LittleHobbit13

Same! The Renaissance felt really welcoming to Otakon, a good enough experience to forego the tunnel convenience. That said, I'm starting to get a little impatient about how long it's taking for the hotel blocks to open up. I keep checking every day and nothing. I'm surprised at how long it's taking!

Without context of the various factors, I would agree that it's not great, but there are factors. The real judgement will come next year when we have a new grouping of data to start creating a pattern out of. Until then, a 4k drop down from 29k isn't too terrible. Understood, and so we're clear amidst vendor quantity complaints...I actually loved having wider aisles so it was easier to navigate the booths. Yes, more vendors would be nice, but the extra room to breathe was breathe was much appreciated.

That's not actually that bad. Last year we had just over 29k, so we actually only fell by about 4k. We lost some from our peak in the couple years beforehand, due to crowding, so that can't be counted as a decrease in interest in the convention itself. I'm willing to bet most of the people we lost since last year are a combination of BMore natives who didn't want to follow us down to DC and people who wanted to skip the potentially chaotic first year at a new location. Those are all completely legit reasons. Now that we have more space, people will return. When word gets out about how smooth the move was, people will return. When the denizens of DC start to realize we're there, they'll replace the BMore natives we lost. All in all, just under 25k isn't actually that bad of a number when you look at it in the proper context.

I'll just point out that anyone using Amazon Smile can set Otakorp as their charity of choice. You know, if you wanna. For ease of donation. Just saying. *wink wink*

But...they're basically exactly the same, just covering different interest areas. You still have panels and costumes and merch and guests. Why do you hate the the comparison?

You don't just toss in metal detectors to placate con-goers. Everything has a price tag attached to it. The more hardware you bring in, the greater the chance of ticket prices needing to go up. People are only whinging about the superficiality of bag checks because most people don't understand the background information for why they're occurring. The cheapest and easiest option of them all is to just explain why they're happening the way they're happening. And even not doing that, they're simply new. With each passing year that they occur, more and more people will simply look at it as part of the Otakon entry experience and stop thinking much about it too much. (Hell, I wasn't even thinking about it that hard by Sunday.) It was new and slightly unclear about what it was for, and that's why it caused so much buzz. Not everything needs a tangible reaction just to placate con-goers being distracted by something. Sometimes all you need is to get past the adjustment period. Except you aren't really responding to the criticisms. You seem to just be dismissing them as "here's why you just haven't thought my idea all the way through and that's why you don't see that it's the perfect solution". Perhaps that's not how you intend to come off, but there's certainly an air of that in your responses. You don't seem to be really considering the alternative suggestions that are being made. @DeathJester's idea about limited pre-lines is a great compromise that gives you what you want without putting a strain on limited staffing resources to manage and transport huge lines. Perhaps it was not obvious that I was using the general "you", attempting to express that oh-so-common reaction pattern wherein someone says they're okay with individual responsibility right up until they're the individual responsible. Maybe it's you, maybe it's someone else, but inevitably someone will not hear something over that excited Otakon chatter and then days are ruined, staff has to hear the complaints, etc etc. As it is, you say you advocate individual responsibility, yet you're trying to place all the effort on staff's end simply because you don't want to wander for a few extra hours or watch the clock to arrive when they officially open the line. You appear to want them to cater wholly to your preferred experience, so it doesn't exactly line up with the attitude of pro-"individual responsibility". You say it's important to consider how things could go wrong. Well, it's not just procedural things that need to be considered. It's human reactions as well. Otakon isn't just about organizing panels and lines and dances. It's about predicting how attendees will move and act. Staff has experience in this from many past conventions so, you know, maybe trust that their answer isn't baseless when they tell you something isn't currently a good solution.

And they're asking you not fill be in that space, not to fill it in anyways to try and force your own preferred autograph experience. This isn't staff being unreasonable. Being in that space regardless of their instruction is just blatantly ignoring their requests which is not cool. Right up until it's you who missed the call and then suddenly I bet it would be someone else's fault, be it staff or another attendee. Just because it's not your solution, doesn't mean it's not a valid one. I'm sorry, but I'm reading through your comments and you're finding fault with every explanation and possible solution except your own. Every compromise someone offers falls short in your eyes. I understand that your main concern is getting that autograph, but you'll just need to accept that right now Otakon doesn't want to devote endless amounts of their staffing and space resources to creating and managing a space for you to sit around 4 hours early. We might have the physical space available for people to line up elsewhere, but they've repeatedly mentioned how staff is limited so they have to be pragmatic about their usage and placement. Someday that might change, but for now it is what it is. Several people have offered good compromises, and you even acknowledge yourself that staff can't be everywhere. Until something changes, we should look for a compromise solution to the autograph line problem that helps everyone a little rather than placing all the burden on one side. It's about costumes that have metal components, not fit. And if you don't even think they'd be helpful, then what is the point of suggesting them? Yes, that's accurate. The Otakon staff is not trained to look for fake IDs, so they use a 3rd-party service.

If you're not going to even watch the video, then your opinion holds no weight.

This is actually the part that's been bothering me most about the whole thing. This should have been basically a non-issue, at most you show it to your friend and comment privately "Can you believe this guy?" and instead plenty have rallied like a lynch mob around this guy. I've made peace with the fact that there are people who come across as "creepy" who attend Otakon - fact of convention life - but to see how many people engage in and support bullying "outsiders"? Well, that's the part that broke my heart a little bit. That revelation was far more damaging to my notion of Otakon as a safe space than this guy's random comments were. He doesn't know the event community, so he can't be expected to know proper ettiquette. The Otakon community, on the other hand, should behave better because we do know better. And we didn't.

