[ACML] The gluttony of conventions (and other musings)

[Jafax PR]

--- macg4cubeboy at aol.com wrote:

> It's gotten to the point that all these people are
creating these conventions not for the fans, but to
lord themselves over the fans saying, "Look at me,
look at me! I run "X" con! Aren't I important?"
>  
I believe you’ve hit the nail squarely on the head,
Adam. One of the traits of newer fans is arrogance.
They go to our well-run events and think it’s easy to
do, so they decide they can do one better, with all
the things they and their friends didn’t see at yours.
While I know there are still a certain number of new
organizers out there who do it out of a love of the
medium, or to fill a need in their specific area, I
think you’re right that a majority of them do it out
of a sense of ego. They just want to be King or Queen
of Geeks, not realizing that it really means nothing
to anyone. They also have no idea what it really takes
in terms of time, money, and manpower to put on an
event, and think that wishing will make it so. The era
of “if you plan it, they will come” for anime events
has long passed in most areas, however.

As for everyone’s thoughts on an upcoming crash, I can
remember talking with our Chair at least three years
ago and telling him there was one on the way. We
brought it up at an ensuing Staff meeting, and told
them we wanted to do our best to be one of the events
left standing when it was over. I think all of us who
have been at this long enough have seen it coming, as
well, and the smart ones are also already doing what
they can to survive. I see this in the specialization
of many events, becoming sub-genre specific or devoted
to one aspect of fandom, such as cosplay. For us, it
meant going back to our roots. Being a free event,
there is no way we can compete with other events that
bring in Japanese guests and hold concerts. We were
actually burning ourselves out as a Staff, trying to
keep up with the demands of the fans, and were no
longer having fun planning or running our event. In
this, we can completely understand the situation with
Ushicon. We decided we’d rather plan an event we would
want to attend than try to create an event the fans
wanted. Since we don’t depend upon registration
dollars for our existence, we can get away with making
this decision. We’ve come to consider ourselves a nice
“starter” event for people who have a passing interest
in anime, and may want to attend a real convention in
the future. Our true purpose, however, has always been
to introduce more people to anime. I’ve seen threads
on here in the past claiming that with the
mainstreaming of anime, there is no longer a need for
that, but have also seen evidence that it’s still
needed. There are a lot of older adults out there who
don’t understand anime, and have prejudices against it
based on a variety of misinformation. Even the newer
fans need to be educated on the history of the art
form. For them, they turned on Cartoon Network one
day, and Lo! There was anime. These are the people
JAFAX exists for, and if the “fans” don’t like our
event, there are plenty of other events they can
choose to go to next time. For a long time, it wasn’t
like that, and that’s why we fell into the trap of
trying to cater to the “fans”.

I’m sorry you feel JAFAX is competing for your
attendees, Adam. However, I feel it necessary to
remind you (and please take this in the humorous
spirit it is intended), we were here first. Seriously,
though, we have never actually felt that there was any
competition between JAFAX and other events, especially
since we don’t see ourselves as truly playing on the
same field as everyone else. We have fought for years
to educate everyone that we’re not a convention. We
have been told by many that if it looks like a duck
and sounds like a duck, it is a duck, and we should
just get used to being called one. Unfortunately, when
we get lumped in with the other anime events as a
convention, then people expect us to have everything
they have, which we cannot do for several reasons I
won’t bore you with here. When we get complaints from
attendees that we’re not as good as one convention or
another or we should have this thing or that, it’s
very difficult not to snipe back at them, “And you
paid how much to get in here? Was that – NOTHING!?
Quit yer bitchin’!” Instead, we patiently listen to
their complaints and suggestions, and change the
things we can, provided it’s something we feel is in
line with our primary vision. We are glad there are
“real” conventions for our attendees to go to, and
feel no pressing need to compete with or duplicate
anyone else’s events or programming just because an
attendee told us to. Sure, there are things we
wouldn’t mind adding that other events may have, but
we still need to remain focused on our goals and
within our budget, while trying to be a unique event.

Now, more than ever, anime events need to be a unified
front. I think we should all do our best to survive
the oncoming crash, as well as avoid competing with
each other in a detrimental way during it. There will
be casualties, no doubt about that, but the survivors
will need to be civil about it, and willing to take on
Staff from those who fall. This will make the
remaining events stronger, and able to better serve
what will most likely be a disillusioned fan base.
Their trust will need to be won back, and we will have
to prove ourselves all over again. If we can achieve
that, we will not, as many of us fear, go the way of
the SF cons.

So, all that having been said, I’m going back to my
usual lurking. I just wanted to chime in to this
conversation, since JAFAX was specifically mentioned,
and very seldom do I express our viewpoint on things.
Usually it’s because someone beats me to it, having a
similar opinion, and it’s silly to just come on to say
“Ditto” all the time. Thank you all for your time.

Sincerely,
Sheila Streeter,
JAFAX 11 PR Co-ordinator

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