hazelchaz | ...They try so hard to break out of their little worlds...

By the way: photos now online from Gallifrey 2009, such as the photo here of missmea and summoner_lenne9.

My Animé Los Angeles report, part 4: Friday afternoon and evening. (See also part 1, part 2, part 3, part 5, part 6, and part 7.)

Lots of things went off without a hitch. I didn't hear of any issues with Cosplay Chess, apart from a miscommunication about the ribbon colors. Having it outside meant it was very cold -- winter by the ocean, and all that -- but the balconies overlooking the pool deck meant that there were lots of good vantage points. I understand that white and black were evenly matched -- every piece took every other piece, until the white and black kings did Rock-Scissors-Paper to end the stalemate.

One thing that I really goofed on was the badge design. In this photo (left) you can see that the first lady has her badge turned around backwards -- and I'd made the back side of the badge almost as colorful as the front. I thought the back design was very plain -- just the convention logo, "FULL WEEKEND" and the basic info about the con. But our logo is so colorful!

I think next time the back needs to be less interesting. Maybe a repeating design? (ANIMÉ LOS ANGELES FULL WEEKEND ANIMÉ LOS ANGELES FULL WEEKEND ANIMÉ LOS ANGELES FULL WEEKEND) Perhaps a two-color design with the logo bug, instead of using the full-color logo. I want it to be distinctive enough that badge-checkers can recognize a valid badge by its back, but not flashy enough that people hang their ribbons from the wrong side. (The lady in question hasn't done that, fortunately.)

Close-up of badges And it wasn't just the back that had problems. On the front, I didn't have a uniform light-colored rectangle for the name label to sit on. So here you can see that Airyu is hard to read, and there's a big blank space for an optional second line between the name and the city. (Jordan Brown later tweaked the Registration program so that for single-line names it would print it lower down.)

The rectangle where the label goes extends to the bottom edge of the badge art, and the badge paper is usually pushed as far towards the bottom edge of the plastic laminate as it can go; all of which made it harder to have the name easy to see.

Considering that's the whole point of having a badge -- it's your introduction to the other members -- on the whole a dismal showing on the part of someone who really ought to know better.

The main event Friday night was the AMV Contest. One of our rules is that you must be a member of the convention, or a member of the convention must act as your agent, in order to win -- the AMV Contest is something the members are participating in, it's not a mail-in contest. (We may have relaxed things to the point that someone with a Saturday-only membership, or who had a full pre-registered membership but wasn't arriving until Saturday would be eligible.)

Friday night we also had the Rum Party, and Karaoke, and the Dance. This was the first year for animelosangeles at this hotel, and we had a few hiccups getting the hotel resumé written. The resumé is our instructions to the hotel -- we want this room set up with chairs and tables thusly, and then rearranged with tables along the walls and a riser (stage) at one end, and so forth.

More than you needed to know about the hotel resumé: ala_mokita had a rough year -- going to denvention3 for about three weeks (because he drove an exhibit to and from) and being sick before and after that Denver Worldcon meant that he was about a month behind on everything all fall and winter. But it doesn't do us any good to have the resumé perfect a week after the convention -- the hotel needs it three weeks before the convention, or at least two weeks, or one week, so they can write up the "Banquet Event Orders" (BEOs) that give the actual instructions to the crew that rearranges the rooms for us.

loscon's resumé isn't that tough, because from one year to the next it's largely the same. But last year we were at the Burb', and we were going to use the space differently than Loscon does, so it was almost a matter of starting from scratch. As late as mid-November, one of the rooms in our resumé was clearly described as being set up for a blood drive! (Will we have a blood drive next year? Don't know. Where and when would we put it?)

One of the last things finalized was the arrangement for the tables and chairs and the riser for the Rum Party. If someone out there in LJ-land can tell me how the Rum Party went, I'd appreciate hearing from you -- I ended up spending most of my Friday night in a meeting and missed all of the excitement.

Next year the resumé should be a lot easier to deal with, because it'll be almost the same as this year. Sure, we'll use some rooms differently, but most of the rooms will be the same and those descriptions don't need to be written again.

Christian had ordered more glowsticks to hand out at all of the dances. We were, umm, a little tardy in getting them out Friday night. Perhaps not at all. Christian takes some delight (sorry) in being there for when they're handed out. Should we have a contingency plan for nights when Christian's busy during the dance? And that reminds me that I have some blue blinky lights (magnetic earrings) in my desk drawer. Maybe I should bring those with me places. Or give them to friends who would appreciate that sort of thing.

Next: Saturday!