Messages

They'll probably announce it soon, but looks to be that Back-On will most likely be one of the headliners for MusicFest this year.

Proof: https://www.facebook.com/BACKON.JAPAN/posts/803814753022421

Translation: I know that a lot of people put their personal time and energy into running the convention, but that doesn't really matter...

I'm sorry if you feel that way. I personally know that many registration staff did not sleep Thursday-Friday night because we had closed at 4am (after the line died down and we were cleaning) to setting up opening at 7am. Many of our staff on Friday were running on less than 3 hours of sleep. I personally could not walk on Friday because I had been standing all day on Thursday. Most Registration volunteers/staff work are incredibly dedicated and loyal. No matter what, they will work as hard as they can until the last person walks through those final doors and is registered.

I personally read all feedback concerning Registration and at this moment, I am planning some proposals for next year. If you have any ideas that are new, constructive, and unique, I'd love to hear it. Please e-mail me at registration AT fanime DOT com or leave feedback on this forum (as it will be read).

I would kindly ask you not to heed this person's interpretation of my thoughts. No doubt in my mind that the registration staff year-in and year-out works hard with all their might during the con days with the process and procedures they've been given, which is NOT their fault for the long delays in wait. I thank registration staff for working their butts off and getting everyone into the convention asap.

It feels like the cause of the delays are within the planning phases (which would primarily be decisions most likely made by the higher-ups), with delays to pre-reg online and some other things we don't have insight on. If the planning and preparation to the con sucks, doesn't matter if your staff works 110% if the process isn't up to it's maximum capabilities and bottlenecks during the con somewhere.  But I really appreciate you responding back here and that you are proactive in making changes to the registration line and having everyone wait less.

Some Suggestions I have in mind:

• You should have pre-reg up and running asap, hopefully by early Fall this year. That way you guys would have more time to prepare for the volume of con-goers and preparing the badge process.
• I think a good goal to achieve is to have the wait time of 2-3 hours back from like 3 years ago, since that seems like a premium now.
• I would suggest taking a look at how other cons handle their registration lines in-con and see what you can take from them to make Fanime's better. Sounds like biting off from others, but if they're doing something right, then why not mirror some of their methods?
• You guys should save your energy for the main days and have Thursday registration start earlier (like before, I would think around 3:30 to 8:00 pm would be great). If people say, "What?! That's too early, I get off work at 8 pm!", I would think when it comes to registration hours, your staff and their energy comes first. The late start would definitely cripple everyone overnight and for the following days, which I think wouldn't result in good efficiency and focus in my opinion. (Then again, I would understand if your reg staff isn't available until later that day too. There's a bunch of variables I don't have insight on and which is probably why reg picked a late start this year compared to other years.)

Translation: I know that a lot of people put their personal time and energy into running the convention, but that doesn't really matter...

Please don't put words in other people's mouths, but interpret it as you will as it is your mind. Everyone who has staffed this year is great. I care for all the staffers for their time and efforts, but if you're going to run a convention, please don't run it at the expense of ~15-20,000 people staying in line for half of the day and missing out on some of the fun events. That's neglecting con-goers time to actually spend their days at Fanime.

I hate to be that guy but I'm going to call out the Registration heads and chair/board on this. Whoever headed the Reg department and made crucial decisions (or lack of) this year needs to admit their mistakes and may need to reconsider doing their position next year. I know Fanime is a volunteer on-basis position and it takes up your own personal time, but with power comes big responsibilities and it's extremely unacceptable to run registration for a convention like this. From opening up online registration late in January (compared to other years, taking reg in January I would assume less time to prepare for the year and does show us fans you guys are not prepared) to waiting 6-7 hours in line for badges, the way everything have been running has gone down in quality and there should be no excuse this year as no power line went down. XD

Please spend whatever you guys need to improve the wait time and lines. Have a analyst or whatever carefully take a look at your process (cause there's some extreme bottleneck somewhere). Clockwork alternative is great if you guys plan to keep the sticker method. Less time in line = reassurance of great service. Plus if there aren't any lingering issues in the con-goers mind, higher chance of people returning to the con. I can feel Fanime can be more awesome with the new part of the convention center opening up next year and expanding to be an even greater con, but I feel like Reg is holding the con back in becoming better.

