Neko 2015
Nekocon 2014 - Con Report: The Recovery Year
Thursday:
It was raining. Perfect start to a new con year. Ashley and I did our last minute cosplay supply and snack shopping for the weekend (instead of me going to class with a creepy Prof who did nothing but ramble on about inappropriate topics) and I headed off to Hampton.
I arrived at the convention center to find everything already set up and just groups of people sitting around waiting for things to do. After settling in at Con-Ops (my home for the next 50 or so hours) I quickly grew bored because there was nothing to do. I also eventually regretted not getting lunch beforehand because I ended up not eating until 6 and that was only because another staff member was generous enough to give me some soup. Of course, by that time things were already starting to get set up so I had little time to eat (its always like that, long periods of nothing then short bursts of chaos).
That being said, we were still unable to completely set up due to network and portal issues so we were unable to check people in in a timely manner; again. However, registration decided to led us a hand this year and basically did our job for all of Thursday night. So basically I didn’t do anything all of Thursday. Huh.
This act, though generous, also had ramifications that lasted all weekend, but I’ll get to that later.
Back to my lack of activity on Thursday, another reason why I didn’t have much to do that night was also because Con-Ops were not in charge of shirts this year. :D Yup, every time someone asked us about shirts all weekend I had this huge, guiltless grin on my face as I answered that it was this department head’s responsibility. This year shirts were handled by the PR department and it was up to department heads to gather the shirts for their staff members. A genius idea that should be done forever and ever.
So since I had absolutely nothing to do Thursday I attempted to teach someone how to play Weiss Schwarz and went to a pokemon spelling bee panel. I kinda made it weird by spouting random pokemon facts and instigating the audience. I then headed home right as Con-Ops actually started running. Oops.
Friday:
Friday was a rough morning. Had to get up early and didn’t want to. Blah blah blah. Anyway, got my cosplay in gear and headed to my friend’s house already feeling like a zombie (good thing she was driving). Had to text that I would be late due to traffic, though it was more because I was buying donuts :p
Anyway, the con officially started with portal access problems; fortunately we weren’t getting constantly logged out every 10 minutes, that was a relief.
Remember how I mentioned that registration doing our job on Thursday would affect the whole weekend? Yeah; people in the pre-reg line had a wait time of about 2-3 hours in the morning. At night we actually had to pass out water and set up more than one registration station because the convention center-long line extended to about a 4 hour wait time. Ouch. Reg pulled the short straw this year.
The morning went pretty smoothly, especially since we didn’t have to worry about shirts. I basically worked all morning: handling staff members, lost items, and struggling to stay awake.
Got into the dealer’s room later than I would have liked, and I didn’t get into Artist Alley until the evening. This year was busier than I expected. It’s mostly because we were short-handed in the Con-Ops station.
It was also annoying that everyone kept thinking we were panel check-in and that panel check-in was lost and found. Literally, this happened every time without fail. I got some cheesecake bread from artist alley, along with some other things. I brought a budget of $200 and spent over half of it the first day (_ _);;
I found the Eirin plushie I *never* thought I would find and spent $30 at one place, $30 at another kiosk where I found blind box Rin from Inuyasha, a Miku Hatsune bunny plushie, and a Naoto keychain that I traded for a Sailor Venus fanbook. The other $30 (technically $35) went towards pokemon badges and I finished the whole set, yay!
There was a lot of good art this year at artist alley. If I hadn’t already depleted my budget shopping then I would have surely spent it all here. After the short (around 2 hour) break of shopping, I headed back to my station for the rest of the afternoon and got off around 6 or 7 that evening (Con-Ops was short-staffed this year, so basically it was "work-as-long-as-you-can" shifts). Got to play some tabletop games and further throw-off my internal clock. XD
Played a quick card game called "We didn't playtest this game" as well as the board game "Resistance," which I've always wanted to play. Sadly, I was so deliriously tired at this point I gave away that I was a spy in the first round and then lost every subsequent round after that. In my defense, the first round I was teaching everyone how to play, and I expended all my energy in hyperactivity in the following games.
We then played a dozen more rounds of "WDPTG" (it's that fast of a game) and headed off to some panels. It was at this point that I realized my internal clock was broken when it turned out to be around 7 instead of 9 like I had thought. Ended up wandering around for a bit until we wandered into the karaoke panel room. I had signed up for karaoke, but I failed to show up for the panel-check-in due to fatigue from my shift. I joked with my friends that it would be funny if I was still on the karaoke roster and, as it turned out, I was?? So I made the best of it and sang the worst of the panel and quickly fled. I think my singing has gotten worse than its been a few years back, is that a thing that happens?
We then attended a "Let's Play Touhou" panel where people who had no idea how to play touhou games would come up and try their luck. I actually made it up and tried playing a round with my eyes closed, to predictable results, and then headed home for the night.
