lazy con report: G-Anime 2009

As far as upstart conventions go, G-Anime had some really good ideas. I was there for both days spanning February 7 and 8 2009.

Some great ideas included a "command center" where programming was monitored by the crew. So whenever something went wrong, help was sent on the way. The location was great too (the Palais de Congress in Gatineau). There was a lot more parking than I anticipated (the city hall next door happens to offer free underground parking if you can find it... and it's connected so you can leave you coat in the car and walk indoors all the way over). Too bad the food court was mostly closed (those who were open seriously cashed in as the con ran pretty much all day both days).

Other great ideas included the fact that a lot of screening rooms were fully automated - each projector was an HTPC with timers set to show whatever was on the schedule for an hour at a time.

The down-sides... well, it felt a lot like being at an upstart. Many times I thought they were biting off more than they deserved (as well as they could chew). For instance, my friends and I missed pre-registration by about... 5 months. That is, we didn't know about it. I didn't even notice a poster at the local comics shop (who, btw, also turned out to have the single largest booth in the dealer's room). So they really needed to raise awareness.

Because we registered at the door, tickets were $40CAD. That's only $5 shy of a basic pass to FanExpo in Toronto! I mean, that's pretty arrogant considering its their first year. Pre-registration was $30... so a 25% jump is pretty hard to swallow.

Secondly, live events took an aweful long time to get running. Because the tickets line was so well-organized, we got in pretty quickly (compared to other cons I've been to). We had time to stop at the openning ceremonies... which, in the end, we lost patience and didn't see. We sat in the room for nearly 20 minutes (enough time to have watched a full episode in one of the screening rooms).
The same happened later that day. Since we weren't terribly hungry yet, we thought we'd grab a seat at the masquerade contest for half and hour or so... well, that 30 minutes grew into well over 35 minutes (the crowd grew restless and start bouncing a balloon around to each other)... we decided to get some supper over on St.Joseph.

Lastly, technical glitches were non-stop. I spent a lot of time in the screening rooms trying to absorb as much anime as possible. But it seemed that the setups weren't fully tested. Sometimes the anti-virus on those HTPCs would kick in and slow down playback. Other times, the glitch delayed the play-time of the show and the timer on the HTPC either cut off the playback mid-episode. Other times the cut-off did not occur and the next show started up overriding the video (but making a mess of the audio). It also probably did not help that all those HTPCs were running the Windows 7 beta. Sure it's free and you avoid the licensing fees. But goodness... sometimes you draw the line somewhere.

Need to give the staff a big big kudos however. Whenever glitches occured, they were there. Security was provided by folks cosplaying as members of the RCPD and Umbrella corporation and despite their reputations from the source material, were all friendly and always helpful.