Just some little things that might have been mentioned already... (badges)

[Serika]

A) May we please wear our badges somewhere else?  I found that mine got in the way a lot more than I liked and I found other ways of holding it, that were still in plain sight, but I was told to put it around my neck.  Thank you. :>

B) I'd suggest you look over the schedule very carefully several times before the convention, including photoshoots and such.  I was dressed as a lolita Misa-Misa the day of the lolita tea party AND the Death Note photoshoot.  I decided to go to the tea party, and here's what happened:
I waited in line for about half an hour with my friends.  The wait isn't so bad, but when you are thinking in your head, "I could be at a photoshoot right now," it can get pretty agonizing.  Both my friends were's in lolita.  One friend was in kurololi, and another in a short pink lolita dress and bloomers, while wearing one glove that did not match.  After waiting for so long, my two friends decided to go to the restroom, leaving me in line.  After getting to the front, they told me, "Hmm, I suppose that's kind of punkloli... Sure, you can go in." I waited for my friends before going in, and when they showed up, I asked if they could.  The answer? "No." Just a flat-out no.  This was apparently due to space issues.  Just then, another person helping out said that they had another table set up, and we could go in.  Happily, we frolicked in and found that we had the joy of sitting in the corner, at the "reject" table where everyone had been told they couldn't go in at first due to not being lolita enough.  I didn't mind them at all; they were very nice people.  However, being stuck in the corner, and having to get food last, was a bit... bothersome.  And although I'm not blaming the tea party for this at all, a bug came up to my food soon after I had gotten it and landed on everything when I was struggling to free my hands to knock it away. D: Being a germophobe, my food was RUINED!!!!11!! Overall, the bad ended up outweighing the good for all three of us.  Two of us wanted to go to the photoshoot also.  We were both dressed up.  Unfortunately, by the time we got out, we figured the photoshoot was already over, and hung out in the hallways feeling bitter(not your fault, it's ours.. ^^;; ).

I just ask that next convention, you pay attention to what photoshoots are scheduled around events like this, so noobs like me and my friends don't have the same confusion. 

Thank you for considering this. ^^;



Also, something I would like to request.. Would it be possible that scheduled photoshoots be in the con event bookey thing?  If they were, we didn't see them.  This year I was planning on going to them, so.  Um.  Yes. :> Thank you so much! 
And one last thing.. If we wanted to submit art for the mascot for 2009, where would we find the rules for doing so, and where do we send them in? 

[Rathany]

Well, as for the badges, the lanyards are what show that you are checked in.  We pre-mail the badges to all preregistered attendees.  You get lanyards when you check in.  The system worked really well last year and we had very few complaints or problems so that is not likely to change. 

Various events are always going to overlap.  Also, I am almsot certain all cosplay photoshoots are unofficial events organized through the forums.  At most other anime cons that I go to it works that same way.  For the con to take on trying to organize dozens of informal meetups, well, that would not only be a huge task but informal meetups would still happen anyway. 

Last time we were at the Double Tree the photoshoots took place across the street in the park.  We can't actually offically schedule stuff there anyway unless we also rent out the park. 

[TomtheFanboy]

Photoshoots are not scheduled by the convention.
How many times do we need to go over this?

If you go to the cosplay part of these forums, we have cosplayers setting up photoshoots and deciding when the best time to meet will be. Everyone gets the schedule at the same time so the photoshoots have to adapt to the schedule of the convention, not the other way around.

If you, or anyone, was frustrated with the scheduling of the photoshoots then it is your responsiblity to make it better by coming into the forums next summer and making demands in the appropriate forum.

(with the appropriate name on your thread)

[MichaelEvans]

Is there any reason (aside from space) that we cannot include photo-shoot times and locations in the pocket guide (and big guide), if we get them far enough in advance?  Putting in place a system for that would be... difficult but seems interesting to me.  It would be a feature to stick in the 'want to have, but low priority' part of the list.  (Getting a working (multi-user) schedule system in place and security are both higher priorities.)

[TomtheFanboy]

Well yes, they could be put in the pocket guide, but the photoshoots get rescheduled based on the event schedule being made public. If the con actually wants to organize something like an official photoshoot schedule, and put a staff member in charge of communicating with cosplayers, Programming schedulers, and the Publicity personnel in publishing..... well then they would be able to do that.

Also, the Photoshoot Coordinator could schedule times for the cosplayers to meet up in the conspace... then the cosplayers could just "wander" wherever they wanted to take the pictures.
Like to the park. 

Even if the position is not made official I highly suggest that some volunteer or staff member take on this job and communicate with the Sign Maker at the very least to get a big schedule written up for the info booth people. Even if they don't actually coordinate anything and just write down what people decide on the forums by themselves.

[Serika]

I didn't know that about the lanyards, I didn't preregister... I'm sorry...

I'm sorry, I thought that they were official because I saw a whiteboard with times written on it at the convention... I also figured that since they were organized on the official forums, the coordinators would easily be able to access it and would have someone doing so.. I'm sorry, it's all my mistake, I'll look into it more next time...

