failcon '15 with extra fail
Nov. 4th, 2015 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davemerrillSo we just had a big anime-con meltdown over on Facebook, which happily melted down more than a month before the actual convention was supposed to have happened. "Akihabara Expo" and/or "Akibaland" was/were a show happening at the Anaheim Convention Center in December, with sponsorship by Crunchyroll and Grimecraft, among others, and lots of DJs and musical acts and producers and DJs and maybe some artists, and an attendee conduct policy that seemed lifted from a rave that informed attendees they could not bring in food, water, or medication and that if they left the facility they would not be allowed back in.
Turns out, most of their guests and sponsors had not agreed to be guests or sponsors, and that none of the facilities, not the Anaheim Convention Center, nor the hotel the convention moved to without announcing it to anyone, had been paid.
So it's vaporware, and hopefully our con chair, who asked everyone to address him as "Michael -san" or "Michael-sempai" - got out of this without being tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Wounded pride heals but credit scores are more complicated. Especially complicated is the legal status of whatever business he was trying to run; AkibaExpo LLC was registered, then cancelled; the address given for this LLC was a fake, and subsequent inquiries brought forth the information that Akiba Expo was being run as a sole proprietorship, which means, he's on the hook for it all, whatever that might entail.
Hopefully the artist alley artists who paid for tables and the attendees who bought badges will be refunded. Hopefully the next time some wannabe decides to start an "anime convention", he'll realize it's a more complex proposition than merely, you know, telling the kind of overblown lies 12 year olds tell each other in study hall about how their dad bought them a Ferrari but it's in the shop right now and how last year he went on a date with all three of Charlie's Angels, to use an example from a childhood fibber I knew.
Turns out, most of their guests and sponsors had not agreed to be guests or sponsors, and that none of the facilities, not the Anaheim Convention Center, nor the hotel the convention moved to without announcing it to anyone, had been paid.
So it's vaporware, and hopefully our con chair, who asked everyone to address him as "Michael -san" or "Michael-sempai" - got out of this without being tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Wounded pride heals but credit scores are more complicated. Especially complicated is the legal status of whatever business he was trying to run; AkibaExpo LLC was registered, then cancelled; the address given for this LLC was a fake, and subsequent inquiries brought forth the information that Akiba Expo was being run as a sole proprietorship, which means, he's on the hook for it all, whatever that might entail.
Hopefully the artist alley artists who paid for tables and the attendees who bought badges will be refunded. Hopefully the next time some wannabe decides to start an "anime convention", he'll realize it's a more complex proposition than merely, you know, telling the kind of overblown lies 12 year olds tell each other in study hall about how their dad bought them a Ferrari but it's in the shop right now and how last year he went on a date with all three of Charlie's Angels, to use an example from a childhood fibber I knew.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-11-04 11:25 pm (UTC)Or whatever the complex B.S. that guy in the APA was writing.
But seriously, how does the Anaheim convention center lease space without a deposit? I was there back in '85 and the impression I had was they were NEVER in down-time. Being literally a block and a bit from freaking Disneyland tends to make your function space quite desirable.
I don't know if we should call this dude a delusional idiot or an amazingly skilled conman genius.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-04 11:42 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure this guy is a delusional idiot. An amazingly skilled conman genius would have figured out some sort of con that wouldn't unravel the moment their website goes live and their "guests" notice that they're being listed as "guests" to a convention they've never heard of.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-09 02:13 am (UTC)