Naka Kon 09
Naka Kon 2009 was this past weekend.
I'm still recovering.
Overall the weekend was damn good. Thursday was frustrating. I get there with a car full of stuff, want to unload it in the game room and make my second trip, but am told that I won't be able to put anything in that room until Friday because the group that booked the hotel wasn't finished with it.
This meant that everything had to be hauled up to the 36th floor. Not the end of the world, but damn annoying that the bellhops insisted that they help and we weren't allowed to use the luggage carts. This meant that we had to tip them for every trip which was frankly a waste of con money since we were just moving things up so we could move them down the next day. By the time we got everything up there, it was close to 10, but Patrick and I made our second trip to get the rest of my stuff and got back around midnight. That load we left in the car and Pat and I discussed costuming until 1:30.
At 8:00 am Friday, William (my director) called and told me the game room was available. So on about 5 hours of sleep, it was time to start hauling stuff around again and setting up. Fortunately, a few volunteers helped considerably (and one didn't help at all) and things went along pretty smoothly.
By the time that registration started and people started coming in, all the TVs were set up, but there were still a few issues getting the TVs set to the right input channel. It was all taken care of pretty quickly, so that was good.
The Duck Hunt tournament was well received but somewhat underwhelming. Not nearly as many people signed up as I was expecting (largely due to long registration lines preventing people from getting there probably) and there were no real marksmen. The highest anyone made it to was lvl 13. In testing out the Zapper, I'd made it to lvl 22, so poo on them.
The We <3 Katamari tournament was similarly underwhelming. Only 5-6 people showed up, so we canceled the head to head round and the final round too. A few of the players apparently had never even played before, so it didn't go too well. But again, I think this may have had something to do with not enough people being there yet.
Sarah got there shortly after that and within 10 minutes was helping check out games, switch systems, and was generally wonderful. We ran out to get dinner with Val and I let someone else handle the Mario Kart Tourney. I didn't catch how it went, but the numbers seemed to be better by then and from what I heard, people were happy.
Friday night I was in bed well before midnight and slept till 8 the next morning when I had to get up to put on Sesshy for Saturday. This is a ~2 hour process, mostly consisting of the makeup and prosthetic ears. By 10:00 I was back down in the game room and I was directing a DDR freestyles tournament with 5 people who had never even heard of freestyles. The highest score I gave anyone was a 2/10. It was sad. I'll just drop this next year.
The DDR technical tournament went a bit better. The biggest problem was that the TV we were using (the giant plasma TV) had about a 1/2 second lag that just destroyed people. We switched out after the first round, but using soft pads still sucked majorly. The top players looked like they could probably handle some 10ft songs, but stuck to 8-9 foots. Boo. Note to self for next year: Use con budget for real pads or at the very least some plywood to make them not move like crazy.
The next tournament was the Guitar Hero tournament and that was run by Christine. She was great. Stayed around a really good amount of time and just got stuff done. I was very happy to have her as part of the staff. I had to run out shortly after it started because I was told that Erica needed me for cosplay sooner rather than later. Sarah told me to go, so I ran off.
When I got there, I discovered I'd left my cell, so I ran back to the game room to get it. When I got there, Will was leaving, Sarah was gone, Mano had disappeared and Christine was the only one there and she was busy running a tournament. Fortunately, Mano came back shortly thereafter.
I headed back to the cosplay area and they were beginning to open up seating. I called Sarah and something was obviously wrong. Really freaked me out and frustrated me that I couldn't do anything about it right then.
Geoff and I worked out a quick script for the cosplay contest intro and shortly thereafter we got started. It was a ton of fun hosting. I just wish I had shoes with better padding. My feet were killing me afterwords.
After the entries went on, there was the judging intermission which was way too long (yes, Erica. I know there's little that could be done about this). A Japanese dance group from KSU did a performance and I was told that when they finished, the judges would be back. They finished up and Pat came up to tell me that there was no word from the judges and all the directors and other people in charge had disappeared with them.
Awesome.
Geoff and I stall for a bit and then we're told that it's going to be at least another 30 minutes. And Lear saved the day. During the cosplay competition, a random assortment of music was playing and one of the entrants just started dancing to the song. Lear played the song again and had him come back out and do the full thing.
