Current location:	Santa Ana CA
Current mood:	chipper
Entry tags:	anime, conventions

...Everyday, everyday, everyday I write the book. Chapter One we didn't really get along...

Here are some of my notes on both conventions I attended, last week and the week before. Click on the photos to see the larger images.

Conjecture 6 vs. Ani-Magic 8, part 1

A weekend away and worlds apart from each other. Conjecture is in San Diego, on Hotel Circle in Mission Valley. Ani-Magic is up in Lancaster. So it's about a two-hour drive for me in either direction.

Conjecture is younger than Ani-Magic, but Conjecture is in a well-populated area (San Diego) that already supports another regular sci-fi convention that's over ten years old, ConDor, to say nothing of the monster, San Diego Comic-Con. And there are regular science fiction club meetings and other gatherings happening in the area, so there's no shortage of people with an interest in the topic and in convention running. In fact, the area's big enough to support a schism and a feud or two, but that's a story for someone else to tell.

Conjecture skews old. The only kids there were there with their folks. (Parents and kids were both fully participating in the convention.) Most of the younger crowd could be found in the Gaming Room. I could probably count the minors on my fingers and toes.

Ani-Magic is up in the Antelope Valley, north of Palmdale, south of Mojave. Lancaster's behind the development curve, compared to Palmdale; if you want a proper mall with a restaurant row, you get on the interstate at Avenue K and drive down to Avenue P. (The avenues are about a mile apart, I believe.) There's some construction going on in Lancaster, including a new convention center they're building somewhere. But generally, Lancaster's a bit of a backwater compared to the bright lights of Palmdale, or to anything on the other side of the hills (i.e. down in the rest of Los Angeles County). To put it delicately, there's not that much to do out in the desert.

The anime fans at the high schools are organized. There are anime clubs at Quartz Hills High School and Lancaster High School, for example, on my postcard mailing list, and I'm sure they come to Ani-Magic.

Ani-Magic, like most anime convention, skews young. There were reportedly 13-year-olds on staff. New kids turning up to work for the first time aren't terribly surprising, that happens all the time unless you've got a completely unwelcoming culture. I'm more interested in how well they're retaining their volunteers. If they were printing a program book every year with a staff roster, you'd be able to tell if you see the same names one year to the next. (I'll get to program book a little later, though.)

Hotel.

(Left) Conjecture used the The Crowne Plaza San Diego, former Red Lion Hanalei. Conjecture used a handful of the rooms at their hotel. The Fleet was in. "Fleet Week" now lasts about a month and a half in San Diego. The hotel told the convention that it was closing the room block early and the convention didn't have to worry about meeting the room night quota to get their most favorable price on the function space charges. The other groups were most military, including a bunch of WW II vets and family.

(Right) Ani-Magic used the Antelope Valley Inn. The hotel was full, packed to overflowing with fans, some of them sleeping 8 to the room. The two or three motels next door had the overflow, lots of people "commuted" on foot. I'm guessing that Ani-Magic is probably the best weekend of the year for this hotel.

Landscaped grounds.

(Left) At Conjecture, the Crowne Plaza San Diego has a polynesian theme going on, with lots of lush landscaping, tikis, and gazebos. There are lots of places that might be good for photos.

(Right) At Ani-Magic, the Antelope Valley Inn has grassy areas all over the place, and a landscaped garden (not shown) around the back.

The dances.

Conjecture had no dance.

Ani-Magic's dance was lively, energetic, and had some creative decorations. Someone had taken a bunch of big white pieces of butcher paper and painted art with flourescent paint. So under the UV lights they were very striking. Christian ala_mokita suggested that we should see if some of the people at Loscon would paint something like that for animelosangeles's dance -- I countered with, why don't we see if they'll paint them for Loscon's dance? Maybe with flourescent versions of the Author Guest of Honor's book covers?

Badges and Registration.

(Left) Larry Niven was Conjecture's Guest of Honor, "Fuzzy Pink" Niven is his wife. Both of their badges had their names and their city (Chatsworth) printed legibly. Fuzzy Pink had the only pink badge at the convention. Larry's was blue, like most regular badges, and had a big "GUEST OF HONOR" ribbon attached to it.