I know this is not an overnight process, but please make the improvement of the registration process the highest priority for next year. Fan relations should be #1 and Fanime has to reassure everyone again that they'll have a fun time, not play the waiting game. I love this con too much to see registration suffering and con-goers not coming back next year because of this.

Everything else about the con is great, despite construction. Hopefully reg gets fixed next year, cause I believe in the Fanime staff that they won't disappoint us next year. :D

[Runners]

Sorry to hear that Team White. Yes, I do agree that the Fanimazing Race this year was an awesome event and it should be in next year's Fanime. Everyone did great and congratulations to the Yellow team for receiving 1st place! I am part of the Dark Blue team that finished 3rd overall. But I do have a share of frustrations with some of the things that happened during the race. I also have some suggestions to possibly make the next experience a more enjoyable one.

Runners
The runner my team had on the first day was awesome. No complaints about him. Second day, our runner was ok, but she seemed very disinterested about the race and had no idea what to do when we were lost in one leg of the race. I don't blame her since she had not slept nor ate much before the race, but to the staff who didn't want to do it and made my runner go, great job for not taking one for the team, yeah? Whoever is in charge, please note the personalities of your runners. Obviously someone who cares about nothing but themselves receiving community service hours like the one with Team White or someone who isn't at full energy like our runner shouldn't be runners at all. Maybe runners should be people who are upbeat and actually enjoy racing around the convention with their team. Should hand pick them during recruiting for staff members way before Fanime starts.

Staff at Checkpoints
We were told at the start of the race that staff members will be wearing orange the whole entire game to distinguish themselves from everyone else. It would be nice to know that they can also wear other colors too before the race, as staff members who were in the peet's coffee and civic auditorium locations wore brown and dark green sashes. I think we should also be informed that they'll try to blend into the setting, because some of them were hard to spot. Also, I think staff members should stay at the check points to provide us an indication whether we receive the next clue or we just got eliminated from the game. (See next topic) Walkie-talkies would be extremely helpful for you guys to communicate with each other simultaneously, compared to cell phones.

Clues
The clues were fine up until the part when we had to get 10 business cards or take-out menus of any combination from 10 food businesses in San Jose. It was cool to complete the task, but one fatal flaw was the clue didn't provide us a location of where to go when we have completed the task. My partner, my runner, and I were completely lost at the juncture of the game as we had no idea what was going on. So our runner gave us the hint to go back to the place where we received the task to receive our next clue, but no one was there... Completely lost, we thought we were eliminated from the game, so we went back to the tabletop gaming area to see the person in charge of the game was there and find out that we just finished 3rd place. 3rd place is indeed a great accomplishment and I was happy to hear that, but a mistake like this in the game that I had no control of is possibly the difference of receiving 1st place to 3rd place. I'm not too happy about that. I did believe my team had a fighting chance of getting first place if it wasn't for this huge error. (By the way, 1st place received a pair of 2012 Fanime weekend tickets. 2nd-4th place received how to draw manga materials.) Yes, it is in it's first year, but it would have also been nice to receive an apology about it cause I didn't hear any kind of apology when I was voicing my concerns after the race.

Qualifying Round
I think it would be more fair if everyone had started off the quiz at the same time. The people who received the quiz first had pretty much an advantage.

Days/Length of Event
I thought it was a little unfair for people who did not have the weekend pass because it was a two-day event and it wasn't announced until the top 10 spots were secured. I think it would be awesome to either inform everyone earlier about this information or to have the race take place only on one day. Also, having a suggestive time frame on how long the race last would be helpful so we can plan our day accordingly if we wanted to go to other events during the day.

Rules
It would also be nice if the rules were written up in a nice, concise fashion. The sheet of paper with rules that I saw did not provide enough information about the whole event.

It was a good trial run, but things could have been better. Hopefully the race would be smoother next year with more exciting challenges!
If anyone would like to hear how the game had planned out from beginning to end, I could type down the various clues and tasks we did for the entire game.