Outside another yellow moon punched a hole in the nighttime, yeah...

[hazelchaz]

My Animé Los Angeles report, part 1: Guests of Honor goodies, Minions, and everyone else. (See also part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, and part 7.)

2851 people came to Animé Los Angeles, officially. There were three people from Anime Expo who stopped by Saturday night and neglected to register; they're not included in that total. But apart from anomalies like that, the number represents all of the people at the convention at some time.

Lots of people had a good time. We received compliments on our signage, especially the Warning: Costume-eating Escalator sign, on the Con Suite and Costume Repair Station, the Artists' Alley, AMV Contest, the beanbags and the rest of the seating (couches, chairs, benches), even the water service.

I've only seen a few conreports from Animé Los Angeles this year. And some people don't feel they have anything new or unique to say. For example, divine_sage wrote in her post-convention entry: "ALA was pretty good. I'm not going to do a con report because, well, everybody else has done one, and most of you were there in the first place."

One comment seen on travel_valenti Vic's report: "Anime Los Angeles has come a long way since its debut in 2005. So many small Southern California events bloom and wither, but Chaz Boston Baden's winter classic remains in full bloom after five years."

And Tom (KValentine) said this: "Although a small convention, ALA continues to evolve from a bunch of anime fans milling around a hotel acting like fools while the real world looks on into an organized bunch of anime fans milling around a hotel acting like fools while the real world looks on that learns from its mistakes and avoids repeating them."

Liz Ohanesian wrote a really nice article on the LA Weekly website. Her angle: "Conventions like ALA regularly draw otaku, anime fans, by the thousands. Here, you can learn the dance sequence from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, score autographs from your favorite voice actors and vote for your favorite fan-made anime music videos. There's a little something for everyone. But, for a new generation of artists, anime conventions have presented the unique opportunity to launch their own business ventures."

If you wrote online about Animé Los Angeles I'd be pleased to get a link! And I'm certainly interested in constructive criticism -- I'll be talking about some of the complaints I've already seen, but I'm always willing to hear more.

I think that somewhere along the line, we passed a tipping point. We've reached a critical mass of fans (and there's no mass of people more critical than fans). Almost six thousand people have been to our convention at least once. That's a lot of word of mouth. It's quite possible that ten thousand people know the convention exists -- certainly many more have heard of us compared to, say, three years ago -- they just haven't all turned up here, and the rest of them don't attend every year. (Which is fine, we don't have room for everyone.)

Use of the Bertha, and Evan's designs, have made a world of difference in our signage. In comparison, the "Al Brooks Rose Bowl" signs seen on New Year's Day at the hotel were very crude. Nothing inherently wrong or bad about them, they just weren't as nice as ours. (right) We should take note of where the hotel allowed the other group to post their signs. This spot, for example, would be a great place to put a sign with an arrow pointing down to Pool Deck and Con Suite. (And perhaps Costume Repair Station, if we move it there.)

When I left off last, we'd closed down the party room, which would be where we'd have Registration. We'd announced that we expected to open at noon. I was quite surprised to get up and find people had started to line up outside the room at 10:00 am, possibly earlier! (left)

Lesson learned: We need signs for the Day Zero Registration Room. Such as Line starts here and Go around to the Pool Deck side.

I mentioned the Guest of Honor "gift baskets." The GoHs were checking in at different times, some of them flying in and some of them driving, or both. We'd given them all rooms overlooking the pool deck, and I had a bunch of goodies to put in their rooms, so one of my duties on Thursday was to get the rooms loaded up. (right)

I had some plates, drinkware and cutlery, as well as lots of things to eat and drink. Not really good at presentation, I just sort of piled it all on the desk and put some of it in little tubs. Fortunately none of the GoHs appeared to be offended by the casual result. (library_lynn is taking over the Guest of Honor Liaison Department next year, and she's going to get actual baskets and make it all pretty-like.)

Ariel Gerdts was one of my new Minions at the convention. She helped me prep the GoH rooms. You can see a medium-sized red ice chest on the cart in the photo. (left)

I wanted to put a cooler in each GoH's room, but I didn't think of that in the summer when they go on sale. Whoops! Instead, I borrowed some from staffers on the convention. Next year I want to have some coolers that are dedicated to GoH service, mostly so we don't have to scramble around after the convention returning them. (And in case a GoH ends up walking off with one of them.) They need to be the medium size, like you see here, not the small lunchbox size, so that we can fit bottles in and not just cans.