Saturday:
Just going to note here that Friday was definitely the highlight of the con this year, if only for the tabletop games, Saturday was kinda just, eh; probably because I was tired out of my mind.
I came in rather early, which was surprising. The convention was still closed, but staff-badge got me in. Didn't matter too much as the main staff room, and most of the other rooms, were still locked. That was weird. In any case, it was eventually opened, and I had to hold down Con-Ops for a while.
The rest of the morning was just full of working until lunch break where I had to go and deliver food back to the crew. Hospitality was short on food this year. I didn't do anything outside of my shift save for the extended break I took buying things from AA and taking my final sweep of the dealer's room. I basically stayed on shift until around 8 at night (12 hour shifttttt~). Exciting right?
Well I did take another break around 6 because Ashley had to force me to relax a bit. Played some Project Diva F 2nd (before the english release came out) and considered getting food (to which I ultimately did not).
Nothing super exciting happened in the staff room, outside the usual "bunch of exhausted people in a room together" shenanigans. There was some excitement from manning the Lost & Found, but even then it was mostly people yelling at me because we didn't have their precious lost items, we wouldn't give them a free badge, or because we wouldn't let them around back to look at the box. I actually almost made some teenager cry because she was being stupid. She came in with her guardian because they had a lost a phone and while her guardian was telling me this, stupid kid over here takes it upon herself to head straight to the back and start digging through the box, calling out "I don't see it." I immediately got up and moved my arm around her back to maneuver her away from the back and she just froze. After her that she was an idiot (well, more like "don't do that kind of thing," but internally I was screaming man you're such a idiot) I look for the phone they were looking for and, lo and behold, it was literally sitting on top of all the lost items. I know it was because we literally just checked the phone in. *sigh* Why are people so dumb?
Eventually, I got off shift, and wandered around Artist Alley for the last time; desperately wishing I had more money to spend on art. Sadly, the year ended with me learning how terrible food service is during con time as most restaurant workers are seriously rude to guests (I'm sure it's a rudeness-cycle thing probably, but it still sucks). However, in any case, this was a pretty good con year. For all the gripe I give staffing, I do enjoy doing it at some level, either that or I'm just insane.
On a final note, I got some closure for the events of the previous year, but that's for another post.
Man this entry was seriously overdue. My bad. Here's hoping that Nekocon 2015 will be a strong year!
Thursday:
It was raining. Perfect start to a new con year. Ashley and I did our last minute cosplay supply and snack shopping for the weekend (instead of me going to class with a creepy Prof who did nothing but ramble on about inappropriate topics) and I headed off to Hampton.
I arrived at the convention center to find everything already set up and just groups of people sitting around waiting for things to do. After settling in at Con-Ops (my home for the next 50 or so hours) I quickly grew bored because there was nothing to do. I also eventually regretted not getting lunch beforehand because I ended up not eating until 6 and that was only because another staff member was generous enough to give me some soup. Of course, by that time things were already starting to get set up so I had little time to eat (its always like that, long periods of nothing then short bursts of chaos).
That being said, we were still unable to completely set up due to network and portal issues so we were unable to check people in in a timely manner; again. However, registration decided to led us a hand this year and basically did our job for all of Thursday night. So basically I didn’t do anything all of Thursday. Huh.
This act, though generous, also had ramifications that lasted all weekend, but I’ll get to that later.
Back to my lack of activity on Thursday, another reason why I didn’t have much to do that night was also because Con-Ops were not in charge of shirts this year. :D Yup, every time someone asked us about shirts all weekend I had this huge, guiltless grin on my face as I answered that it was this department head’s responsibility. This year shirts were handled by the PR department and it was up to department heads to gather the shirts for their staff members. A genius idea that should be done forever and ever.
So since I had absolutely nothing to do Thursday I attempted to teach someone how to play Weiss Schwarz and went to a pokemon spelling bee panel. I kinda made it weird by spouting random pokemon facts and instigating the audience. I then headed home right as Con-Ops actually started running. Oops.
Friday:
Friday was a rough morning. Had to get up early and didn’t want to. Blah blah blah. Anyway, got my cosplay in gear and headed to my friend’s house already feeling like a zombie (good thing she was driving). Had to text that I would be late due to traffic, though it was more because I was buying donuts :p
Anyway, the con officially started with portal access problems; fortunately we weren’t getting constantly logged out every 10 minutes, that was a relief.
Remember how I mentioned that registration doing our job on Thursday would affect the whole weekend? Yeah; people in the pre-reg line had a wait time of about 2-3 hours in the morning. At night we actually had to pass out water and set up more than one registration station because the convention center-long line extended to about a 4 hour wait time. Ouch. Reg pulled the short straw this year.
