2007-08-25 20:55:00
In the weekend on the 28th of May, 2004, Stichting J-POP organised their annual convention. This time around in Almelo.
It had been a long time in coming, since last year's con was held in February, but finally the time was ripe! At 1500 on Friday the 28th the doors opened to our first guests and everybody could revel in a weekend full of manga, anime and japanese pop culture. My little write-up will be a bit unique insofar that it will not cover the event from the point of view of a visitor/guest. Nope, this time around I'll try and give the reader a sense of what it's like to be a volunteer!
Please forgive us for not taking any photographs. Marli and me actually both bought a photography license with our tickets, but we were both _way_ too busy to be bothered with taking pictures. Luckily there are loads of other people who took pictures so you should have no trouble whatsoever in finding some. Just browse over to one of the dutch anime/manga forums in the Linkage section!
On another quick side note, there's the t-shirt I designed for my friends Peter and Menno. Both of them had been going on and on at both A2k2 and A2k3 about tentacle hentai flicks and how they were sorely lacking at the conventions. This year around I thought I'd teach them a little lesson, which is why I made them t-shirts with the line "BRING ON THE TENTACLES!" (both front and back) with this picture on the back. Last thing I heard is that they got quite a few reactions about the shirts! :3 Anyway, the real kicker?! We were all quite amazed to see that A2k4 actually had the live action version of "La Blue Girl" scheduled!! So that made Menno and Peter quite happy ;)
One last thing: WE ARE ALWAYS IN NEED OF MORE VOLUNTEERS! If you have an interest in helping us out making a better convention, please visit the Anime Con forums for instructions. Contact either Ramon or Niels.
Yes, you read that right: "Thursday".
Since this convention kind of doubled as our honey moon Marli decided that we might take some extra leisure time at the hotel so we wouldn't be totally stressed out at the con. We made arrangements to get an extra night in the bridal suite which luckily was no problem with the hotel.
The nice thing was that we weren't alone in the hotel. A number of other (Senior) Gophers and all of the Staff members were also already there. This allowed us to get reacquainted in a relaxed atmosphere and to have a couple of drinks and smokes together. Niels (one of the staff) actually needed most of the night at the hotel to finish some of the subbing for the convention (this required all kinds of hardware being dragged up to his room, since the hotel TV didn't allow him to hack into the system).
Balance of the day:
* Dinner: 1.5 hours
* Drinking, playing cards: 3 hours
* Real con stuff: 1 hour :3
* Beddy-bye-time: Around 24:00
All of the people already at the hotel had agreed to a breakfast meeting around nine. We all agreed that this indeed is the one and only right approach to convention preparations: coming in a day early allowed us all to have a nice and relaxed start of the day!
Marli and me had been appointed Senior Event Gophers, which basically means that we were in charge of the Event Room (fourth floor, Mysterie Zaal) and of a number of events going on in the Archonia Room (large theater). After a number of false starts we finally got the Event Room built up as it was supposed to be. Luckily this was finished a bit early, since the nice ladies for the Ikebana workshop still needed time to set things up. The tech people who'd come over from Germany were absolutely great! They finished the video and audio setup of the Event Room very quickly, which allowed us to do the rest of the setup.
As far as I know setting up Video Rooms 2 and 3 went without much problems, with the exception of a couple of stalwart curtains. Around three o'clock I was sent on a wild goose chase by Kaj (yet another staffer) who needed pins for the Fan Artist Gallery and a hundred copies for Saturday's Anime Quiz. So while I was away for about an hour Marli helped Ramon and Kaj out at the ticket's desk, since the convention had officially opened :)
The rest of the day actually went quite well. Switching the Ikebana setup over a normal Video Room setup took some time and effort (Marli was starting to feel her back from all of the heavy lifting), but we were done in time for Ayashi no Ceres to start. I took two quick trips to the Archonia room to setup two panel discussions: the official opening went without much trouble although Niels made me chase after a Lina Inverse cosplayer who was needed for one of his jokes and who couldn't be found, but we did run into some audio trouble during the Nekotachi panel. And while I was running Nekotachi, Marli was helping out at the Anime quiz.
Balance of the day:
* Rebuilding the Event Room: 4 times
* Dragging tables on stage: 2 times
* Wild goose chase: 3 times
* Various stewarding tasks: 2 hours
* Free time: About 2 hours (eating, smoking, dealer room)
* Beddy-bye-time: Around 01:00
We got up around eight to have breakfast at nine. Our first gig was at eleven o'clock in the morning for which we had to prepare the Event Room. Luckily the setup would be pretty easy (only two tables, for the Dybex panel), but unfortunately we ran into some trouble: Niels couldn't present the panel, since he went to bed at nine and Jeroen Schiffer from Dybex was missing. He only came in around eleven (which technically is in time), but by then we had already cancelled the panel. Understandably Jeroen wasn't too pleased about this, but later deliberations with Niels fixed this. The Dybex panel was rescheduled to 1530, which would still allow the AMV compo to start at 1630 (giving contestants and viewers alike a little time to run to the cosplay compo).
We were kind of happy that the Dybex panel had been moved, since the setup for the manga drawing workshop required quite a lot of work (setting up the room in a semi-classroom fashion). There was another wild goos chase involved a white board, but that got fixed in time for the workshop to start. The two ladies who'd be presenting the workshop were very nice and they astouned everybody with their amazing skills. I reckon a lot of people got quite jealous at how quickly they were able to draw basic faces etc. At the highpoint the room was absolutely PACKED and we had at least ninety people in the room. I feel that most of them had a blast, since the teachers also put quite a bit of humour and interaction with the crowd into their show.
Now, while I was busy with surveillance in the Event Room Marli was dragged down stairs to perform stewarding tasks at the Dealer Room. I wasn't there to witness it, but I heard the crowd got pretty nuts and the line was awesome! Upon opening the doors to our Saturday guests at 10:00 the line starting growing immediately! At one point the waiting time to get into the Dealer Room had grown to about 35-45 minutes!
The rest of the day was actually pretty easy: I was VERY happy that Niels and Kaj had taken it upon themselves to move the furniture for two panels in the Archonia Room, which allowed me and Marli to put all of our time into the Dybex panel and the AMV competition. The AMV compo attracted a very large crowd and I think just about everyone enjoyed it very much! :)
We turned in at around twelve o'clock, with me waking up at 0145 to go and watch La Blue Girl with Menno and Peter. I'd given them the shirts so I really had to be there to watch the movie with them :3
Balance of the day:
* Rebuilding the Event Room: 6 times
* Wild goose chase: 1 time
* Various stewarding tasks: 3 to 4 hours
* Free time: About 3 hours (eating, smoking)
* Bad tentacle porn: About half an hour
* Beddy-bye-time: Around 24:00 and 02:30
This day would be kind of quiet, since there was only one event that we had to gopher: the Artist Lounge. So while I took care of that Marli did a bunch of random tasks for various staff members, ranging from more stewarding to a short bout at the luggage check. Since we were both quite beat and we had to take care of some stuff at home we had decided to leave for home after cleaning up the Event Room and after watching the closing ceremony. Luckily this was no problem with the staff (Thanks guys!).
Balance of the day:
* Rebuilding the Event Room: 3 times
* Wild goose chase: none!
* Various stewarding tasks: 2 hours
* Free time: About 2 hours (eating, smoking, guest-stuff)
* Going-home-time: Around 16:30
kilala.nl tags: anime 2004, anime 200x, conference,
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