CosmosAutumn

I'll try a rough translation... "The curtain falls on the US-East Coast Cosplay extravaganza 'Otakon'" The prevention of fans' uploads to the internet is the topic at hand. Celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, the East Coast's largest anime convention "Otakon 2008 - Convention of Otaku Generation (Otakon)" concluded on the 10th. In three days, last year's record of 22,852 was exceeded by over 3,000 more attendees, setting a record high attendance number. Japanese anime fandom in the US is certainly incresing, and according to Otakon Public Relations Chair Amanda Tai (S

As far as feedback for other panels I attended, I was really impressed with a lot of fan panels! I really wasn't expecting much from most of the fan panels I attended, but many of them were well run, organized, and informative. The first two to come to mind were the Fan Fiction and Amateur Voice Acting, both of which I had low expectations for. I was pleasantly surprised. Making Visual Novels was fun as well. Other than the Touhou panel, which just seems an unfortunate miscommunication, I enjoyed all the panels, industry and fan, that I attended. Now if only I can fit in everything

Thanks for the responses so far!

I realize an official feedback thread has already gone up for the con and may or may not go up for panels, but I know there were a lot of panels I missed that I'm curious about (how were they? Did you learn anything new or interesting? Would you reccommend to someone else to attend that panel if it shows up again?) and even for panels I attended there were things I missed, so I figured I'd start a thread for people to share thoughts and info...(mods, I hope this thread is OK) I reckon I'll get the ball rolling with panels I missed and am wondering about: -The Kendo Demo -The Adul

I just wish the escalators would stay consistantly off or on, not constantly changing like the ones going from level 3 to leve 4.

LOL I'm glad someone asked this. I stayed for about 20 minutes because it was so odd to watch - no one seemed to know what was up -whether he was the panelist just joking around or what. So Otakon staff eventually intervened?

Thanks for making this thread, I'm getting psyched for Otakon just reading it! Some of my highlights include: -Kendo: Way of the Sword -Making Visual Novels -Funi's and ADV's panels -Life Drawing -Contour and Gesture Drawing -Otaku Studies -Rakugo -Tadano and Matsushita ...and I'd be lying if I said Bandai's "surprise" didn't look intriguing!

Wow, this sounds exciting! Will there be sheet music as well?

Interesting, curfew crackdowns are happening in our area as well. Who knows how they will react to congoers, but it's good information and people under 17 should be mindful of this just to be on the safe side.

This was my first big con and I definately had a blast and thought the staff handled a lot of things very well. I know you guys are working on the erroneous schedules and all, but I noticed a LOT of panels described in the Pocket Guide that neither appeared on the online schedule or the Pocket Guide one, even though their descriptions were there. I know you said the pocket guide goes to print much earlier, but the fact that they were in the descriptions section and not in the schedule in the same book that was probably printed at the same time was...odd. Why did that happen - was it because