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[ewu]

Dear FanimeCon Members,

Over the years, FanimeCon has grown substantially from our small club roots to one of the largest Anime Cons in North America. Along the way, we’ve experienced growing pains like any other convention or event. The staff of FanimeCon has worked diligently to always provide a safe and welcoming environment for all of our members. In the interest of further promoting safety for the FanimeCon community, access to the second floor of the convention center will require a FanimeCon Badge.

Some Key Benefits to this policy change:

• Un-badged wanderers from outside our community are prohibited from entering the second floor of the convention center. We hope that this measure will provide a safer place to participate in the FanimeCon community to enjoy our programming and events.   
• You may have noticed that the lines for many of our events and programming have gotten longer with the increase in attendance. As a result, getting everyone inside is taking longer. This new initiative will allow FanimeCon attendees to simply have their badge checked once at the entrance to the second floor. This will allow attendees to freely enjoy events and programming.

Some Major Changes:

• The layout of the Convention will change a bit. Full changes of locations and affected programing will be provided on the website, social media, and the forums as well as all maps that FanimeCon will provide.

We thank you all in advance for your patience and understanding as we implement this new initiative. We welcome any and all feedback as we all come together to make this upcoming year another amazing and successful FanimeCon!

For more information and updates please refer to the FanimeCon webpage:
http://www.fanime.com/csi/

[Kyra_Maverick]

Will badge check stations be located on the map as well? I'm mostly curious about the hotels connected to the con and the potential bottlenecking that will happen in an already congested area.

Otherwise this sounds like a decent way to streamline entry into other crowded areas like dealers hall and artist alley.

[Konekogami]

I love this.  No really, I absolutely LOVE this. 

As someone who gets regularly creeped on by drunk people who you can tell that they're not Fanime Attendees and are just there to snap some pics, make lewd comments and laugh at people. 

I love this.

o3o A+

[Nina Star 9]

Interesting.

Hopefully this doesn't cause more problems.

Though we all know that it's to prevent ghosting. ;] Hopefully it helps with late-night safety issues, though. (I've had plenty of creepers who are con attendees, though, so idk)

Are badges going to be checked all night as well as during the day? And are obviously drunk people (even with badges) going to be turned away?

[Barnes]

Now that I think about it, I found it strange that I (and everyone else) could walk upstairs easily, because there were no badge checkpoints for the main area.

I hope this new plan works out well.

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

I was worried that this was going to be some stupid SJW safety policy or something.

I guess my main concern is how this is going to effect traffic into and out of the convention center. Many people wonder all over the place, and with food, panels and regular returns to hotel rooms, not to mention other events, I can see many people going to and from the convention center a dozen times a day or more even.

Im guessing the badge checks will be on the first floor correct? Otherwise I smell a death trap if we have lines going up all those stairs. I imagine those checkpoints that connect to the Hilton and Marriott are going to be difficult to deal with too sense it has 3 paths leading on to the 2nd floor converging right there. And how are elevators going to work out? Im sure they are going to be put off limits and reserved for handicap people, but then you are going to need to have someone on guard not only on the first floor but the parking garage too, unless you can shut down floors the elevator can land on. Even then though.
The real question though is if those lines are going to move fast enough and if their will be enough entry points to get people in in a timely manner. From a generic convention center map, I count about 7 or so entry points, with traffic likely passing though the front and hotel entries the most. And those entry points will need to have corresponding exit points too, probably cutting potential traffic in half.

I guess sense their will be constant flow through the entry points that it will thin out naturally over time, but I am a little worried about that friday morning line.

I also imagine that the fairmont hotel is going to be the usual setup with someone checking badges at doors yeah? While there will be few, I am sure their will be other guests at the fairmont besides congoers that will have to have access to the 2nd floor, unless they are forced to take alternate paths to their rooms. Probably wouldn't be an issue one way or the other there, ghosts aren't going to host around panel rooms, there is not much happening over there. They will still have the first floor and outside areas though.

[Angelx624]

Well, I can see this as a good thing. It means it should be less crowded on the second floor, now. More room to roam around freely, I hope. And it will feel nice knowing that there won't be creepy non con-goers on the second floor. (^^)"

[Ecchi ja Nai]

Did anyone else happen to attend the recent Silicon Valley Comic Con?  It was also held at the SJCC and they had a similar policy where you would tap in/out with their NFC/RFID bracelet to gain access to most of the con.  In fact, when I first read the OP, my immediate thought was that someone from staff had attended and noticed that they didn't need to check badges at every entrance to the panels or Dealers Hall or the like, and thought that it would work well for Fanime too.

