Rather than give a standard criticism or review, I decided to write a guide to running a tiny convention on next to no money, highlighting places Johncon can improve. I myself have run many tiny conventions in the past, while I was the president (and founder *boast boast*) of the Underground Gaming Society at Rutgers. For the record, we love Johncon, and would love to see it do better, and hopefully this guide will help it do just that. None of this criticism is meant to be taken negatively.

So here we go!

How to Run an Awesome Con on No Money

1. Lean on Your Members for Entertainment – One of the things Johncon doesn’t do, but should, it use its members as a resource. The convention had a single anime viewing room, and a game room with one PS3 on a CRT monitor, and one DDR set up, most likely because that’s everything the college could provide. That’s not very impressive, and it’s an easy way to get people to go home after checking the con out. Now, here’s the trick. Most people who are running a con, already own gaming systems, games, and of course TVs to hook those systems up to.  So what any small con should do, is have its members bring their own personal set-ups to the con in order to be part of the gaming room. Even if only five people were running the con, you would add those five game setups to the two the college gave you and your game room immediately looks bigger. The same goes for anime or viewing rooms. If there is any member that has a laptop and monitor or laptop and projector, they should bring it. Heck, even your board game library should substantially come from your members.
2. Lean on Your Veterans for Entertainment – One thing that Johncon has going for it, is that several Alumni of Johns Hopkins still go to Johncon for fun. These Alumni also have game systems, TVs, laptops to hook up and show anime on, so on so forth. Reach out to them early, and ask them what they can provide. Many of them (especially if they have fallen into good careers) will have really high quality monitors or even projectors and well expanded game libraries.
3. Bribe People for Entertainment – Finally, offer the general populace a chance to pitch in and help the convention out. It’s very simple. Bring a Console/TV set-up, and get free entry into the con! Add this together with the stuff the college gave you, the stuff your members provided, and the stuff your veterans supplied and suddenly you find yourself with a game room with over 20 game stations, a huge tabletop gaming library, and several anime viewing rooms, enough to rival many others small or even average sized cons, with no money spent whatsoever.
4. (Protect Your Investment) – Here is how you handle people volunteering their electronics for Johncon. First, everyone who donates must put a piece of tape on EVERYTHING they donate which has their name, phone number, and possibly even address on it. This way we know EXACTLY who owns which setup. When I say everything I mean EVERYTHING from controllers to TVs to systems to even game cases. You also have to have one convention staffer watch the gaming room at all times. It’s a shitty job but it will make your convention waaaaaay better. Extra points if you can handle shifts to get the game room running twenty four hours. Keep a detailed inventory of who is donating once and have your gameroom staffer have a copy at all times. Other than that, you simply get in touch with all your donating members as early as you can before the convention starts. Get the person with the biggest car or van to start rounding the donated electronics up (or let people bring the set-up themselves) and get them all in place (if not started) before the convention starts. Then, when the convention ends, do the same thing in reverse. Round up all the electronic and spread them out to the exact people who own each setup as you break down the con. The exact same thing holds true for anyone who is volunteering to say, run an anime viewing room with their laptop.
5. See The Con As You Walk In – One of the problems Johncon has is you can’t really see a convention happening as soon as you walk in the door. You basically just see an empty lounge with a reg desk and nothing else, and you aren’t allowed to see what else the convention holds until you pay your registration fee. As a result, people who are just checking the convention out and are not sure if they want to come or not will walk in, see nothing, and walk out without a second thought. Any successful convention should allow congoers to see the convention in progress before they even reg, and so the Johncon lounge area should be used for something. You can use it for a videogaming area, a board gaming area (with your board game library right there) or even an area for PC gaming. Anything that gets people doing some sort of activity in that area will do.
6. Decorations – This sounds dumb but you should decorate, a lot. You should let people know as soon as they walk in that this is a con and it is happening right now! Heck, you should decorate outside with signs or something to let people who are walking by know there is a convention happening inside the building Keeping the front door open is also a good way to do this. Remember, atmosphere builds hype and hype builds a good con, so anything that builds more atmosphere will help your con thrive. You do need to spend some money on decorations, but it’s a comparably small amount to what you would spend on everything else at the convention.
7. Advertise Early – The biggest problem with most small cons is not their content, but their attendance. Simply put, small cons need to spend an IMMENSE amount of effort advertising, and advertising early. As soon as you know the con date, start putting out fliers on campus. Not only that, but get the word out on the internet, on facebook, on twitter, and on every convention database that is out there. Post to forums that might be interested in the con. The person who is running the game room should post to Shoryuken.com or Dustloop.com or something like that. The anime guys should post to Anime News Network and AnimeCons.com and stuff like that. The board gaming people should post the board game geek. Let EVERYONE know that your convention is happening and don’t stop. Then, as stuff gets revealed such as guests, panel lineups, tournaments, and so forth, advertise again! Let everyone know in an update. Make it impossible for anyone to NOT know that the convention is going on. Most of this advertising is free over the internet, and fliers can be printed up at any random college computer lab.
8. Figure Out Your Content – When people decide they want to go to a convention, it’s because there is something at that convention they want to see or do. So the earlier you can promise content, the more people will want to come. Even if you don’t know exactly what TIME these events will be happening, informing people of your panels, games, tournaments, and so forth will build hype about your convention. Just keep people in the know, so that they can hype themselves up.
9. Utilize Your Space – Never, ever, EVER let a space go unused. Even if you have a really small meeting room, use it for roleplaying games, board games, or even anime viewing. Have something going on in every room, and if you can, have something going on in the hallways! You always want people to see the convention no matter where they walk, so that means utilizing  every single room the building has to offer.
10. Ask for Volunteers – This one is simple. Offer someone free entry (and food) if they help staff the con. Many people will do this for the food alone.
11. Be creative! – The final piece of advice I have is to be creative. The good thing about small college cons is that they don’t necessarily have the worries huge cons have. They can experiment and do things that other cons can’t without worrying too much about liability issues. So all those good ideas that people have that just can’t be done because Otakon staff is afraid of being sued, that’s your goldmine.

