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Ah my room actually left a fat tip at the end when we left.

That's what we ended up doing.

I gave a tip on Friday, and our maid was a bit hesitant to take it.  Maybe because I gave it to her in person?

That's interesting. We left a tip on one of the tables, and it was still on the table when we got back, even though the beds were made while we were gone. I thought it was because we used the wrong table, but we left the Do Not Disturb sign up the rest of the time because I sleep during the day.

At the marriott. No waiver. Helpful little flier that answers a lot of questions though!

Can anybody post a copy of this?  I'd like to know what it says.

Unfortunately, the only reliable information I can give you is that 2010 hotel registration will open when it opens.  If it would help you to have an unreliable ballpark target, my notes from last year say that the goal was to have hotel registration up around the holiday season, so it should hopefully open some time around Thanksgiving to New Year.  However, in my experience, things seldom go according to plan, and things sometimes change from year to year.  I wouldn't be surprised if I end up being completely wrong.  ^_^;

i have never seen these until stumbling upon them now

The newsletters were on the web site last year, but they were linked to a rather non-intuitive location.  In addition to the web site, we printed about 200 paper copies per month, and they were distributed to several locations, including FanimeCon staff meetings and the No-Name, Foothill, and Tsunami anime clubs.  We printed 2000 of each at-con issue, and the main distribution points were the Info Desks, although we left some at other locations as well.

will we see this type of item back for next years website, or was this just a one-shot deal?

I have excellent writers who are eager to get started on articles for 2009, so newsletters will be posted to the web site this year too.  (Apparently, whether people will see them or not is a different question.  I hope we can fix that this year.)  If you're interested, I archived some old newsletters (the ones I helped with) at http://tenba.multiply.com/.  I know there were at-con newsletters at the Info Desks before I joined staff, but I don't have copies of them.

(In other words, this wasn't a one-shot deal. :))

If you have any feedback about what you liked about the newsletter or what could've been done better, or if you'd like to apply to work on the newsletter, please e-mail newsletter-staff (at) fanime.com.

I would wait for them to post it up on the site. It should be soon.

As far as I know, we're supposed to be aiming for September for the main 2009 design and online registration.  The current countdown on the main web site is only for the next interim site just to get the dates for 2009 out since the current graphics banner has 2008 dates hard-coded.

Hello!  I'm just curious how many people out there might want program guides from the last three years and don't already have them.  The poll is set to allow you to select up to three choices.

Hi!  It sounds like several people don't read the program guides at the convention, so I was curious about how people expect to get information about the convention.  Do people just expect everything useful to be in the schedules?  Or are people getting information via other means?  How many people normally check for new information when they get to the convention, or is everything expected to be posted to the web?

If not something to be printed in the schedule, then perhaps an insert flyer like how the video and live programming schedules are handled as well as the last-minute Gainax room schedule?

Just to clarify, the schedule I submitted to the print shop on May 12 was the four-page video and live programming "insert".  The GAINAX schedule was complete and frozen by May 19.  It had to be in order to get printed in time, and that was still cutting it close.  It was doable partly because it was a half sheet and partly because we were only doing one such last-minute schedule.  The number of attendees is huge, and printing enough for the entire convention is a very slow process.  Even if we were going to ignore human sanity, cut things down to the wire, and leave absolutely no room for Murphy, doing one page for 10K people requires a printer to be running for 11 hours straight, and the printer tends to stop and cool itself every two hours or so, so we're looking at someone staying up about two nights after coming back from work or school for every page of these extra schedules we do.  That means the information is two more days out of date for every extra page that gets added.  We're moving to using two printers that can be transported to the convention instead of the one huge office printer, but the two printers don't run as fast, and they seem to spend a night in a truck, so that means we lose a day's worth of print time right before the con.

We can see how it goes next year.  It depends partly on when BSaph would be willing to freeze the schedule (if she's still organizing it).  We can try printing a small quantity and leaving some at the Info Desks, and/or we can try shrinking them and fitting 4-6 per sheet.  If it doesn't work out, and if few enough people absolutely need a printed copy, some of the hotels have business centers that offer free printing to customers.  We'll try to avoid having it come to that, but I wanted people to know that the option is there in case we don't succeed.

