hazelchaz | ... Do mi fa. Si re si mi. La do la fa re sol sol do.

Photos online:
LASFS/Aftermeetings part 363: Coral Cafe (20-Aug-2009) et seq.
Anime Los Angeles 6 meetings part 15: GoH/Live Program meeting (22-Aug-2009) et seq.
Photo of ala_mokita, sbeckstead and friendlypinet is from the dinner meeting.

For animelosangles 6, I've invited "Bekka the Alice" (Becca Feiner, nee Becca Norman) as our Fan Guest of Honor. For her role in conventions in Colorado especially Nan Desu Kan, for being a voice of reason on the Anime Conventions Mailing List, and for her live program expertise.

It made sense to me, then, to have her come out to California before the convention and meet our program people to talk about program ideas. And having decided that, having all of our guests of honor meet in a casual setting to talk about what they'd like to do at the convention made a lot of sense. The Spoony Bards sent Stephen Poon to represent the band, our Music Guests of Honor; and Kyle Hebert (Voice Actor GoH) and le_moose (Artist GoH) are local.

We met for dinner so we could get the conversations started. (They would continue the next day at our potluck/outreach event/recruiting and planning picnic.) It was primarily a Guests of Honor/Program meeting.

Dinner was very productive. Pearl and Bekka talked about a number of program and workshop ideas. It looks like we'll be able to have a Spoony Bards concert Friday night, and the Bards will also serenade the Masquerade line. Scott got important data about their tech requirements. Lynn got some info on likes and dislikes that will be helpful in putting together gift baskets for when the GoHs come back to town in January. Jessica did some more sketching and showed us the plan for the program book cover.

At one point, Bekka offered an apology for speaking her mind on an idea for the staging. I reassured her that no apology was needed, that in fact that was why we'd flown her out and invited her to the convention in the first place. We'd like to have cross-pollination of ideas, and getting an outsider's insight is exactly what we're looking for.

The dinner also gave us a chance to make sure that our GoHs are the kind of friendly people we'd like to have. Christian was quite impressed with Stephen, and wishes we had someone local just like him to recruit to work on the convention. Kyle held court at the east end of the table, talking up a storm with Tadao and cracking jokes with ladymaxstarr. Jessica showed 'round her art, and Bekka proved to be the life of the party at the west end of the table. We like them all.

Eventually, the party broke up, we walked Bekka and Stephen to their rooms, and we went home. We heard later that they stayed up a little, exploring the ballroom level of the hotel to start familiarizing themselves with the place. Not sure if they found the stairs to the first floor and pool deck, though...