I had a small number of Minions that assisted me all weekend. Melissa and I had worked on recruiting and training minions, with mixed success: the group that ended up helping me at the convention wasn't the same group that we'd trained.

There was some overlap. aramina came back to help a second year, and was invaluable as Acting Head Minion when it turned out Melissa was out sick. (right)

Mindy and David helped at Loscon, and Willow had helped before, but they weren't able to attend animelosangeles. Cameron was AWOL as well, although on the property: we know he picked up his badge Friday afternoon, but he never introduced himself to me. Steven attended, worked, and was invaluable Sunday morning as I'll explain later.

Ariel was one of the Minions that I hadn't met before we got to the LAX Marriott. Romy and Lauren were on-site with other plans (helping Registration and Tech, respectively) and summoner_lenne9 was as reliable as ever. (left)

Romy had originally agreed to help with Registration all weekend, but ended up only being available to assist on Thursday, with the Day Zero Reg project. She was very useful to Lynn there, and we were glad to have her that day. I'd met Romy a few months before, at CSU Northridge, and had been quite impressed with her work ethic.

One reliable minion that turned up, who I've known for years (and who had helped me at Loscon a year or two earlier), was lizardfoss. (right)

Another one I met for the first time, and who seemed to work out reasonably well: Allison. But I didn't catch her last name, and I don't remember what it said on her badge. Anyone know this Allison here? Anyone remember when she arrived? (left)

Lesson learned: Our carefully-laid plans for working out a schedule on Thursday for a whole fleet of minions on overlapping two-hour shifts fell apart because (a) half of them didn't show up, (b) Melissa was out sick, and (c) it was an overly complicated idea in the first place. We thought it would be a good idea, because there seemed to be so many people who wanted to be part of the department... We had a simple system last year. Maybe something between what we did last year and this time around?

I'm leaning towards each Minion having a four-hour shift for at least three of the days of the convention (counting set-up and teardown), and being considered "on call" the rest of the weekend in case something comes up. Minions would be asked not to work for another department, so that if that on-call situation comes up we've got a better chance of finding they're free. And a minion who's in the Masquerade would be assigned two separate two-hour shifts on Saturday (or some comparable arrangement) to allow them to get to all of their Saturday commitments.

Some of my Minions this year will be graduating to other departments. Melissa's helping Lynn with the GOHL Department, for example, and Sarah's been tapped for Operations. But if I can rely on Rebecca, Ariel, and Allison; and if Mindy can join us next year; and if Romy joins the Minions, then I should have coverage during the 10am-2pm, 2pm-6pm, and 6pm-10pm shifts everyday. When we have more than three on duty on a given day, we'll fill out 12pm-4pm and 4pm-8pm shifts too.

I didn't use my Minions as effectively as I could have. To start with, I still had the going-back-for-stuff-upstairs problem from last year. Some things went from my house directly to the hotel room, and never actually made it where they were supposed to go -- the Animé Los Angeles tablecloths, for example. The only things that should go to my room next year are things that aren't needed outside of that room.

On top of that, for a while on Saturday it seemed to make sense to have the ribbon restock bins downstairs instead of up in the room, which led to me leaving a minion to keep my cart company rather than bringing him or her along where I was needed.

I think the solution to that problem is to have a lockable office down on the ballroom floor. We're looking at splitting Office and Operations but this would be another separate place. My working name for the room is the Lair. The ribbon supply bins would be kept in the Lair. Elizabeth's job gets simplified or eliminated. (I expect she'll probably still come to the convention and help with the Costume Repair Station even without the ribbons.) Everyone issuing ribbons -- this mostly would be department and division heads -- would get an instruction sheet and would be asked to stop by the Lair to get their ribbons, and to return them there at the end of the convention or when they're no longer needed.

Lynn could stage the GoH goodies there. About the only reason having them up in our room made sense is because we were on the same floor as the GoHs, but elevators make short work of that issue. The GOHL Department could be based there. (Lynn and I might actually see each other more than once a day that way.) It could be used for sign prep on Thursday. We'd also use the Lair for beanbag storage overnight -- each night we'd move about half of the beanbags in and lock them up, then in the morning bring most of them back out. (Leaving a few in the room for the Minions and GOHLs to lounge around on.)

Lesson learned: Chair should spend more time on the floor, and not walk off without a minion.

... I sat down to write this, intending to get through Thursday (Day Zero). Doesn't look like I've made it as far as dinnertime. *sigh*

Next: Day Zero. Registration, Setup, Dealers and Ice Cream on Thursday.