DeathJester

Coronavirus ain't gonna stop me from doing my annual request: Asian Kung Fu Generation.

Here in New York, Gov Cuomo had a great counter to a reporter who was asking why we were still occupying convention centers as field hospitals even though the hospitalization rate was going down. He reminded everyone that the hospital situation stabilized because of the state mandate to shut businesses down. Until the hospital system can remain stable when businesses and travel are reopened, the state needs the additional COVID treatment capacity available. Using that logic I highly doubt that the WEWCC is only going to used as a hospital until the end of June.

AND OPTION NUMBER 1 IS OUR WINNER. Hope everything behind the scenes are good given that the cancellation was forced upon by the venue. I guess we'll see when the 2020 financials get released what the impact from skipping this year is.

Remember that Otakon hotels have not pulled any deposits yet and full refund cancellations are allowed up to 72 hours before check in. There is zero chance that any hotel would be willing to automatically roll over room reservations to next year.

The Spring conventions really got the short end of the stick since they were too deep into regular planning to make any kind of effort to salvage their work. Otakon is still 3 months away so if they switch gears now they can have a more robust virtual event beyond just opening up a "wish you were here" discord channel. The main things you would have to lose beyond the attendee driven stuff (photo groups, parties, being around humans) is the dealers room / artist alley and the physical hangout spots like the Maid Cafe, Lolita Garden, Photo Suite, Manga Library, etc. Again I am going to stress that a virtual Otakon would be a giant technological mess- but in theory you could do an Autograph session that is just a minute or two of video chat with the guests if you put a good moderation system to keep out the trolls. Same for the Masquarade, queue up the contestants via webcam to do their thing on a moderated video stream or have the whole thing pre-recorded like an AMV contest entry.

Of course, no one has a crystal ball into the future and governments are prone to make stupid decisions but if the field hospital is expected to be completed at the end of May (~1 month construction) then I have extreme doubts that it will only be used only through June and then converted back into a usable convention space by the end of July. Here are what I think the possible outcomes are given the current situation: 1) Convention gets cancelled due to the WEWCC being unavailable and COVID uncertainty. 2) Convention gets postponed to later in the year due to the WEWCC being unavailable. Obviously attendance will take a huge hit, but Otakon would need to operate at a reduced capacity anyway to maintain social distance and sanitary guidelines. 3) Convention gets moved to a different venue due to the WEWCC being unavailable. Or possibly split between different venues and becomes more of an oudoor Otakon Matsui rather than an enclosed event. 4) Convention goes on the scheduled date at the WEWCC. This means DC spent millions of dollars to quickly create a field hospital, then will spend millions more to tear it down to attract whatever tourism dollars people are willing to spend immediately after this pandemic. [edit] 5) This started as a joke but bouncing it back and forth actually got some people interested. Otakon becomes an all-digital event where the content is streamed out to members. In the age of Zoom classrooms, twitter #watchparties, IG Live DJ battles, and even concert venues recreated in Minecraft, this is something that can actually be done well. It would also be a clusterfuck, but it would be a memorable one.

Well I said if events were still getting cancelled 5 months after the initial outbreak then going to an anime convention would be the least of everyone concerns. WEWCC is going to be a field hospital for COVID patients, so this will give Otakon an exit lane to cancel the event without being fully responsible for the bills. https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/dc-convention-center-to-house-500-hospital-beds-for-possible-coronavirus-surge/2277113/

If the COV-ID situation gets so bad that events that are 5 months out are still getting cancelled, then getting my fix of anime will be the least of my concerns. Keep in mind that governments are taking extreme precautions now to get the situation under control quickly, especially in Japan where they very much need to be medically cleared ASAP for all that Olympics tourism revenue. I think the biggest impact is the availability of overseas guests since any kind of negotiation is going to have to wait until the virus is under control. We're definitely going to see an Dub Industry-centric Otakon this year.

If the fountain was the only bottleneck in the BCC then I wouldn't have minded the crowds. Unforunately Otakon grew so big that there was worst bottlenecks by BOTH Skybridge connections, the entrance escalator to the dealers room, panel room queues, autograph line queues, etc. I think Baltimore was a better host city than DC because all the entire Harbor area bent over backwards to accommodate the convention guests, but the BCC itself is straight trash once you get past ~25000 daily attendees.

I wouldn't say never, but it does seem like Otakorp's fear that the BCC renovation would interfere with Otakon is proving to be even worse than imagined. "We're losing all our big convention contracts to other cities because the BCC isn't good enough!" "Okay, so how about we fix it by doing nothing?"

As I recall you could not do public viewings of the recordings due to the convention labor contracts, but if there was a library of these archive videos that could be "requested" by Otakon members- would that skirt around the commercial broadcast rules? We need to watch the TMR concert again for RESEARCH!

Did someone change the name of the thread to Hazbin Hotel instead of 2020 Guest Requests?

Asian Kung Fu Generation. I'm going to keep requesting and hopefully one day it can happen.