Otakon, showin the love

[hackerzc]

Otakon's schedule has been released (http://www.otakon.com/con_schedule.asp).
Now that everything is official I can happily announce that over the course of the weekend Otakon's AMV Contest will be able to accommodate more than 10,000 viewers , nearly double that of the Masquerade.

Yeah, we roll like that.

[dwchang]

Otakon's schedule has been released (http://www.otakon.com/con_schedule.asp).
Now that everything is official I can happily announce that over the course of the weekend Otakon's AMV Contest will be able to accommodate more than 10,000 viewers , nearly double that of the Masquerade.

Yeah, we roll like that.

Wow I should post like 5 seconds later...I guess I could copy and paste here, but I imagine you'll see my other post. Feel free to reply to either >_>

[Seijin_Dinger]

well John I think the "Bigger than Cosplay" trend is starting to spread

[hackerzc]

well John I think the "Bigger than Cosplay" trend is starting to spread

Well the potential is there.... we'll have to see how many come though.

[jasper-isis]

The larger accommodations sound great - thanks!

I've noticed on the schedule that the big Friday night showing runs for half an hour longer than the Saturday and Sunday showings. Is this to count for the additional time needed to get everybody seated?

[Parodic Productions]

EDIT:

I just reedited this message because I felt it too revealing. Forget I said anything. Sorry.

[hackerzc]

The larger accommodations sound great - thanks!

I've noticed on the schedule that the big Friday night showing runs for half an hour longer than the Saturday and Sunday showings. Is this to count for the additional time needed to get everybody seated?

Short answer, no it's not (but it MAY be used as such... if needed).

Now for the explanation:
As things are right now the hour before the contest screening (that gray block) is for "clearing of the concert/seating of the AMV contest" (that is according to the "draft schedule I have from when things were being setup).
However, going on what I keep being told by video ops (the guys who run the video rooms and keep the timing for all that stuff), we will NOT be clearing the room... at all.
I know how contradictory that sounds (and it is), so I'll have to email a couple people to find out for sure if the room will be cleared after the concert or not.
Given the size of the room I'm willing to bet it will not be cleared, as a half hour is far too little time to seat 5500+ people (you didn't hear me say that number BTW... something about how "we do not discuss room capacity"... whatever).
If in fact things will NOT be cleared then you can start coming in for the contest as the concert is ending (or go to the concert and just stay there).

So anyway the thing about the extra half hour at the end is that instead of blocking it for room clearing I requested it just be an extension of the actual contest play time in case we run into any hickups that need addressing, or need a bit more time to get people in/seated/ballots passed out. Also as we would NOT be clearing the room before fan parodies anyway, it was quite pointless you make a half hour block and call it "room clearing".
I had actually requested that all the contest screenings be set up to have identical looking blocks (first half hour set as seating, last half hour as an extension of the 2 hour contest play time), but I see that did not happen on the schedule released on Saturday. Just as I also requested that the AMV Overflows be renamed to "AMV General Screenings" as I find the term "overflow" somewhat derogatory in nature (denoting that the videos in the overflows are just "extra crap").
In my personal opinion a few of the videos in the General Screenings are actually more enjoyable than some of the entries from the contest, so I think the videos in the "overflows" deserve a more respectful block name.
Funny thing is, the draft schedule I have actually lists the overflows as the "AMV General Screenings". So we'll have to wait and see what the printed schedules at con say. I'm hoping the schedule released on the website is just a basic representation and that the at con schedule will be more detailed (denoting seating times, etc).
My reason for being so concerned is because last year the schedule did not list the first half hour of the AMV contest as "seating" time, leading a number of people to believe the contest was supposed to start at the exact time the block was listed on the schedule, and as that was not the case a lot of people thought the contest started late when in fact it started right on time. So this year, being the head (and having every aspect of the contest personally reflect on my own abilities), I made it a priority to make sure that the seating time was listed... something I repeated over and over again. If it ends up not being there, I'm going to be very annoyed to say the least.