It was great in theory.  People would be able to move in and out of the different halls and rooms once they showed proof of registration at a central area.  There were a couple of problems with this, though.  They had a bunch of things going on both upstairs and at the ground floor of the convention center.  Due to their schedule and the different panels I was interested in, there was a lot of tapping in and out to get from one area to another.  The other issue stemmed from the fact that the badge/wristband check was set up basically at the top of the main stairs in front of one of the large halls - I think it was Hall 2 - set roughly where Stage Zero normally is but further back closer to the middle of that area.  While the tap in/out process was very fast, the sheer number of people and the layout of the second floor made that a major bottleneck.  In all they maybe had a couple dozen stations set up, of which only three or four were positioned as an exit.  All of them were in the same general area, so that quickly got clogged with a ton of people trying to work their way both out of the area and further in to where everything was happening.  It didn't help that SVCC apparently drew the largest crowd ever for the convention center, but it really didn't look like there were that many more people than the past few Fanimes.  What SVCC didn't have was anything going on in any of the SJCC side rooms or any of the hotel ballrooms.  Originally I was thinking Fanime would have badge check at the entrances on the main floor, but then I remembered you can access everything by coming in from the hotels, and there are all those entrances from the convention center garage as well.  I'm assuming Fanime is keeping their policy of having those side panel and viewing rooms requiring a badge to get in to, so I guess those locations will still need people checking badges at the door.

I really want this to work out as this would free up a TON of staff and volunteers from having to just sit there for hours checking badges, and I know they could always use that help in some other capacity around the con.  However, knowing how spread out Fanime is and witnessing how poorly it worked for Comic Con I'm just not convinced we'll see a positive outcome.  I'm all for changes to the con with the hopes of improving things for both staff and attendees.  I guess we'll just have to hope there's a good game plan behind all this and see how things wind up. 

[tesla]

Since Fanime badges dont have the tap in/out that SVCC had, [yes I did attend and volunteer, was AMAZING!! ] it sounds like it will just be a jumbo badge checking station at all the 2nd floor access points. That is a lot of places, maybe some will get blocked? In theory it would be faster than SVCC because eyes are faster than tech. It'll be interesting to see if any of the big attractions (ie reg, artist's alley, dealer's hall) will have to adjust to this implementation. They would be hard to move/adjust simply because they need a lot of space to be efficient. 
I know AX has a similar system with bag checks (after the bomb threat a few years ago) when you enter and badge checks on their second floor. It slowed down entering the con a little, but they were very efficient. Maybe this will encourage more peeps to buy badges if they just want to lurk in the upper hallways!
Fanime is wonderful and happy and awesome, so I hope this will help it stay that way!!

[InsaneDavid]

In theory it would be faster than SVCC because eyes are faster than tech. It'll be interesting to see if any of the big attractions (ie reg, artist's alley, dealer's hall) will have to adjust to this implementation. They would be hard to move/adjust simply because they need a lot of space to be efficient.

I assume it would be faster as it would be a "check, wave - check, wave - check, wave" process.  I'd also assume / hope there would still be entrance / exit traffic controls at the dealer's hall, artist's alley, etc. but of course that depends on how the layout changes this year.  I could see there still being a queue to get into the attraction rooms such as the dealer's hall, but there to automatically regulate entrance speed and keep it moving smoothly.

[Misamo]

I saw this idea used at SacAnime to get up to the second floor!  I thought it was a pretty nice idea since that meant upstairs did thankfully had a whole lot less people and yes I know it is smaller then Fanime but it was something that I liked and I'm glad the staff is going to try it for Fanime this year!

Just thought about this when I was looking through the forums:  To make things easier I think that 18+ attendees should have a different color wristband or something like that to make it easier for the panels younger ones aren't supposed to get into.  Just a suggestion that may make things a bit easier on everyone!

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

Just thought about this when I was looking through the forums:  To make things easier I think that 18+ attendees should have a different color wristband or something like that to make it easier for the panels younger ones aren't supposed to get into.  Just a suggestion that may make things a bit easier on everyone!

This has been suggested earlier this year down in the serious business section. To save my typing, ill just quote myself.