The morning went pretty smoothly, especially since we didn’t have to worry about shirts. I basically worked all morning: handling staff members, lost items, and struggling to stay awake.
Got into the dealer’s room later than I would have liked, and I didn’t get into Artist Alley until the evening. This year was busier than I expected. It’s mostly because we were short-handed in the Con-Ops station.
It was also annoying that everyone kept thinking we were panel check-in and that panel check-in was lost and found. Literally, this happened every time without fail. I got some cheesecake bread from artist alley, along with some other things. I brought a budget of $200 and spent over half of it the first day (_ _);;
I found the Eirin plushie I *never* thought I would find and spent $30 at one place, $30 at another kiosk where I found blind box Rin from Inuyasha, a Miku Hatsune bunny plushie, and a Naoto keychain that I traded for a Sailor Venus fanbook. The other $30 (technically $35) went towards pokemon badges and I finished the whole set, yay!
There was a lot of good art this year at artist alley. If I hadn’t already depleted my budget shopping then I would have surely spent it all here. After the short (around 2 hour) break of shopping, I headed back to my station for the rest of the afternoon and got off around 6 or 7 that evening (Con-Ops was short-staffed this year, so basically it was "work-as-long-as-you-can" shifts). Got to play some tabletop games and further throw-off my internal clock. XD
Played a quick card game called "We didn't playtest this game" as well as the board game "Resistance," which I've always wanted to play. Sadly, I was so deliriously tired at this point I gave away that I was a spy in the first round and then lost every subsequent round after that. In my defense, the first round I was teaching everyone how to play, and I expended all my energy in hyperactivity in the following games.
We then played a dozen more rounds of "WDPTG" (it's that fast of a game) and headed off to some panels. It was at this point that I realized my internal clock was broken when it turned out to be around 7 instead of 9 like I had thought. Ended up wandering around for a bit until we wandered into the karaoke panel room. I had signed up for karaoke, but I failed to show up for the panel-check-in due to fatigue from my shift. I joked with my friends that it would be funny if I was still on the karaoke roster and, as it turned out, I was?? So I made the best of it and sang the worst of the panel and quickly fled. I think my singing has gotten worse than its been a few years back, is that a thing that happens?
We then attended a "Let's Play Touhou" panel where people who had no idea how to play touhou games would come up and try their luck. I actually made it up and tried playing a round with my eyes closed, to predictable results, and then headed home for the night.
Saturday:
Just going to note here that Friday was definitely the highlight of the con this year, if only for the tabletop games, Saturday was kinda just, eh; probably because I was tired out of my mind.
I came in rather early, which was surprising. The convention was still closed, but staff-badge got me in. Didn't matter too much as the main staff room, and most of the other rooms, were still locked. That was weird. In any case, it was eventually opened, and I had to hold down Con-Ops for a while.
The rest of the morning was just full of working until lunch break where I had to go and deliver food back to the crew. Hospitality was short on food this year. I didn't do anything outside of my shift save for the extended break I took buying things from AA and taking my final sweep of the dealer's room. I basically stayed on shift until around 8 at night (12 hour shifttttt~). Exciting right?
Well I did take another break around 6 because Ashley had to force me to relax a bit. Played some Project Diva F 2nd (before the english release came out) and considered getting food (to which I ultimately did not).
Nothing super exciting happened in the staff room, outside the usual "bunch of exhausted people in a room together" shenanigans. There was some excitement from manning the Lost & Found, but even then it was mostly people yelling at me because we didn't have their precious lost items, we wouldn't give them a free badge, or because we wouldn't let them around back to look at the box. I actually almost made some teenager cry because she was being stupid. She came in with her guardian because they had a lost a phone and while her guardian was telling me this, stupid kid over here takes it upon herself to head straight to the back and start digging through the box, calling out "I don't see it." I immediately got up and moved my arm around her back to maneuver her away from the back and she just froze. After her that she was an idiot (well, more like "don't do that kind of thing," but internally I was screaming man you're such a idiot) I look for the phone they were looking for and, lo and behold, it was literally sitting on top of all the lost items. I know it was because we literally just checked the phone in. *sigh* Why are people so dumb?
Eventually, I got off shift, and wandered around Artist Alley for the last time; desperately wishing I had more money to spend on art. Sadly, the year ended with me learning how terrible food service is during con time as most restaurant workers are seriously rude to guests (I'm sure it's a rudeness-cycle thing probably, but it still sucks). However, in any case, this was a pretty good con year. For all the gripe I give staffing, I do enjoy doing it at some level, either that or I'm just insane.
On a final note, I got some closure for the events of the previous year, but that's for another post.
Man this entry was seriously overdue. My bad. Here's hoping that Nekocon 2015 will be a strong year!