...I know you know it's more than physical...

[hazelchaz]

Continuing with Part 3 of my four-part Pacific Media Expo report. pmx was in November, so I'm only eleven weeks behind realtime. (Other installments: part 1, part 2, part 4.)

We've been using the publicity tour to train my minions, with mixed success. Oh, the minions have been great -- but not everyone who wants to follow me around at animelosangeles wants to go out on the convention trail pre-con as well. Is that a problem? Oh, no, not at all. Publicity-helping is as good a training system as we've got for the Minions, but it's not like a lot of training is necessary.

A Minion is basically a P.A. -- a production assistant -- and either you can handle following instructions, or you can't. And a P.A. can graduate and go onto greater things. Take friendlypinet, for example, who served as P.A. on the tv show Friends. Now he's our world-famous Toastmaster! My best minions are likely to "graduate" to other positions from one year to the next, which is great. I'll talk more about that when I catch up to this year's convention.

We've been trying to recruit people to join the Animé Los Angeles staff. Our convention is staff-heavy, volunteer-light, and that's okay. I see the difference between "Staff" and "Volunteer" is that someone on Staff knows what department they'll be working in before they get to the convention.

Anyhow, one of the advantages to hitting so many conventions in the year is we meet people we might not otherwise have a chance to talk to. One example would be Coral Eisenbruch (right) -- we were at the same convention at CSU Northridge, but didn't meet until PMX. She's had actual experience operating a real video camera for real tv shows, so I was delighted to run into her and talk to her about helping with our Masquerade video.

And sometimes we meet people and it doesn't work out the first time around. Jenny Tomasick (left) has some skills that would possibly make her a great addition to our Publications Division. We didn't get her on the team this year, and she didn't attend the convention, but I'm optimistic that we might run across her again during the coming year nonetheless.

The publicity tour, aka the convention circuit: it's certainly not a short circuit. I estimate that I spent 10% of my nights in 2008 sleeping in hotel rooms, and that's likely to go up slightly for 2009. I've spent a lot of my time on the road giving the same speeches. (And I've identified two new ones I need to add, which could be abbreviated water and ops. More about those later.)

In the "Is Anime LA worth the consideration?" thread that turns up on Cosplay.com every year, I summarized most of my usual subjects when I said: I'd be happy to talk at length about how things are run. Some keywords for that dissertation: non-profit, volunteers, pass-on system, rollovers, memberships vs. tickets, student discount, military, groups, parent-in-tow, postcard art contests, mascot, fairy godfather, minion, ribbons, open meetings, divisions and departments, framework for creativity, choose to have fun, we are all "us," McGuire's conversational theory of conventions, community, Standlee's potluck theory of fandom, forum participation, outreach, noisy/quiet floors... A number of you who've been by my side all the while know these by heart. With any luck, the memes are trickling out into the wider world, too. If I'm not careful, somebody's going to make a Chaz Bingo card for these topics someday.

magi_sammy (right) interviewed me wearing her "Sailor Venus" costume. (Her, not me.) Since she was both interviewer and camera operator, it was easy to maintain eye contact with the viewing audience, i.e. the camera lens. Good practice. Thank you, Julia! My only regret is that I didn't realize when she asked me to describe the typical things you'd find at an anime convention that she intended to use that as a voice-over for footage taken elsewhere at PMX. And I don't have my talking points sorted in order of which ones I'd like to bring up first, in case we run out of time. But I was pleased with the experience. I didn't stumble over my words or stutter too much. (As some of you know, I've had a stammer since grade school; you can still hear it today, if you're watching for it.)

And speaking of video interviews, there was a crew from Otaku Hour filming at the convention. This is a new public access tv show, and they were filming at PMX. I talked a little with one of the guys (left) while their crew was downstairs filming in the dance. Which reminds me, Animé Los Angeles is getting big enough and conspicuous enough that we really need to have a Press Relations Department. But that's a topic for another time.

The Traveling Valentine article on PMX has a splash picture taken in our PB&J room. I'm flattered that they considered the crowd in our room to be iconic enough to represent the convention as a whole. Traveling Valentine is getting better at their reporting -- I've watched Vic's journalism improve over the years, from being mostly a personal diary full of in-jokes to more thoughtful and methodical coverage. And their tagline was: Ain't no party like an Anime Los Angeles party so I guess that means we should keep partying on, dudes.

To be continued...

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the reference. I particularly like you contrasting going to a pot-luck dinner with going out to eat at one of the chain buffet restaurants. I hope the message gets through.

Chain buffet

[hazelchaz]

You know, I don't think I've used that analogy...

[catgod018.livejournal.com]

LOL
i googled myself because i'm bored and haven't been able to sleep
and i totally just realized you posted about me
hahaha

hi chaz :] it's cor.

Hello there

[hazelchaz]

Hi, Coral. Small world...

May I link to your LJ from your photos?

Re: Hello there

[catgod018.livejournal.com]

yes go ahead :]