Im not sure if there is a viable means to verify an age though. If memory serves correctly, in registration you can just put any age effectively, and the age entry is a age range even. I suppose verification can be done at badge pickup, but that might slow it down a bit and cause conflict, especially with group registration where most of the group wont be around to verify their ages. I think most importantly though, if you are going to mark age on badges, there might be an expectation that a badge marked for a certain age can be used in place of showing ID, and with that there could be an issue with people trading their badges to underage congoers. And if thats not allowed, then Im sure a lot of people are going to be wondering why it is being implemented at all.

These aren't all huge issues and can probably be remedied easily enough, but in the long run Im not sure if is all that worth dealing with either. I think it might just be easier to ask how old they are. You can be indirect about it and ask them where they are taking classes, where they work, or if they drink or something as well easy enough. Its all easy to lie about no doubt, but not any less then it is to lie to registration.

strike through with the irrelevant bits.

[MyAlterEg0]

Misamo wrote "Just thought about this when I was looking through the forums:  To make things easier I think that 18+ attendees should have a different color wristband or something like that to make it easier for the panels younger ones aren't supposed to get into.  Just a suggestion that may make things a bit easier on everyone!"

and
TC_X0_Lt_0X wrote "Im not sure if there is a viable means to verify an age though. If memory serves correctly, in registration you can just put any age effectively, and the age entry is a age range even. I suppose verification can be done at badge pickup, but that might slow it down a bit and cause conflict, especially with group registration where most of the group wont be around to verify their ages. I think most importantly though, if you are going to mark age on badges, there might be an expectation that a badge marked for a certain age can be used in place of showing ID, and with that there could be an issue with people trading their badges to underage congoers. And if thats not allowed, then Im sure a lot of people are going to be wondering why it is being implemented at all."

and I write:

This is ridiculous.  The bottleneck caused in registration would be horrendous!  This would effectively remove any benefit of group pickups.  The wristband or different badge is not effective.  People already share badges and can swap wristbands.  If a minor has an adult badge goes into Hentai, think of the repurcusions.
Criminal charges could be pressed (and someone will go to jail).
The con could be sued.
This jeapordizes not only the attraction, but the event (con) itself.

or

Say somebody decides to hook up with someone that has an adult badge, but is a minor.  The person is then in trouble by making the wrong assumption that they were old enough, and it possibly places the con in a precarious legal position.
The alternative? People wearing their government issued ID <- This is illegal, an invasion of privacy, and goes against the principals of the promoting safety.

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

Wait are you disagreeing with me? I dont know but the way your post is structured seems to be indicating that is the case, even though I agree with you and I think my posts agrees with you as well.

[Angelx624]

Fanime's never even had wristbands to begin with. You're probably getting it confused with Sac-Anime. Just a heads up. ^^

[MyAlterEg0]

Wait are you disagreeing with me? I dont know but the way your post is structured seems to be indicating that is the case, even though I agree with you and I think my posts agrees with you as well.

LOL, nope,  you're right... we are in complete agreement.

just explaining it further....like to add the clarify the money factor:

considering a bulk price (at 5+) of $49/500 with a daily need of ~40k at a cost of $3920 Plus tax/shipping (couple hundred), I fail to see the beneift of spending $16k on something that isn't effective...that could probably pay for 2 guests of honors...

[Firefury Amahira]

I don't really think that carding 18+ panels at the door is going to create enough of a bottleneck to justify special measures to indicate the 18+ attendees, honestly. Those events are all later in the evening, generally at times the con's crowding and intensity level drops off considerably compared to prime time hours. Between the lower crowd levels and there generally not being tons and tons of 18+ only panels, they can probably keep carding folks at the door to those panels. I imagine they'll still need a staffer at the doors anyway for usual tasks of notifying panelists when time's up (and in case there are problems, like the drunk attendees at the 18+ Fanfic 369 panel a year or two back that con staff had to kick out,) so whoever's on door duty can handle checking IDs.

As others have already pointed out, trying to card people at reg has serious drawbacks, especially for group pickup. Wristbands or other special 18+ markers are just an unnecessary and inefficient expense, especially compared to just having a staffer who's going to have to be at the door to a panel anyway handle the ID check on the way into the room. At least unlike in years past, they won't also have to be checking badges, just IDs.

[.3mm]

do you think it is safe to leave children here unattended by adults? or would it be better for them to have adult supervision?

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

What ages are we talking about?

[InsaneDavid]

What ages are we talking about?

That's the key.  The San Jose McEnery Convention Center is a large facility and Fanime events and attendees sprawl out over much of the surrounding area as well, with tens of thousands of people at the convention and the surrounding downtown area over the course of the weekend.