My overall feel of Kcon '09

[Rathany]

For what its worth, PSU has no classes between labor day weekend and September 28th. I dont know what that means for the dorms, but there shouldnt be any trouble getting rooms for hosting the con campus wide.

I stayed in the Ondine. I'm a PSU Alum. It was only $40 a night for a room with 2 beds and its own bathroom, plus coffee maker & free instant coffee. (Of note: Bring your own fan. No fan/AC in dorm!). I got parking passes for PSU lots for only $8/night, *including* overnights. Didn't use them though; drove to the PMCs near the hotel and then moved car to street overnight. It was loud at the Ondine but most hadn't moved back in yet. Ondine is SW 6th & College (10 blocks south of hotel). Broadway is 1 block further south & (logically) on Broadway, is only $50/night and includes a kitchenette! (Bring your own supplies.) So the extra $10 could be made up for by how much food you don't have to buy.....yah. Ondine has kitchenettes on 6th and 9th floors but those were already "turned over" from summer accommodations dept to campus living dept so not able to be rented by congoers.
I felt totally safe (albeit one person ranting on stairs, homeless local) but might not have if walking that far late at night. Max runs right by it though as I'm sure do some buses.

I know PSU has been looked into ... From what I remember they weren't intrested in working with us, but I forget why.  It may be that we are too close to the start of classes and they need to get thier own offices set up.  We could take a second look next year just to make sure we exhaust every possibility. 

[RemSaverem]

There might come a time that our only economically feasible option is to consider changing from our beloved holiday weekend. Earlier in the summer might be easier to get a campus. (*ducks under desk to hide from thrown tomatoes*)

[AllyKat]

But if we move it back to far.... then we run into summer classes...

*the vicious cycle of this kind of issue continues*

I imagine that holding an event like this for a college seems daunting and also unprofitable;

"So, you want free reign of classrooms and meeting areas, the food court and access to dorm
rooms so you can fill them with 11 year olds, crazy 20 somethings and oldtacos? All dressed
up like Japanime cartoon characters running around with swords and fake guns, pretending to
be these cartoons? And you want to do this at OUR campus? uh...."

We may have to show them a presentation of what we do, what our mission is and what
we are really about before we get anyone to even consider hosting us who has never hosted
any type of convention, let alone an anime one, before.

~Allykat

P.S. Woot! Home now! time to veg infront of my computer and do the same thing I was doing at work! yay!

[SilentChaos]

You know, despite what felt like an initial locking of horns with the hotel staff, I gotta say I still had fun this year. The mask policy was frustrating and that ultimately made me switch to costume that was only 90% complete at the time, but it was understandable. I also will admit that things had improved by day 2, but god forbid you stood still in the open for more than half a second. Whenever the staff would get on me with their constant "Keep moving, keep moving!" crap I was nowhere near a vital choke point.

My second frustration was with the Gaming Room on day one. Again, I realize it was a fire safety thing and, like the mask policy, was understandable but even still, I think that's the first time its ever happend that I am aware of.

My next thing that was kind of a let down was the Dealer's Room this year. Was it just my imagination playing tricks on me, or was it really freakin' small this year?! At the very least it felt like it lacked variety! The past two years I've gone I could find two or three booths with a large variety of PVC Figures to choose from (PVC Figures are like bread and butter to me at these things), but this year everything felt very limited! Everywhere I went there was nothing but Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy figures (and with every passing year my disdain for such merchandise increases immensely). However, Anime Palace pulled through for me to some extent. While you can't expect one booth to have everything, I hadn't even heard of half of the stuff there. Though I did get the last C.C. figure, so all is well and Anime Palace continues its run of being the one booth I buy something from for the past three years.

Ultimately, I'm not going to let this stop me from going to Kcon next year. Nothing will stop me from going to Kcon next year. I'm doubtful that anything will stop me from going to Kcon. I have a great time every year! Yes, the Hilton seemed frustrated with us as we were with them, but next year we know what to expect from one another I think, and that may ease the conflicts. I admit that I like everyone else here would like to ultimately jump to the Convention Center, but I think we all have a good idea of how hard it will be to do this and I KNOW we don't waste our one freebie. So I say to the staff to take your time with the Convention Center. I'm confident we'll get there someday.


.....But seriously, the Dealer's Room. Was that just my imagination? Was it really smaller? Cause its been driving me crazy ever since Kcon ended.

[AllyKat]

Having never seen a dealers room besides that one (and it did feel a little limited to me)
I can't speak from experience but I can tell you the roof may have been playing tricks on
you. The shorter the ceiling of a room the more it feels constricted, small and less appealing
you may have missed several things because it felt like you were walking in circles, also the
appeal to many vendors to be in such a narrow tight space may have made them choose to
bring only a few of there less standard items... play arts and other figurines are hard to come
by as they are often sold out, even on the square website itself.... while bringing them may
have brought them immediate money, the economy has made people think cheap and may be
why I felt a sincere feeling of "discount! discount!" in what I expected to be an overly expensive
situation!

~Allykat

[Meganekko]

What about lincoln city or Sea Side?

Haha, Lincoln City sure seemed to like us with all the filler junk for swag bags!


Well going back to fund raising.... I know that PCC and Clark both have lovely Anime clubs and I'm sure that the local uni's have some too.  I know you can't discuss the financial stats, but I think you have a huge untapped resource there.  More over there are non club members to be tapped.

But the problem with fundraiser is ORGANIZATION! If 9 years of 4-h taught me anything, you need to have your Fundraiser Staff on the same page and have an amazing person in charge to make executive decisions. Through some doughnut sales, a big arse garage sale mecca weekend, and a hot dog sale we usually netted 10k a year, due to organization. You'd be amazed at the amount of money somewhat dedicated kids and their families could raise with proper guidance.  We were maybe 30 kids, plus families.  Both Clark and PCC have separate manga and anime clubs that add up to at least 30 if not more.... actually PCC has multiple anime clubs for the diffrent campuses as I recall. (I'm a student of RC and Cascade Campuses)

But working on the assumption you could get 5 Anime Clubs that add up to even 15 head a piece, and that they work under good organization I think you could see similar results...throw in a carrot or two for the highest grossing club, and then you've got them competing for who can raise the most.  And you've got some serious extra con money to help make up the deficits.  Now I can take a very rough guess at what the con costs simply based on badges*attendees, I have no idea what corp. sponsors add into the pool, but even an extra 20-30K would not be something to scoff at and that is low balling the estimate, cause I'm sure that most clubs are larger and we could get more than just 5 clubs going in on this.

Also, there are the individuals.  Even just setting up a "move us to OCC" paypall and saying, feel free to donate a dollar or 2, and this won't be used till we get to the OCC.  They can get involved in other efforts too.

Now these are all estimates.... many of which many not be very accurate due to how little info I have, but I'm just saying, with a great staffer heading this, there is cash to be had.


Also, WSU Vancouver has a BEAUTIFUL Campus ( I dunno if they actually have dorms tho ) ... and as a smaller distanced branch campus they may be more willing to accommodate us than PSU.