Did Fanime's program book have fan arts? I didn't look through it yet.

The FanimeCon 2008 program guide had various art from the very talented FanimeCon Art Pool.  This year's theme was Feudal Japan, so we had ninja, swordsmen, merchants, and girls in kimonos.

If you (or anybody) can get me access to the ComicCon program guide being referred to, I'd love to take a look so that I can see what you're talking about.

Yes, our SOS staff was nearly double of what we had last year =)

Awesome!

But it wasn't enforced until now. That's the major difference.

I wasn't out on the floor much.  Were they actually more enforced this year than previous years?  (I'd like to think my signs made a difference.)  ^_^;

A "glomp me" sign is sollicitation.

They have always been banned by state law, not by FanimeCon.  Basically, the convention rules themselves haven't changed to be more strict in the last year or anything.  They've always been like this.  (I'd know since I dug up all the previous years' policies in order to write this year's.)

Did anyone happen to grab a business card from the therapist operating outside the Artist Alley door?

He has an ad on page 18 of the program guide.  ^_^;

I'm not sure you "forgot".  I missed Closing Ceremonies too; my reporters tell me that's when it was announced.  Check out Tony's new sig.

I can do it.

...especially if I get a staff position- coughcoughnudgenudge.  ;)

Sure!  Please send e-mail to publications@fanime.com.  Mention your forum nick, and include a resume and writing sample just for fun.  I'm going to reorganize and send out a questionnaire when I'm ready to rehire people on my staff for 2009 (we all get fired and rehired every year), and I'll add you to the list of people I send the questionnaire to.  Thanks for offering!

5 bazillion points to the person (besides us Staff) who knew where they were.  :P

Aw, I feel left out.  I don't know where they were.  Those do look like convention center chairs, but the background...  It could've been K, but the chair positioning doesn't seem right...

It would have been nice if the con had a lost and found

Did people lose page 18 of their program guides...?  ConOps tried to tell staff about it via e-mail and in meetings, I believe, and Reg and my team tried to tell people about the lost and found via the program guide.  Oh well.  ^_^;

I agree that Info Desk could use more info, but it must be a very deep-seated and difficult-to-solve problem because they've always been short on info as long as I can remember.  Even before I started staffing, I remember giving the Info Desks information that they couldn't answer about very basic and major stuff (like where and when the Masquerade was and such).  It partly depends on who's at the desk.  Some Info staff know more than others.  And it also depends on hours.  Info Desk's open hours weren't published anywhere at all this year, and even I didn't know when they were supposed to be open.  (They just weren't there most of the time I tried to stop by, but I only had time to do that in the wee hours.)  When the Info Desk isn't open, random people seem to sit at the tables just to rest their heels.  Unless people make sure that the people behind the Info Desk have staff badges, they might not be talking to real Info Desk staff people.

For an online version of the newsletters, see the bottom of http://www.fanime.com/about/downloadable-flyers
I believe the URLs are supposed to get moved soon, so it might eventually become
http://www.fanime.com/2008/about/downloadable-flyers or something like that.

Tenba, the hotel might give information about what restaurants out there, but except for common knowledge like "Jack in the Box is cheaper than Paragon," there's no info about the relative price ranges. Which, btw, would be enormously helpful.

Hm...  You're right; the information doesn't seem to be readily available.  I thought I saw it online before somewhere.  I'll see if I can get a reporter to go collect it, but I can't make any promises.

Times for the autograph sessions were not on the schedule. And by the time they were posted on the door near artist alley, it was already the day of said session. I almost missed one I wanted to go to because I had left the item in my hotel room in the Fairmont. X.x;

I'm sorry about that, but it takes one to two weeks to print the schedule, so we didn't have the information about the autographs and demos or the GAINAX room in time.

Detailed information concerning cosplayer's rights and confiscating policies would be nice. (If there is even any.) Also, basic DOs and DON'Ts concerning guests might be rather nice. Not the basic stuff we all know but stuff relative towards the guests so we don't feel afraid we might offend them.

Those are great ideas.  Attendee rights and complaint procedures should be possible.  I'm not so sure if we'll be successful getting guest-specific etiquette information (I'm guessing you mean things like, "Please do not ask Yamaga-san about fansubs when Bandai is in the room"?), but I'll try.