... and faces the other, says it's time that I made you my lover. Oooh we belong together...

Other notes about Anime Vegas. Hands down, worst badges I've seen at an anime convention, and some of them have been real stinkers.

How many things were wrong with them? For starters, they were printed on heavy-duty business card stock, vertical format, with a slot to hang from a lanyard. No lamination, in other words. They also only had the class of badge, and the hard-to-read script logo for the convention name. No dates or location (although that's implied by the name of the convention), not even the year. Not even a "4" to tell you it's year 4. They could use the same badges last year and next year if they were that foolish.

Apart from the class of badge -- SAT, SUN, MON, 3-DAY, PRE-REG 3-DAY, STAFF, DEALER, ARTIST, GUEST -- they didn't have any legible printing on them. They did make each class of badge a different color. And there was a small white space where you could fit an Avery 5167 label (the 0.5"x2" kind that comes 80 to the sheet) for your name, or you could write your name in by hand if you bothered. They also had VOLUNTEER and MASQUERADE BACKSTAGE PASS, so some people had two badges. I don't think they took away your regular badge when they gave you the other one.

Each class of badge was a different color. I'm not really sure why they bothered making 3-DAY and PRE-REG 3-DAY different. (For that matter, why hand out "MON" badges? Anyone buying a badge on the last day can just be given the same badge as the full-weekenders got.)

The only advantage I could see to having specific last-day badges would be if you were pre-selling them the day before.

library_lynn pointed out that some people on the second day had two badges -- they had purchased a two-day (Sun/Mon) membership, and were given two badges, one for each day on the same lanyard. Again, though, if someone was buying a "rest-of-the-convention" membership, isn't that the same as buying what's left of a Full?

But the size of the badge, the tiny space for writing your name, and the fact that they weren't requiring a name to be printed there. Clearly they thought the badges were only for access control, for admission tokens. They were worse than the Sac-Anime badges! The size/shape of the badge meant that our badge ribbons didn't fit well, of course, but that's another story. In fact, the badge was the same size as some of the larger ribbons. (And smaller than the extra-size "Pre-Con Costume Award" ribbons that costume_con 26 gives out.) You could lay a "STRAIGHT but not narrow" ribbon on top of the badge and cover the whole thing up.

One young lady bought "STRAIGHT but not narrow" ribbons for herself and her girlfriend. But that's another story.

... like traffic and weather, like traffic and weather. Oooh we belong together

Have uploaded these pictures:

1. LASFS/Aftermeetings:
   • part 297: Coral Cafe (30-Aug-2007) et seq.
2. Anime Vegas 4:
   • Friday (31-Aug-2007)
   • Saturday (01-Sep-2007)
   • Sunday (02-Sep-2007)
   • Monday (03-Sep-2007)
3. Michelle's Picture Gallery:
   • Anime Expo part 48: Michelle's Pictures (30-Jun-2007)
   • San Diego Comic-Con 2007: Saturday (28-Jul-2007)
   • Con-Chord 2007 (Aug-2007)

Click on the "Karaoke is for Drinkers" picture to see the Anime Vegas photos. I haven't captioned them yet -- I'll take care of that tomorrow, before I head over to Mikomicon.

Some more random notes: Once again, I took a small number of pictures at the convention. And I'm almost out of "SHOT BY A BEAR" ribbons. (But I have plenty of the little bear stickers.) I'm out of a few more styles now, such as "Dangerous Curves." I need to re-order badge ribbons, I'll probably do that on Monday.

Biggest oops? I forgot to bring the animelosangeles tablecloth. I'll fish that out right now. Next year I want to have a backdrop behind the table, I'll have to see if I can get our publicity budget to cover that.

I've already heard from two manga/anime publishers who want to get involved in the convention -- program book ads, sponsorships (like the bags), dealers room space, panels on the live program. I need to put together a package for potential sponsors to cover the opportunities we've alleady identified (advertising on a bench, program book, lanyards, bags). Can anyone think of anything else I should be mentioning? Hmmm, I wonder if I should ask BROCCOLI if they want to sponsor fresh vegetables in the con suite.

Does anyone want to be on the Gallifrey One or Animé Los Angeles postcard mailing lists? Let me know.

I couldn't make it to Con-Chord, so Michelle Pincus has donated her pictures from that convention (along with a handful from AX and SDCC). I'll caption those real soon now -- I recognize a lot of the filkers from that con.