Kumoricon is pleased to announce Sean Schemmel, best known as the voice of Dragon Ball’s Goku! For more information, please head on over to the guests page.

Just a friendly reminder that there are less than 2 weeks left to pre-register for Kumoricon 2007. This is your last chance to join at the $35 rate and to have your badge mailed out.

We have received over 900 pre-registrations so far, which is more than 50% higher than at the same time last year. This number includes the 28 who have chosen our special VIP membership.

Pre-registration closes on Friday, August 10, at 11:55 PM for online registrations. Mail-in registrations must be postmarked by August 10. (Those received by August 10 will be mailed slightly sooner than those received afterward, but postmarked on time.)

After pre-registration closes, registration will be available at the door for $40.

Kumoricon is just a little over a month away. We look forward to seeing you!

Saturday, August 11th, we are going to put on a little shindig to complement our next general meeting. We have three rooms of space, all day Saturday, and—besides using one of the rooms for stuffing the envelopes for the tier 3 prereg badge mailout (8AM-2PM) and for the general meeting (same time as usual, 2PM-5PM)—we will fill the space with video games, karaoke, AMVs, anime viewing, and whatever you guys feel like trying to cram in! Everything starts at 10 AM [note: updated start time] and continues through 10 PM at least, although we will stop things for general meeting formalities.

For us this is a chance to to work the kinks out of our untested systems before the con, so please be patient if anything goes wrong. For you, we hope this will be a chance to relax and have fun and enjoy what we can offer.

Anyone who already has a badge or is registered as staff can attend this little event for $5. Anyone who doesn’t have a badge or isn’t signed up as staff as of before the meeting can get in for $10. We are accepting manga for a generous discount of $5 off your entrance—that means if you have your badge and you have a manga you get in at no additional cost, or if you don’t have a badge but you brought two books, you get in free!

(We are only accepting manga to supplement our library for Kumoricon so please bring some cash just in case we already have too many of whatever manga you bring and cannot accept yours. Please no NewType or Monthly Shonen Jump.)

We will be deploying our new registration system at the door, but we will only be able to accept cash or checks (or manga).

You can attend the general meeting and the envelope-stuffing at no charge, but we will be asking to see your admission at the doors of any other room.

Please see this forum thread for news, updates, and questions.

We hope to see you there! Bring your DS.

If you are an anime club in the Oregon or Portland area, we’d like to hear from you!

We’re featuring local clubs in the Kumoricon program book and on the web site. If you are nonprofit, meet regularly, and your membership or at least some of your events are open to the public, then you’re eligible to have your name and blurb printed in the program book, and we will feature your meetings in the Kumoricon web site calendar.

Please contact us soon, as the book must be printed shortly. Email us at publicity@kumoricon.org.

As a special gift to all the dedicated Kumoricon fans, we have made available in complete form every single Kumoricon program guide since the beginning in 2003! We also have pocket guides from 2005 and 2006 online. We will continue to post additional publications from previous years as we locate and/or scan them.

We’re still working on our schedule for 2007, but until then, if you haven’t attended Kumoricon before and want to get an idea of what it’s like, this is a great way to explore what we’re all about.

Enter this page in the Kumoricon gallery to begin browsing. Enjoy!

Separate reminder: The mascot and cover contests have only a little bit over a week remaining until entries are due, which is at July 15, 11:59:59 PM. Please see this forum thread for complete rules and instructions for entry.

The location of the Saturday, June 16 general meeting has been changed to our hotel, the Hilton Vancouver and Convention Center. All four of the remaining general meetings until the con will now be held at the hotel. The calendar and other areas of the web site (including the newsletter PDF) have been updated to reflect this change.

The date and time of the meeting have not changed. The meeting remains on Saturday, June 16 from 2pm to 5pm.

Announcing the launch of three contests: The mascot 2008 contest, the program book cover 2007 contest, and the pocket programming book cover 2007 contest!

Artists, here’s your chance to make your work a part of Kumoricon. The winner of the mascot contest will receive a free Artist Alley booth at Kumoricon 2008!

The mascot will be prominently used in Kumoricon art and publicity material for the 2008 convention year, including but not limited to the web site, promotional flyers and posters, advertisements, merchandise, and badges/membership cards. It should be an immediately attractive, original, anime-style character or characters reflecting the “cloudy” theme of Kumoricon, typically with an umbrella. We need two versions: one adult or teen, and one chibi.

The cover of the 2007 convention program book introduces attendees to the convention upon arrival; every attendee receives one. It is full color and letter size. Fully detailed, colorful backgrounds and foregrounds work best.

The cover of the 2007 pocket programming guide is a smaller, simpler design. It is grayscale, possibly with lower resolution than the main convention book. Lightly detailed and shaded or all-white backgrounds, with strong, contrasting shades, lines, and geometric patterns work best.

Entries must be received by Sunday, July 15, 2007, at 11:59:59 PM, Pacific Daylight Time. [Update: This has been extended by one day so that entries can be turned in at the July 15 general meeting.]

Please read the entire rules and instructions for entry in this forum thread.

We have also just posted galleries of entries from the last two years’ mascot contests, and last year’s cover contest (as well as photo galleries from recent events at which Kumoricon has appeared).

Good luck!

Kumoricon welcomes A-Key Kyo and Kirk Thornton as guests of honor for 2007, both returning for a second year.

A-Key Kyo is a J-pop and anime cover band formed in Portland, who plays at Japanese cultural festivals and events.

Kirk Thornton has voice acted in over one hundred roles for anime and video games and has voice directed many series.

Please visit our guests page for full bios and photos of all our guests!

The Northwest Film Center, a part of the Portland Art Museum, is showing several anime and Japanese live-action movies including Paprika and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence as part of their Japanese Currents film series. These showings run from May 3-6 in the Whitsell Auditorium. Kumoricon flyers and posters will be displayed at the venue!

Please visit our forum thread for detailed information and showtimes and to discuss meet-ups with other forum members.

You can also visit the NW Film Center’s website for information. Here is a Google Maps link to the Portland Art Museum.

Quick reminder: On a separate note, the current tier of registration ends tonight at midnight! Until then you can pre-register for $30. After that, the price goes up to $35.

We’ve performed a software update and made a few improvements to the forum, as listed in this post. However, as a consequence of one of these changes, some users may experience trouble logging in the first time after these updates. If you are immediately logged out after trying to log in to the forums, please return to the www.kumoricon.org home page, click the “Forums” link in the left bar (this ensures you are using kumoricon.org rather than kumoricon.com to access the forums), and try logging in a second time. In our testing, logging in a second time always worked. If you experience problems after a third login attempt, please contact webmaster@kumoricon.org. Thanks for your patience.