Well I'd like to point out for the record that it's certainly not my intention to downplay the nature of the comment and I apologize if my wording implied that. I'm merely suggesting that, like you said, these people exist and you can't really do much about it, and in the grand scheme of the internet I've heard way worse. It's really easy to try and make this an "us versus them" situation, but in a crowd of 30k people, it would be false to think that at least 5-10% of attendees aren't having the same thoughts regardless of voicing them. You may have caught this guy, but we're still walking around with plenty of other people who feel the same way. I certainly took issue with the comment - gave it an eye roll and a hearty groan and tsk - but I also just recognized that I can't do anything about it. It is what it is. And I still believe that if he had a badge, this still would have been handled differently than it was, all because people would've just chocked it up to "one of those attendees" rather that turning into "KILL THE OUTSIDER!" My concern is less the specifics of what he said, but the witch hunt that took place by the commentators all because he was viewed as an outsider. I take issue with mob mentality, especially when it has a lean toward the hypocritical. Vendors/Artists at Otakon sell sexualized body pillow covers and highly suggestive fanart, and I stand by my earlier inquiry asking the difference between that kind of fetishizing action and a passing comment made one YouTuber. Is the comment acceptable? No, and I never said it was, but it's not exactly surprising to hear it either. Certainly doesn't warrant the witch hunt it generated. On the other hand, you know where his channel is. It could warrant a maturely worded PM explaining why the comment felt inappropriate or offensive and try to educate him on the concern so he understands for the future. That's probably far more effective in fixing the problem than everyone shouting aggressively at him, don't you think?

Maybe, like, an eye roll at most?

That's gonna happen in every fandom. Maybe it's not right, but it will happen. I mean hell, this whole thread (as well as Facebook and YouTube) is littered with comments mocking this guy for something he was enjoying. Mocking happens. This guy wasn't really mocking the MLP person though. He was just saying he didn't get it. I can't even gonna fault him for the "I think it's sexual?" comment either, because even though I have never set foot into that part of the MLP world, I still know it exists and is one of the more major issues people discuss. Makes total sense if that's the extent of his exposure: hearing the odd conversation about the sexualization that occurs in among the bronies, and I'm pretty sure before I watched the series that issue was my only awareness of it too. Based on the video evidence, I thought he was on the nicer end of the spectrum of con attendees. I'd love for him to join us next year, properly badged.

Iya, chigaimasu. Ano hito wa hentai zya nai yo. So what if he made that comment? It wasn't even that pervy. Why can people put pervy fanart of characters down in the Artist Alley, or make whole blogs devoted to sexualizing their favorite asian idols, but one guy saying in passing that he hopes to see some sexy asian is somehow such a problem? "Should see some really sexy asians" is a fairly benign statement. You know, I've seen multiple sources of people claiming "What are you cosplaying?" is one of the top things you should never say to a cosplayer, and I've never understood it. Like you said, nobody can be an expert on everything. Isn't it nicer to complement the person by acknowledge the obvious level of effort you noticed in their cosplay? I feel like that's just as great a compliment, especially if you don't know the series. It means it's you just really like the job they did on their costume rather than just because you know the series. Besides, if someone asked for my picture and then admitted they didn't know the series but the costume intrigued them, I would consider it an opportunity to introduce someone new to something I like. So yeah, I don't get how not knowing a costume is ever a point of contention. That doesn't make sense to me.

I don't think the controversy came so much from the incident as it did how aggressively damning you and others were reacting to it. It's fine if you want to vent your frustration that this happened, but you don't need to call names like "douchebag" or "idiot" or "trash" and call for permanent bans. That was just too much. I think the video itself was fine to bring attention to, because we clearly got some good discussion out of it; people having their different opinions, or helping to point out weaknesses in access control and offering suggestions for how to adjust it. That was good stuff. The name calling was unnecessary though, especially since it was just a new con-goer mistake. As someone said in a YouTube comment, he was actually more respectful than plenty of the other attendees we get at Otakon. Polite with the photo requests, didn't block anyone's way to take photos, etc. We've had way worse attendees at Otakon over the years, so the controversy here was only that people started a witch hunt because he's an "outsider". That's not good. It's gatekeeping, and it doesn't really belong at a convention that's supposed to be about sharing culture. We had that in past years at the BCC, but the layout in the WEWCC wasn't ideal for that this year. There didn't seem to be enough space to fit Registration/Pick-Up right up front I can't remember how the space works out, but I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to send people with badges off to the left (side we came in on this year) and people without up the right? Those without badges would come up the path to see registration right in front of them. Those with badges would also be on the side with the escalator traffic to/from the AA/DR floor, so no one without a badge would get lost in the mix of that. For me it's hard to suggest a change without being in the space to understand the space allowances, but maybe splitting the line somehow is the way to solve this going forward given the restriction of not being able to pull Registration closer to the door?

At the same time, I think anyone would assume they were about to get in trouble. You don't get called into the principle's office because they want to ask why you forgot your textbook one day. Usually "the heads" are reserved for bigger issues. Especially if all they wanted to know was how he got in, why wouldn't the staff right in front of him be able to ask such an easy question? To me, that suggests there was going to be something slightly more in-depth than "How did you get into the building without a badge?" when everyone knows the answer to that. Like you said, there are plenty of rule breakers at Otakon that don't get called up for a more in-depth discussion about it. Considering that he was in the photo area, I think it might have been more along the lines of wanting to see what photos he took and potentially having them deleted out of security/privacy concerns for the badged attendees. I would love if staff could comment on why they wanted to talk to him. And for next year, they just need a way to separate badged from non-badged attendees at the door. Send those needing to purchase through a separate line. Unless I'm remembering wrong they did that on Thursday. There were different doors they wanted you to use depending on what someone needed in the building.