And again, does anyone have information on the mascot contest thing? D:

[MichaelEvans]

It looks like there's an un-official answer.  http://www.kumoricon.org/forums/index.php?topic=2623.0

I don't immediately know offhand where the info is either, but you should be able to email your submission to the Publicity Director at publicity@kumoricon.org

However, such a thing is probably towards the far end of task lists at the moment.  It would be far easier to set up a better solution after we've taken care of some of the more fundamental site changes we are currently in the early planning stages of.

[goatchild]

I hope I'm not just being annoying, and if I am, feel free not to respond.

I understand that the photoshoot schedule is completely attendee planned (I usually help plan several of them : P), and I'm not saying that the con itself should personally take cafe of it, but would it be possible, maybe not even this year but eventually, to put a print out of some sort in the swag bags? I do understand the complications of printing and packing the bags and getting someone/people to do all of that, especially since it would be after the official schedule is released and probably already printed with everything else. But I also know that while I was aware of the photoshoot schedule through the forums, I didn't see the sign at the con until the second or third day when I stopped by the same table to get something peace tagged. I realize this was more of my fault for not seeing the sign, but I do feel that having a handout of some sort would be nice as well. Maybe even just having piles at the registration/check in tables that people could take if they wanted, though I do realize that that would require more work for the people manning the tables. Maybe the planners like me could even volunteer to print off the copies ourselves and simply drop them off at the tables.

Again, this is all just a hypothetical question, not necessarily for this year or even something to really worry about at all. Just curious. Feel free to ignore if you feel the answer is the same as the rest of this topic. ^^

[JeffT]

I'll consider doing something like this on an "official unofficial" basis. Rather than print any schedule in the bags or the books, we would probably just facilitate organization into a single list or forum thread, possibly kept up-to-date on a live sign at the con. The books need to go to press a few weeks in advance and there would surely be changes and additions right up until the end.

The main concern here is that whenever something is made official, the con implicitly takes responsibility for the content at least a little bit, and there's more work involved to organize it. This includes a greater effort to keep all schedules current and up-to-date. But if we have our at-con live schedule change system working well for official events, then perhaps we can extend it to unofficial events also.

[MichaelEvans]

Jeff, would it be a good idea to plan some of the (likely/known to be) more popular photoshoots as actual official events?  There wouldn't technically be a room, but a given slot within the actual schedule grid that would collect and show them.  Plus anything else could be penciled in by the book's user per their preferences.

Of course, a requirement of this would be to get the general schedule nailed down even earlier... or even better have trial versions to help iterate over inter-relationship possibilities with lots of lead time.

[Rathany]

Jeff, would it be a good idea to plan some of the (likely/known to be) more popular photoshoots as actual official events?  There wouldn't technically be a room, but a given slot within the actual schedule grid that would collect and show them.  Plus anything else could be penciled in by the book's user per their preferences.

Of course, a requirement of this would be to get the general schedule nailed down even earlier... or even better have trial versions to help iterate over inter-relationship possibilities with lots of lead time.

Photoshoots tend to happen in places like parks and lobbies where we can't officially schedule events.  That is one of the reasons we need to be so carefull about not even appearing to be in charge of them. 

[MichaelEvans]

Photoshoots tend to happen in places like parks and lobbies where we can't officially schedule events.  That is one of the reasons we need to be so carefull about not even appearing to be in charge of them. 

Just for planning, if there were some kind of generic tool for allowing site-members to setup public schedules, and say produce an output based on some kind of filter of their choice, that wouldn't actually be official endorsement or official planning of unofficial events?  Even if you could also produce a schedule which showed both official events and those other non-official events?  (Hum... would it help if official events had a mini-logo in the column header while non-official ones lacked it?)

[TomtheFanboy]

Photoshoots are organized on the forums by the congoers.
The convention had a white board at the info booth that had the photoshoot schedule on it but it got erased partway through.

Let the cosplayers take care of it.
Focus on things that ARE your responsibility.

[MichaelEvans]

I fully intend to.  However while fulfilling my responsibilities, an extra 1-2% effort today to make it vastly easier to add in such options later (Ok, I'm nowhere near that, but I am gathering data for background impressions that will be in the back burner pot with all the rest of the stuff helping to influence design decisions, some of which will probably be made in the next few months at the latest.) then it's worth asking about now.  Actually I think the real issues for this would be an approval architecture (already need it for the system I'd like to end up with), and space visually (much harder).

Though this does bring up an interesting schedule layout idea.  Finding some way of injecting a visually empty column.  That way extra notes for anything they like can be penned in later.

[Jamiche]

We will do our best to have the schedule up the earliest we are able to so that cosplayers can plan their photoshoots around activities, and we can display the information at the info desk for people to see.  But I will not inlcude the photoshoots in the official schedule - we have no control over where and when.  Photoshoots are for the attendees, by the attendees... we will do what we can to help them, but we won't take the planning away from them.

If you have questions about scheduling, I suggest you take it up with me.

[MichaelEvans]

Thank you.  I probably will do just that, however I've already got enough ideas in my head and this thread, and quite a few tasks between here and actually working on things that will use that data.  Hopefully in a month or two I'll be able to ask you more detailed questions.  Now... to figure out how to make a note to my self to check this thread for this topic...