MattTheMinion

For the record it is still being worked on, as negotiating changes between several hotels takes time. On the bright side this should mean more rooms closer to the convention center for the initial opening. Again, when this opens it is not planned to be a surprise.

I missed this one earlier, part part of the empty feeling is that the exhibition space in DC is significantly bigger than it was in Baltimore.

Yeah I've found Amazon is a little sneaky about smile when you go to buy things, but as long as you checkout from a smile.amazon.com page it will apply. As for us, we've had it set up for a little over a year now, the problem with getting the word out is tied into the solicitation rules. Amazon doesn't want to get involved either so they make theirs a little more stringent to cover their butts. But Otakorp is an option out there if you look for it.

Yeah it's going slower than we hoped, as one of our key hotel contacts went on vacation last week. Most of the room block allocations are for where we put staff and guests and the like, so you guys won't notice much of a difference - although it may open up more rooms in some hotels. When we are ready to announce it we plan to give you some lead time to be ready.

I'll second Kim's post on how to donate to Otakorp. Contacting our help desk will get you towards the right people in a better documented fashion. After that you basically would send us a check, and depending on the amount receive a thank you letter from us. I will add that one of the reasons it is difficult to find out how to donate is that we cannot solicit donations outside of our membership directly without spending a lot of time registering and reporting our efforts to various state agencies, which depending on what state you are talking about includes posting a "donate here" button on our website. However, if you got any of the email newsletters that we sent out, towards the bottom of the email there was a link to one way to indirectly donate funds to Otakorp (which helps Otakon). Other than that, if you want to offset everyone's registration costs by $5, you'd basically need to donate $125,000, by $10 would be twice that, etc. Of course it should be noted that when a donation comes in we may choose to only accept it with the caveat that we get to choose how to spend it.

The tricky thing with dealers is that a single vendor can purchase a number of booths, and that sometimes makes it hard to tell what the total number in the room is based on the number of tables.

So to tie up some lose ends, a daily pass is risky because anything that looks like a ticket and acts like a ticket, will likely be considered a ticket. And at that point we will essentially be subject to both sales tax and entertainment tax on all membership sales, because the membership would also be considered a ticket. Now if it came to it, we could fight that designation in court, but until it was ruled one way or another we'd have to be collecting the tax from everyone along with paying various legal fees and it is generally a mess to avoid. That being said, as we set up our budget plans for the 2018 fiscal year (it starts Nov. 1st), if we look over all the pro's and con's and decide to go the route where we would move down the path to tickets for Otakon, then we'd have to figure out pricing and would probably incorporate the taxes into the price structure. What exactly would change on the price side is hard to say since we'd be moving to a brand new attendance model. What gets trickier to account for is that there are a bunch of related expenses that tie into registration and the different types of badges. For example, figuring out different badges, training security and staff, reconfiguring registration setup, figuring out rules on badge transfers and upgrades, determining the inpact on various vendor contracts that have clauses for private vs. ticketed events, and so on. After that we'd have to doublecheck on how going to tickets was impacted by the corporate bylaws. To make the changeover would not be easy, but if we determined that it was something we needed to do it could be done. Also odds are with the effort involved it would be a one-way decision.

I believe the question you really wanted to ask was "When will then be now?"

Unless something pops up to hinder it, this will be going out on several channels tomorrow.

We do have something together, just working on coordinating the announcement and such. Should be released soon.

So this might tie in well if I go with the changing demographics route. It will also take a little bit more legwork on my side, but I suppose if I start next month I should be able to get at least half the people who would be needed to write something up that could be used. I agree with this being a problem. Which is what makes it hard. Not to mention a lot of people who know the best stories are busy with other things so getting everyone free at the same time at-con is even trickier. That is more or less the abridged version of the start of Otakon.

First off thanks for attending these. I never know who is going to show up, as the content isn't quite the same as everything else that is offered. As for the amendments, unlike say the US constitution they get worked into our bylaws text, while the original content remains is recorded in the amendment. So what I presented was the document as amended last March. That being said I probably could talk for 10-30 minutes on each one. On that note I suppose something that would be more interesting was alluded to in the Q&A - if we could instead do a gathering of past presidents of Otakorp panel and have everyone talk about their particular year's. Maybe something for the 25th Otakon?

It may be simply the case that they were interpreting the rules we gave them in a more strict fashion than we had intended. At least now we know that it was happening..

I can't say 100% what happened in Hall A, I wasn't there Sunday as I had other things to take care of. If there was some sort of miscommunication on our side regarding this, then that is one more issue we have to clear up. Either way I think we all agree that we, as Otakon staff, need to spend more time and effort regarding the planning and effectiveness of the charity auction.

I don't think there is anything we can do about the price, between staff and members we already consume over 90% of the rooms in the hotel. However, we may look to shift where some staff are housed based on what's more efficient for us on the staff side - and that would of course free up more space in the Marriott for members.