MattTheMinion

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

According to the hosting provider there has been an issue with the server that our forums are on. I've been through the cycle of it doesn't work - support ticket - it works - time passes - it doesn't work many times now. I'm currently reviewing alternate hosting providers. As it's somewhat ridiculous that the same issue it happened more than twice. When I do switch the BBS over I'll post an announcement in the BBS announcement section so that everyone can be ready for a day or two of service disruption as the DNS moves to a new address.

To be honest the initial number released is a preliminary number based on raw sales data. Last year there was a communications breakdown involving how the 2-day and 1-day badges along with some at-con comps were tracked and a lot of them got double counted. That's why it should be announced as a preliminary number. This year we centralized the attendance count a bit more in order to be closer to the final numbers, but as we go through and check the counts it can still swing either way.

Since I'm the one who has audited the attendance numbers for years, the ones posted on our website are accurate. I don't touch Wikipedia as starting down that road would end up as a huge time sink. As for updated numbers, it takes a couple of weeks to go through the data and weed out duplicates, identify people who did not show up even after they bought a membership, find and correct exceptions that were made in reg in the name of customer service, confirm with staff about comps for industry, contractors, etc. I'm fairly certain we will be close to the preliminary reported number, but w

If for some reason your badge is not listed with a tracking number by now please contact our help desk team through help.otakon.com We are tracking problems as they develop and plan to use this info to improve the process for next year. On the bright side I can say with some certainty that most of the badges were delivered without issue. However, I do acknowledge that most is not all.

Confirmation Date: The day the badge was delivered Confirmation Code: Extra info on the delivery These will start filling in soon when we upload the next update

Please take a moment and log into the members area on the Otakon website and check your tracking number. If there is no tracking number or you find another issue, let us know through our help desk (help.otakon.com) and we will see what we can do.

So my guess is that this particular package got mangled by a mail sorting machine. That being said, the badge IDs on the badges we sent out are tied to your membership IDs, just like the badges one would pick up at Otakon. So in effect it doesn't matter what you write on it, since we know the badge ID a person should have if it becomes necessary to challenge veracity.

So I have the last batch of tracking numbers in my email, I'll have to wait till closer to lunch time to upload them since the job that pays me has priority while I'm at work. That being said we've been noting various issues (positive and negative) with how this first year roll out played out and in theory they will be used to make next year's process easier and more straightforward.

So I've been uploading the tracking info as it comes in, which has so far been in one or two files at the close of the day. Pretty much if you just pick a time to check each day, it will either be there or not. As for changing your ZIP code, by now it is far too late to update the packages, although for what it's worth we have been checking the addresses as we've been going through them and fixing ones that are obviously wrong. Personally, I'm a bit surprised by the number of people who neglected to include their street name in their badge mailing address. Anyhow, we have been tracking

As soon as I get the info about the mailed badges, it will go up on the site. I can understand that they don't want to give us a handful of files when 1 will do, but I will ping them for an update.

Well I know the BPD let the folks stay overnight Wednesday, although they may frown on people camping out for days... What's more likely to happen is that the organizers of an event that runs in the convention center before Otakon will not want them there and ask they they go wait somewhere else.

For what it's worth, in order to make it to the hotel room areas of the hotel one would need to cross over a second walkway from the building in which we are considering holding the dance. At that point those folks would be far enough removed from the dance that they really can't be considered as participating in it anymore.

Actually (even though I don't know why you would want it), last years schedule is still available in the members area in pdf form. I'm sure they will remove it later though. Also, although it's not artist's alley like the original poster asked about, they have started posting the partial dealers room list in the members area. We can try and keep some of the old information up longer if you think it will help; however, we do have to clean it out so that we can prep it up for the next years info. For example the dealer's that are starting to be posted are those that have signed up

We will likely be looking at opening more blocks in the future, although it depends partially on how the current blocks go. You shouldn't be able to find better room rates than the ones we offer through passkey, although if you do happen to find a lower rate than ours let us know.

I don't know the exact make/model of the projectors we get for this room, but I do know that we specifically arrange for ones that are capable of displaying HD quality material. Also we arrange for several media players for that room, so that we can accommodate a variety of formats.

The changeover of 35mm to HD is a permanent change. As time has gone on, it has become more difficult to get relevant and new 35mm prints (not to mention the permissions for them). Mostly this is because of the shift in the industry towards digital formats leading to a lack of available and usable 35mm prints here in the US.

We do not forsee the need for an attendance cap this year. Last year we were able to handle 26,000 people pretty well. This year we have a bit more space. Now if 50,000 people pre-register before April... that's a different situation.

Yeah, if you clear your cache or hold down shift and hit refresh on the Otakon page you'll get the 2009 logos, otherwise you have to wait till it clears on its own. As for the news item, it must have been something from the site update. Either way I think that it's fixed now...

Patience will be rewarded, indeed...

As of last year, a list of names and table locations for both Artists in the Artist Alley and Dealers in the Dealer's Room is posted on the Otakon website. Of course since Otakon 2008 is long over, the list was taken down.

Indeed we have, and of course we're on this one too.... weeeeeeee!

Part of the problem with negotiating things slower is that the hotels will continue to allow room reservations during our negotiations. This means that the number of rooms available for us to contract a lower rate for gets smaller. For example if we don't have nearby hotels like the Days Inn contracted and signed before we release the next Otakon's dates, it will likely end up sold out just as quickly, but now everyone is paying more. Good for the hotels, not so good for our members.

I believe by later, they are thinking more along the lines of having information announced 1-2 weeks after the end of Otakon.