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Starting a college anime con

edited May 2008 in Conventions
Thought I'd throw this out there to all those interested or who want to contribute sagely advice.

I've been enlisted for the last few months as guest relations czar for Tigercon, a startup one-day FREE event on 11/1 at Towson University (in Towson, MD, north of Baltimore) sponsored by the accordingly monotonously named Towson Anime Club. I'm also dabbling in events, programming, and other fun odds and ends for it. We have a lot of cash sent down from the heavens to make it really awesome.

Here's our guest/artist lineup so far:

DJ ASU (Producer, artist, DJ, Tenbu Productions guy)
Applegeeks
Steve Bennett
Dead of Summer
Fragile Gravity
Jami Noguchi
Geist (band)
And a bunch of other people, whoever shows up

Now I know, by virtue of one or two of those names there, it will be a party unmatched by anything else our campus has seen. However, I was wondering if you guys had any ideas for what kind of things we could pull off to make it not just awesome, but legendary.

Comments

  • I suggest that you change the name of the con, because it's really close to Toracon (tora means tiger in Japanese for those who don't know), a one day con in Rochester, NY by the RIT Anime Club.

    As a side note, I wish I could get mad moneys for my con T_T
  • As the founder of Tora-con the best advice I can give you is DELEGATE. Find underlings and use them for everything they're worth. Don't pick random people though, find people you trust and know will get the job done. They will save your life once the con comes around as some life emergency may come up and makes you unable to perform some con duty or job. Since you delegated some power earlier there's no need to worry since you've been training and working with the underlings for months/weeks.

    You should probably not get your hands in everything going on at the con, it will eat up all your time and the quality of everything will decrease. It is much better to just focus on your job as head of guest relations to make their time at the con as enjoyable as possible. That way when the con rolls around all you will have to do is answer to the con chair, keep an eye on your staff, make the guests happy, and make sure the guests' events run smoothly. That is much better than doing all of the above plus checking on other events or things you scheduled outside of your department.

    Remember, the key word is DELEGATE.
  • I CAN NOT AGREE WITH LISA MORE!
  • WHAT DO YOU SEE?
  • YOUR MOM!
  • edited May 2008
    I suggest that you change the name of the con, because it's really close to Toracon (tora means tiger in Japanese for those who don't know), a one day con in Rochester, NY by the RIT Anime Club.

    As a side note, I wish I could get mad moneys for my con T_T
    We considered that when deciding on a name back in February, but our school's mascot is the Tiger, and with other events on campus with names like Tigerfest and Tigerthon and all sorts of other Tiger____s, we ultimately wanted to have that consistency, because this event is primarily for the student body.

    And yeah, I know, we've been delegating. I'm just contributing ideas to other departments. Early on I was helping out with broader things because I just wasn't sure how many of our club members would step up to the plate, or even what my position would be when we got things rolling, got the budget, etc.. Turns out we gathered a crew of 16 or so plus other local clubs pitching in for some things.
    Post edited by aresef on
  • YOUR MOM!
    What?
  • edited November 2008
    I know this thread is kind of dead, but fast forward to 11/1. We did it. Not only did we do it, but it was a resounding success, with 350 people showing up to have a kickass time. Nothing blew up and most of our guests want to come back. Geist actually went out there and said it was the most fun they've had playing a con.

    I remember being in the main events space for their show--there's a grill in the back of the room, and I can't imagine it was easy for them to take orders over the epic-loud metal.

    Any crises that happened we were entirely prepared for. Like we had to can the dance for safety concerns, so we had our DJ and our artists come together for Super Art Fight, which was badass. Or Steve Bennett and our game room crew were both double-booked (Florida Supercon, yeeeah), so we switched around the schedule, got the TU gaming club guys to work, and it ended up being awesome.
    Post edited by aresef on
  • I was there, and I was quite impressed. Sadly I had to leave early, but I enjoyed being there. Will there be one next year?
  • 350? That's awesome! Sounds like you guys did a great job.
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