Well, that’s about it. Hopefully this guide has been informative! Now you know that you too can run a successful convention in very little cash.

Download the MP3 here!

Podcast Outline

1. Introduction
2. Panels we did
a. Fanfiction
b. How to Build an Arcade Stick
c. Overall overview of our panels
3. Things we liked about Otakon
a. AMV Contest
b. Coffee Samurai
c. Neuro
d. The Guidebook app
e. Dubs Time Forgot
f. The hall community and cosplay
g. Anime Parliament
h. The Game Room
i. Con panel staff (especially Andy)
j. Fan parodies
k. Japan’s IP Problem: The Panel
l. Tiger and Bunny
m. Some anime about a girl who is a waitress at a hotspring
4. Things we didn’t like
a. LINES!!!
b. Space management
c. Panel scheduling
d. The Panel Ops lounge
e. The dance
f. More space management
g. The Matsuri festival
h. The Tokusatsu panel
i. Anime Myths and Legends
j. Otakon’s panel selection process
k. The overall attitude that panelists are all just going to come to the convention anyway even without compensation
5. Final thoughts and things we want to see and not see next year
a. We would like to see names attached to panels next year
b. We hope “ice cold water/only one dollar” doesn’t become a recurring callout
c. We would like to see targeted staggered scheduling
d. We would like to see bigger screens
e. We would like to see a slightly smaller entry fee
f. We would like to see an independent or spontaneous open space for fan made events
g. We would like to see more staff! Volunteer!
h. We would like to see better selection in fan parodies
6. What could possibly keep us from coming next year
a. A Fatwah
b. If Baltimore explodes
c. If the only panel that gets in is Disorganization XIII kicks Rob in the nuts
d. If they scheduled the con when we were in another country
e. If they gave Uncle Yo the antidote
7. SHOWTUNES!!!

Download the MP3 here!

