Otakon 09: Friday

Otakon is the largest anime convention on the east coast, and the only con I go to / have been to. One convention of this magnitude over the course of a 3-day weekend is enough to satisfy me for about a year. Sure, I could go to a different con instead one year, but EVERYONE goes to Otakon - I go to school in Baltimore, so it's practically our back yard. So why change up the routine? And so it's been for 6 out of the past 7 years since I first started 2003. It usually hits between late July and late August, but this year was a little earlier - July 17-19th - and it marks my first year helping to staff. Check out my posts from last August for Otakon 08.

For Jasmin and a lot of my friends, Otakon starts long before Friday. Wednesday night, I watched as she stayed up late working on her cosplay, finally finishing her costume of Katara from Avatar sometime Thursday afternoon. Like last year, my friend Chris was able to score a free hotel room in the Hilton, where it would be him, his girlfriend Sarah, our friend Jack, Jasmin, and myself. So we drove into Baltimore Thursday evening and checked into the hotel, dropped off our bags and watched from the windows as the line outside to pick up pre-registered badges got longer and eventually circled around the entire Baltimore Convention Center. As staff, however, I enjoyed the first of few perks to come - waiting in a separate staff line that included a grand total of 1 person in front of me. Yeehaw. They took my picture, threw a few shirts at me, and sent me on my way. Good thing I packed all of these clothes beforehand.


The staff position that I had was a step up from your average gofer, which can be thought of as the equivalent of interns in a company - they're there to run and get you coffee and make themselves into pyramids when the other staff are bored. No, my position was in Panel Ops. We're in charge of going to panels, run by industries or guests or fans, and watching over them to make sure things go smoothly. We're not even supposed to mess with the tech stuff, technically (no pun intended), unless it's running around with a microphone to the audience, which you can be sure I did. You don't get paid, but they're supposed to give you a free badge and even a free hotel room. Well, my hotel was already free (and they said it was too late to compensate anyway), and I had paid for my badge (which I plan to email them about in the near future), so I was doing this to try it out and have something to do. Other perks I did take advantage of include free food, secret passage-ways, first dibs on free merchandise, no lines, and the general ability to get away anything.

The catch is, they make you do some work, too. I was up bright and early Friday morning to be in Panel Ops by 9:30, to meet with the head honchos and my friend Aaron who was able to get me the job a week before the convention. lol They told me I was going to help out with some double-coverage of panels they thought would be busy, namely industry panels like Bandai and Funimation that usually have a packed room. So I decided on a few panels and went from there. I met with Jasmin for a few minutes while she was waiting in line for the Dealer's Room, but I had to apologize for running off to do more work. After a quick demonstration of what I need to do in a panel (introduce yourself to panelists, ask them if they're ok with pictures, etc.), I found my way to the Staff Suite in a nearby hotel for a quick bite to eat.

The first panel I worked was Madhouse. The announcements that interested me weren't anything I hadn't heard before, like Trigun the Movie which has been in the works forever. lol The guy who came was Japanese and was essentially the person in charge of Madhouse, and I got a kick out of asking him in Japanese whether taking pictures would be alright. My favorite part of the panel was taking the mic around for Q&A, and giving it to a couple of people who I realized as soon as they started talking were part of an anime podcast I listen to - Anime World Order. I introduced myself afterwards as a fan of their podcast and asked if they were doing any panels this year. More on the Anime's Craziest Deaths and How to Review Anime panels later.

I finally had some free time and went to meet Jasmin in the Dealer's Room, but we left right afterwards and got some sandwiches from the staff food room (not to be confused with the aforementioned Staff Suite). We went back to the hotel room to take a break and drop off stuff Jasmin had bought, then returned to the con to meet up with some friends. My friend Aaron was doing his annual Evangelion panel as the Eva Monkey, so Jasmin and I decided to check it out. He did a good job, and they had some funny videos too - two in particular that come to mind are an Eva version of the Rejected cartoon (Shinji: "MY ANUS IS BLEEDING!!"), and a myspace call to some girl using a Shinji soundboard (Shinji: *emo* "Please don't leave me..."). XD


We went to California Tortilla for dinner, which marks the only time I paid for food the whole weekend, but picked up a staff food voucher as well to use another time. Jasmin really wanted to go to Artist Alley, but her interests in the area are completely different from mine so we were forced to leave after not too long. I had organized a meeting with a friend of mine, Leeanne (aka Mistress Roxie) from New Jersey, and went to meet her in the flag area. She was dressed as Mello from Death Note, and pulled it off really well too. Our visit was short and soon I had to go to my next panel - Bandai.

According to panel ops, Bandai has traditionally been the industry panel in need of the most support since they give out lots of free stuff, so we were ready. Unfortunately, they neglected to tell me that the room is cursed, and it seemed like a bunch of things went wrong from my standpoint. It started out okay when I had to make announcements about the exits and for people to scoot in toward the isles. However, when it came time to walk around with microphones, as soon as I passed by the speakers there was huge interference and it apparently blew out the line for portable mics. The rest of the time, the panelists had to deal with people running up to the front of the room to use the wired mics, and they probably weren't happy about that. But here's the kicker -- my mic was off the whole time, and I showed it to the tech guy to make sure, so it shouldn't have had interference in the first place. As time went on, people in the audience were taking pictures and videos and one of the staff asked if we should be patrolling it. Well, it came out that no one had asked them in the beginning whether pictures and videos were okay, so they were looking at me and saying I was responsible. But really, if Bandai truly didn't want it they would have said something, right? Bleh.

It was getting late now and my feet were killing me, so I went with Jasmin back to the room to lay down for a bit. When we came back to Otakon, the first thing we did was hit up the rave, but the smell of Otaku was so overwhelming that we had to leave shortly thereafter. So we got some 18+ bracelets and went to see Bible Black instead, the notorious hentai itself. After one episode, Jasmin (and me too, to be honest) had enough; unfortunately, no, not all hentai is going to be about a sweet love story.

That was enough excitement for one day. Or possibly a whole weekend? Stay tuned.

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