MattTheMinion

My answer here is based on how things were done in the past. I don't know if they have changed recently. In previous years vendor badges were handed out on site when the vendor checked in. I don't think this is going to change. The person checking in for the booth should be able to pick up all the badges for their booth on check-in. If you know you will need more badges than what comes with the table space you can add them to your table order. However, I believe you can also purchase additional badges on site in the vendor hall. For more up to date answers keep sending things to the

Hello: Vendor badges are full badges for the rest of the event. You do not need to purchase another badge. Yes, your coworker should go to member accessibility to get priority access to the elevators. It will make things easier for her overall. I do not know the official answer as to whether or not vendors can use the exhibition hall elevators, but if you have the accessibility item for access then you are covered either way. Yes, in a case like you suggested you should have someone talk to the Otakon staff person managing the line.

At this time we are sorting through our options and playing a little wait-and-see. Our goal is that once we pick something we don't want to change it abruptly unless we absolutely have to. I believe that like last year, if we announce that vaccines are required - those who are unvaccinated and purchased their badges before the announcement was made, will be eligible for a refund.

To be honest there isn't much we can do when it's slow other than reboot the virtual server it sits on in AWS-land and hope that it starts behaving again. There is a software update coming out soon, so perhaps that will help?

Yeah I thought I got 2021 in there sometime in the last year, but apparently I did not. Things are in progress, but also I have about 100 other things to do post-con that take priority. Paying bills is never really "fun", and for that matter neither is filling out sales/use tax returns. As for this year, it will likely be early September based on other deadlines.

As probably one of the oldest semi-active account holders on the BBS (going back to the before times when it was just for gofers) it's true that the BBS has lost its luster as a social media platform. While it does have several advantages such as being fully under our control vs. something like Facebook, it requires a notably larger time and support investment than just using someone else's product that nearly everyone already happens to be part of. The cost of course being that these other products and platforms have built in limits on what you can and can't do and who controls what can be a

Yeah, it's never been free. I don't think there is a way to realistically make it free. Even if we could coordinate all the labor as volunteer work we'd still have to pay for shipping, tracking, and packaging materials and honestly that's where most of the cost lies.

Yes, it is $15. I believe it's the same price as it was last year. The price is computed based on what it costs us on average to have a package of 1-8 badges put together and shipped.

Legacy information is being handled a little differently now. In theory if your registration information remains similar enough it should automatically be complied when you re-register.

In a word the thing(s) holding it up are.... contracts. Adjustments needed to be made for a post-covid world.

We are aware of it, and are looking into pinning down whether the source is the database or a software thing.

To keep it brief there are a lot of logistical and practical considerations and trade offs that had to be considered in terms of holding a convention. And if we're being honest, there is nothing we could have done that would satisfy everyone. For example, social distancing. If you spaced out seats in the programming rooms to distance folks, the seating capacity of each room would be roughly 15% of what it was this year. It's not worth having a video room with a max capacity of 23 people, or limiting main events to a couple hundred attendees. Once you do that you have thousands of people c

Hello, There was a printer error on some of the mailed badges. While the bar codes on the back are correct, the printed numbers are not. You can just distribute these amongst your group at this point.

Yes you can head to badge services in registration (don't wait in the pre-reg pickup line). Bring your confirmation ID, tracking number, and ID and they will help you out.

Badge pickup is at the convention center from 3PM-10PM Thursday. Follow the lines through the front doors.

Yeah, the only option for parking at the Marquis is valet parking. It is an underground lot, but basically you don't get access to your car until they bring it back up.

Send a message to Registration here: https://www.otakon.com/help/contact-us/

Since we are not planning on using any space in the hotel for programming this year, the mask rule begins at the entrances to the convention center. This would be the end of the tunnel where it opens into the convention center. Of course we would encourage you to wear your masks in the tunnel as well. As for the bag check, the details are still being hammered out but I would expect it to be around in some form. I do not know if we are going to have 'mask stations' setup at all the entrances, although it has been something we've been discussing the logistics of.

The short answer is that as of right now, everyone is required to wear masks at all times, save for specific circumstances. While the CDC does set guidelines we can still be more restrictive if we feel it is in our organization's best interest. With that in mind providing a safe environment for all of our attendees is important to us, and in this case we still have to be concerned about those who are not vaccinated like children under 12 or those who may be immunocompromised or living with someone at high risk. The most straightforward way to accomplish this is to require everyone to wea

You may want to send and email to the panels folks (panels@otakorp.org)

The BBS doesn't usually see much traffic until about two months out from our event. I did forward your message on to one of the heads of our AMV contest to see if he knew people who may be interested. Also you may want to try posting something on the Otakon Facebook page since it is more active this time of year.

The coupon codes you received last year were set to expire on the first day of Otakon 2020 when they were created. We are currently working on updating all of the previously issued codes so that they expire on the first day of Otakon 2021 instead.

We are finishing up moving everyone over to the new 2021 event in ShowClix. Assuming everything goes as planned everyone who held on to their 2020 registration should get a new confirmation email for 2021 later this month.

We are planning to resend event confirmations for Otakon 2021 registrations likely around November of this year. It's a matter of balancing timing of the reminder so it's not too far away from next year's event. Almost everyone who did not ask for a refund has already been rolled into 2021, we still have a few records to transfer over.

Since I have been summoned... 😛 In very broad strokes membership income makes up about 70% of our income, cutting it back to 1/4 of this would be unworkable. A restriction in attendance would also drop the other 30% of our income as there would be fewer vendors, merch sales, advertisements, and so on. Could we run an Otakon on 25-30% of our expected budget, not really. The combination of the annual day-to-day expenses eat up a large portion of what's left (for example material storage, internet things, legal support), and as we already run those aspects pretty thin there isn't much t