Points of Podcast

1. Otakon and what panels we were doing
2. Spoiler 5′s progress
3. Tanto Cuore, the new anime maid cardgame overview
4. Why visual jokes do not work on podcasts
5. Tanto Cuore strategy
6. Mouth breathing
7. The differences between Tanto Cuore and Dominion
8. Our final Tanto Cuore review
9. Kemomimi Panic, when sweaty men sit around to pretend they are catgirls
10. Our impression of a Kemomimi Panic game
11. What celebrities we would play Kemomimi Panic with
12. The John Stamos story
13. Our review of german chocolate whipahol

Note: When we say Whippits we actually just mean eating alcoholic whipped cream randomly. We do not condone the recreational consumption of nitrous oxide. It damages your brain and is generally a bad idea. We do, however, recommend recreational consumption of alcoholic flavored whipped cream. That shit is nuts!

Double Note: We actually do have a lot of respect for Otakon, and we are happy they let us come back this year and do two really well received panels. But seriously, LET SPOILER BACK IN!!!

Be on the lookout for our Otakon recap podcast soon!

Download the MP3 here!

Courtesy of: The Pants Are Optional Topic

We’re all for having fun, but honestly it seems like every year people come up with just crazy stuff that is NEVER going to be allowable in public or in polite company.

Just because you’re at a con, that doesn’t mean the rules of everyday life are completely suspended.

Okay … wait what? Is taking off your pants at a convention really that offensive? Is it really a rule of everyday life that you can’t take your pants off in a room with a bunch of people that say it is OK to? I understand their original argument, that the BCC had policies against that sort of thing. THAT makes total sense. However, is taking off your pants NEVER allowable in public or polite company. Geez I can remember a spoiler rehearsal we did totally pantsless, and everyone there seemed to be polite. I can also remember more than one comedian who has been known to take his pants off on stage.

So, is taking off your pants really past the limit of things that a convention will allow? This is a convention that allows girls to cosplay characters that wear next to nothing. Look at the Felicia cosplayers out there. Look at the Yoko (from Gurren Lagann) cosplayers. Geebus I can’t wait to see what girls decide to cosplay Makoto from BlazBlue. So female nudity is not offensive but male nudity is? Or perhaps they are just saying that nudity is OK if it is part of a costume but otherwise isn’t OK. It sure as hell can’t be a problem with being revealing, cause boxer shorts hide way more than these costumes do. Is it simply the case that it is only OK to take off your pants if you are attractive? That’s demeaning isn’t it?

Not to mention, I can think of PLENTY of things that should be way more offensive than some geeks sitting around in their underwear. The full frontal nudity shown in the hardcore hentai in hentai panels doesn’t count as more offensive? The extreme violence shown in the mature screenings doesn’t count as more offensive? Hell, the numerous amounts of trolls and no-shows in non 18+ panels don’t count as more offensive? Also, geez I can remember topless models in a “how to draw hentai” panel, and anime burlesques that were practically strip shows, and a dozen and one masquerade skits that end with someone pantsless. When did panels become a “pants only” zone?

Honestly, I just don’t get this morality. The idea was to just have a little fun and let the audience take off their pants “cause they can” because we were put into an 18+ slot and it soon erupted into something way more. I’m sure the Otakon staff looks down on us as “trying to cause trouble” now, but really all we wanted to do was have some consensual adult pantsless fun, and as soon as we were told not to, we said OK, but I get the feeling they are getting sick of the fact that we like to make waves, and would probably prefer to stick with someone “inside the box”. God forbid we do something more interesting than the flatly delivered cookie-cutter discussion panels everyone is used to. I guess I just have to be happy that we have such a strong fan following that has been built up over these years. It’s probably the only thing that lets us act the way we do.

All bureaucratic things with Otakon aside, what do YOU guys think? Is offering people a chance to take off their pants in a panel room really that offensive? Is it any more offensive than anything else you can see at a convention? What is the fan’s opinion on an 18+ panel being “pants optional”?

This sure has snowballed. I mean geez, we were kidding from the get go anyway … probably.

What really sucks is how hard it is get across that we really are trying to be professional about all this. All we really want to know are the policies that Otakon has about panels, and we aren’t trying to troll Otakon, or cause problems. Still, I can’t help but think the couple of issues we have had this year is starting to paint us as something of an undesirable element.