(Right) Vic Mignogna, the biggest name voice actor Guest at Ani-Magic, was seen Sunday without his badge. I don't know what his looked like.

Conjecture uses one or two badge designs, and appends ribbons to them to indicate special classifications. The ribbons were ordered from pcnametag.com at the eleventh hour -- less than a week before the convention -- and they were all "stock" titles that the ribbon company keeps in stock for easy shipment. STAFF, CHAIR, and so forth. (They ordered a few frivolous ribbons as well as their various official needs, such as EXPERT, to hand out sparingly.)

(Left) As it happens, I had taken care of ordering some "rush" ribbons last year for them from a different supplier, who had delivered late. Here you see Michael Thomas, last year's chair, holding all the ribbons that he had ordered for last year's convention and never used.

This year's ribbon order took into account the fact that they had all the ribbons left over from 2006, somewhere, but last year's chair hadn't handed them off to this year's chair by the start of the convention. So by Saturday at this year's convention they had more of a selection to mark people with. Saturday afternoon, they offered Larry the proper printed "Guest of Honor" ribbon to replace the big hand-made one, but he declined the opportunity. (Larry's a fan.)

(Right) Ani-Magic has different badge stock for different classes of members, similar to ConDor's system, so Dealer and Staff and Guest and Platinum and One-Day so forth would have completely different art and color schemes. You can see here that Alisa Grant, from "Drunken Master" has a light green badge. She sells live action DVDs, mostly martial arts stories.

(Left) At Conjecture, all of the badge stock was pre-printed before the convention. In this photo, you can see glittercat13, who has run Registration before at many conventions, typing in the name and address of someone who just signed up in order to print it on their badge. The label maker is just to the right of her screen, next to her water bottle, and the black device is a laminator. The unused badge stock is inside the cash box. (It should be -- you should handle badges, especially blank badges, as carefully as you handle cash.)

Nancy Bangaoil-Ulmer has all of the pre-registered badges in front of her. The ones with the red stuff sticking up are the ones with "PANELIST" ribbons on them and with the participant's schedule printed on a label on the back of the badge. They're in the box upside down, but they've got "A-Z" dividers to make it easy to find them. You can see by the size of that box that they have a lot of different people on the panels.

Conjecture's Wi-Fi network gizmo is not visible, but it's near that potted plant on the left. Conjecture didn't have network problems, and I didn't see any unbadged staffers or ghosts while Reg was open. It's usually Kris's practice to get badges on staffers as early as possible, along with anyone else who's pre-registered and hanging around before the convention starts.

On Friday morning, Ani-Magic had network problems that prevented them from getting Registration going as smoothly as they wanted, and in fact for several hours on Friday they hadn't issued the Staff badges yet. On Saturday I saw them running off more badges on their color laser printer in the office, a building away from Registration. This is where their CFO (Jack) was hanging out. Their pre-reg cutoff was the Monday before the convention, and he brought all the mail and forms with him to the office. When on Saturday the five staffers that I'd mailed a check for couldn't get their badges, he found my paperwork and wrote out on an "E-Ticket" form that they should give me five badges and not enter it in the computer. Taking that back to the Reg desk got us the five badges for Andrew Vo, Lisa Kim, Esther Kim, Marco Dominguez, and Sky Claborne.

(Left) Adam Tilghman was chair of Conjecture. His badge (blue, like almost everyone else's) has his name and his city (San Diego) listed. His wife has a regular blue badge too. The hot pink badge ribbon attached to Adam's badge says CHAIR. The ribbon on Rebecca's says ANALYST. The light pink ribbon on Adam says "... MrPants" which some anonymous person (who was not buddykat) gave to him.

(Right) Revell Walker posts as AM Chair, and is listed as CEO of Ani-Magic. There's rumor that Lenny was actually the chair of the convention. I can't tell from this distance. Revell wore a yellow polo shirt every day with "Staff" embroidered on it. (It wasn't stinking, so either he has two or three of them, or he washes it every night.) I understand that Ani-Magic has a special "Family of staff" badge, but I don't remember getting a picture of it.