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davemerrillSo on Wednesday I got on a plane to Dulles and from there to Atlanta, and I was picked up by my folks, and spent the night at my folks' in Smyrna, and then on Thursday I borrowed the van and went down to the airport to pick up Ryan and Greg. On the way I went to a comic shop way down in Fayetteville or some dang place because when I was in there 8 years ago they had some diecast Gatchaman II vehicles that caught my eye. I finally found the things in a display case behind a framed Milt Caniff print. Owner wanted $400 for 3 of them. I'm like, hey, these things have literally not been touched since I was in here 8 years ago, but owner was simply not interested in selling them. Fine, I hope the dust they gather in your store satisfies the hoarder-center areas of your brain. Anyway, I got Greg and Ryan and we got some lunch and made a Target run and checked into the Waverly and then began our con odyssey.
You can see where the Braves are building their new stadium, to take traffic that is already pretty bad and make it worse for the duration of the baseball season.
This is AWA's 20th year so there's lots of new signage and it's kind of awesome.
Thursday night is the SHFS - actually there's a lot of programming happening Thursday, but the SHFS is my baby so I made sure it happened. Tables were set up right, ALL THE SELLERS SHOWED UP AND CHECKED IN, it was the smoothest setup yet. One woman was irate because she couldn't get wi-fi to make her cell phone credit card reader to work, and somehow this was something I needed to solve for her. Sadly, it is not. It is not my problem in the slightest. Next year we will stress what we're not offering in our sales agreement.
Later that night I did Old School Classroom, which was a live version of that "least essential OVA" column I wrote. Had a fascinating discussion with someone after the panel in which I finally made him realize that when I use words like "arbitrary" and "subjective" and "in my opinion", I mean to communicate the fact that I'm talking about my own arbitrary, subjective opinion that may not have anything to do with anybody else's feelings about some goddamn video game.
Later we got some dinner thanks to Elizabeth driving us around and then it was bedtime.
Friday it turns out I got to MC the opening ceremonies, which I found out about 40 minutes before showtime. It went pretty well, I brought a nice jacket, Taka introduced the Japanese guests, our voice talent only slightly wasted big chunks of time with their HILARIOUS ANTICS, and then it was time for the con to begin!
More to follow in Part 2.
You can see where the Braves are building their new stadium, to take traffic that is already pretty bad and make it worse for the duration of the baseball season.
This is AWA's 20th year so there's lots of new signage and it's kind of awesome.
Thursday night is the SHFS - actually there's a lot of programming happening Thursday, but the SHFS is my baby so I made sure it happened. Tables were set up right, ALL THE SELLERS SHOWED UP AND CHECKED IN, it was the smoothest setup yet. One woman was irate because she couldn't get wi-fi to make her cell phone credit card reader to work, and somehow this was something I needed to solve for her. Sadly, it is not. It is not my problem in the slightest. Next year we will stress what we're not offering in our sales agreement.
Later that night I did Old School Classroom, which was a live version of that "least essential OVA" column I wrote. Had a fascinating discussion with someone after the panel in which I finally made him realize that when I use words like "arbitrary" and "subjective" and "in my opinion", I mean to communicate the fact that I'm talking about my own arbitrary, subjective opinion that may not have anything to do with anybody else's feelings about some goddamn video game.
Later we got some dinner thanks to Elizabeth driving us around and then it was bedtime.
Friday it turns out I got to MC the opening ceremonies, which I found out about 40 minutes before showtime. It went pretty well, I brought a nice jacket, Taka introduced the Japanese guests, our voice talent only slightly wasted big chunks of time with their HILARIOUS ANTICS, and then it was time for the con to begin!
More to follow in Part 2.
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no subject
Date: 2014-10-02 10:35 pm (UTC)REALLY? That's crazy huge numbers of people! And I don't recognize that area AT ALL. Have there been significant changes to the interior since 2011?
I feel lost...
no subject
Date: 2014-10-02 10:50 pm (UTC)The crowd photo was taken right as they were clearing the room before Neil's Totally Lame Anime, so there was a giant crowd trying to get out and a giant crowd trying to get in. EVEN THOUGH last year we had a lot of issues with room clearing, and even though Events and Public Safety swore up and down they wouldn't clear rooms, they did it anyway. As TLA settled in we found staffers and made them swear on the bible they wouldn't clear the room, and yet at 20 minutes til 10 there they were, making people line up outside for Hell and preparing to clear the room. I had to make myself very clear that we were NOT CLEARING THE ROOM.
Final total attendance is 20311, I'm told.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-03 12:25 am (UTC)I assume there is zero knowledge of who actually issued the order, even in the face of what you did. I'm understanding from what you say you managed to keep them from clearing the room but it was a severe hair pulling struggle.
alright, that picture. I wasn't oriented. That's the hall at the convention center that goes down and down and eventually ends up at the doors to the bridge to the mall, right?
20k plus. wow. Dat's a whole lotta peeple. :)