After that, he played Carmeldansen for the audience and they started dancing. The guy that had done the spontaneous dancing ran out and started doing that. Then suddenly I turn around and all of the cosplayers are out on stage doing it. The intermission turned into an awesome and spontaneous dance party.
Moe (the Security director) was helping to hold up speakers next to me and I asked her to run over to Lear and have him queue up a slow song a bit later. I told the audience that the Kon steals our souls and was taking my time away from Sarah so I was requesting a slow song to give her a minute to be together. The fan girls went squee and it was cute and something I'll never forget.
Finally, the judges came back, we handed out awards. I went back to the game room to check and make sure everything was ok and then passed the hell out.
The next morning, we tried to host the last 2 tournaments and they flopped, largely due to one of the games not making it there and the schedule having to be rearranged with little in the way of letting people know. So it was pretty much just a day of open gaming.
At 11, I ran my panel. What can I say besides it was freaking EPIC. I was originally supposed to have the largest room since the thread I'd created to see if there was any interest in it was one of the largest ones for panels. But I got downgraded to the smallest room for whatever reason. As a result, there were barely any seats and a LOT of people standing. I had numerous people tell me it was the best panel they've ever been to. There's some improvements I want to make (like holding off on some of the final figures until I finished deriving them to keep the surprise and/or not ruin the punch-line). I'll also probably drop the entire segment on "how far would Naruto fall and how big of a crater would he make?" since it was really underwhelming. But all in all, an awesome panel and it went over really well. Matt recorded it for me on Sarah's camera (and she's editing it as I type this). I'll be putting it up on Youtube once she's done. I was also going to send it to Mythbusters and see if they'd give me a job, but Sarah says the quality isn't that great so probably not worth it.
At 5:30 it finally died out and we were taking things down. There was some major confusion on who the TVs belonged to (there were three that didn't have names). Apparently some people also grabbed the wrong ones and I'm still not sure who got what. :-\
Overall, things that are lost are 1 wii-mote, maybe a gamecube controller, and maybe a TV (but it's probably just with the wrong person). Given the horror stories I've heard about losing things in the game room, I think that's pretty damn good.
Next year, we'll have a bigger room, I'll have some better idea of what's going on, and hopefully things will run much smoother. And hopefully I can delegate more. After all, they're making me a director. :)
I'm still recovering.
Overall the weekend was damn good. Thursday was frustrating. I get there with a car full of stuff, want to unload it in the game room and make my second trip, but am told that I won't be able to put anything in that room until Friday because the group that booked the hotel wasn't finished with it.
This meant that everything had to be hauled up to the 36th floor. Not the end of the world, but damn annoying that the bellhops insisted that they help and we weren't allowed to use the luggage carts. This meant that we had to tip them for every trip which was frankly a waste of con money since we were just moving things up so we could move them down the next day. By the time we got everything up there, it was close to 10, but Patrick and I made our second trip to get the rest of my stuff and got back around midnight. That load we left in the car and Pat and I discussed costuming until 1:30.
At 8:00 am Friday, William (my director) called and told me the game room was available. So on about 5 hours of sleep, it was time to start hauling stuff around again and setting up. Fortunately, a few volunteers helped considerably (and one didn't help at all) and things went along pretty smoothly.
By the time that registration started and people started coming in, all the TVs were set up, but there were still a few issues getting the TVs set to the right input channel. It was all taken care of pretty quickly, so that was good.
The Duck Hunt tournament was well received but somewhat underwhelming. Not nearly as many people signed up as I was expecting (largely due to long registration lines preventing people from getting there probably) and there were no real marksmen. The highest anyone made it to was lvl 13. In testing out the Zapper, I'd made it to lvl 22, so poo on them.
The We <3 Katamari tournament was similarly underwhelming. Only 5-6 people showed up, so we canceled the head to head round and the final round too. A few of the players apparently had never even played before, so it didn't go too well. But again, I think this may have had something to do with not enough people being there yet.
Sarah got there shortly after that and within 10 minutes was helping check out games, switch systems, and was generally wonderful. We ran out to get dinner with Val and I let someone else handle the Mario Kart Tourney. I didn't catch how it went, but the numbers seemed to be better by then and from what I heard, people were happy.
Friday night I was in bed well before midnight and slept till 8 the next morning when I had to get up to put on Sesshy for Saturday. This is a ~2 hour process, mostly consisting of the makeup and prosthetic ears. By 10:00 I was back down in the game room and I was directing a DDR freestyles tournament with 5 people who had never even heard of freestyles. The highest score I gave anyone was a 2/10. It was sad. I'll just drop this next year.
