIK Logistics and ConOps are still moving and shuffling things around on that day too. But of course, we would appreciate some lovely, fresh meat volunteers to help out.

/offtopic You wouldn't happen to be the same Plumpkin who went to Cal around 2005-2009, would you?

forestof_denial


The white boards located beside each of the Panel Rooms, which listed the daily Panel schedule for the Room that they were immediately adjacent to, were very useful. Maybe next year there could be a white board or something similar in the Game Room that lists when and where tournaments and special events take place. Also, while the Video Rooms did have posted schedules, they weren't as easy to read as the white board schedules. Instead of posting a table schedule that lists all of the events for all of the Video Rooms, it might be better to post individualized schedules outside each of the Video Rooms that only list the events for the Room that they are next to. Alternatively or additionally, the PA system could be better utilized to keep people informed of Con events by making more announcements.