The DDR technical tournament went a bit better. The biggest problem was that the TV we were using (the giant plasma TV) had about a 1/2 second lag that just destroyed people. We switched out after the first round, but using soft pads still sucked majorly. The top players looked like they could probably handle some 10ft songs, but stuck to 8-9 foots. Boo. Note to self for next year: Use con budget for real pads or at the very least some plywood to make them not move like crazy.
The next tournament was the Guitar Hero tournament and that was run by Christine. She was great. Stayed around a really good amount of time and just got stuff done. I was very happy to have her as part of the staff. I had to run out shortly after it started because I was told that Erica needed me for cosplay sooner rather than later. Sarah told me to go, so I ran off.
When I got there, I discovered I'd left my cell, so I ran back to the game room to get it. When I got there, Will was leaving, Sarah was gone, Mano had disappeared and Christine was the only one there and she was busy running a tournament. Fortunately, Mano came back shortly thereafter.
I headed back to the cosplay area and they were beginning to open up seating. I called Sarah and something was obviously wrong. Really freaked me out and frustrated me that I couldn't do anything about it right then.
Geoff and I worked out a quick script for the cosplay contest intro and shortly thereafter we got started. It was a ton of fun hosting. I just wish I had shoes with better padding. My feet were killing me afterwords.
After the entries went on, there was the judging intermission which was way too long (yes, Erica. I know there's little that could be done about this). A Japanese dance group from KSU did a performance and I was told that when they finished, the judges would be back. They finished up and Pat came up to tell me that there was no word from the judges and all the directors and other people in charge had disappeared with them.
Awesome.
Geoff and I stall for a bit and then we're told that it's going to be at least another 30 minutes. And Lear saved the day. During the cosplay competition, a random assortment of music was playing and one of the entrants just started dancing to the song. Lear played the song again and had him come back out and do the full thing.
After that, he played Carmeldansen for the audience and they started dancing. The guy that had done the spontaneous dancing ran out and started doing that. Then suddenly I turn around and all of the cosplayers are out on stage doing it. The intermission turned into an awesome and spontaneous dance party.
Moe (the Security director) was helping to hold up speakers next to me and I asked her to run over to Lear and have him queue up a slow song a bit later. I told the audience that the Kon steals our souls and was taking my time away from Sarah so I was requesting a slow song to give her a minute to be together. The fan girls went squee and it was cute and something I'll never forget.
Finally, the judges came back, we handed out awards. I went back to the game room to check and make sure everything was ok and then passed the hell out.
The next morning, we tried to host the last 2 tournaments and they flopped, largely due to one of the games not making it there and the schedule having to be rearranged with little in the way of letting people know. So it was pretty much just a day of open gaming.
At 11, I ran my panel. What can I say besides it was freaking EPIC. I was originally supposed to have the largest room since the thread I'd created to see if there was any interest in it was one of the largest ones for panels. But I got downgraded to the smallest room for whatever reason. As a result, there were barely any seats and a LOT of people standing. I had numerous people tell me it was the best panel they've ever been to. There's some improvements I want to make (like holding off on some of the final figures until I finished deriving them to keep the surprise and/or not ruin the punch-line). I'll also probably drop the entire segment on "how far would Naruto fall and how big of a crater would he make?" since it was really underwhelming. But all in all, an awesome panel and it went over really well. Matt recorded it for me on Sarah's camera (and she's editing it as I type this). I'll be putting it up on Youtube once she's done. I was also going to send it to Mythbusters and see if they'd give me a job, but Sarah says the quality isn't that great so probably not worth it.
At 5:30 it finally died out and we were taking things down. There was some major confusion on who the TVs belonged to (there were three that didn't have names). Apparently some people also grabbed the wrong ones and I'm still not sure who got what. :-\
Overall, things that are lost are 1 wii-mote, maybe a gamecube controller, and maybe a TV (but it's probably just with the wrong person). Given the horror stories I've heard about losing things in the game room, I think that's pretty damn good.
Next year, we'll have a bigger room, I'll have some better idea of what's going on, and hopefully things will run much smoother. And hopefully I can delegate more. After all, they're making me a director. :)