Postby ClosetOtaku » Tue Feb 22, 2005 10:54 am
Katsucon is a very largely volunteer-operated convention. That's good on paper, but I think (for a very small hike in the already high $50 weekend admission fee) that they could afford to bring in a set of professional contractors to work the technical issues for a weekend. It was so bad at one point they had to delay the Opening Ceremonies -- a largely optional function -- for several hours, throwing off the rest of the main schedule.
It was not their fault the concert was postponed, as two of the performers arrived in DC sick. Such is life. But so much of the schedule was built around the concert that when it didn't come off on time, nothing else did either.
The peculiar thing is that most attendees paid just as much as if they were attending Otakon (five times larger), yet none of the staff felt particularly compelled (in my opinion) to keep things timely, or communicate the myriad of last-minute changes effectively. That attitude may be OK when you're running a small, nuisance-entrance-fee sort of operation, but for the price most of us expected something a little more engaged. Even finding a staff person to talk to was a challenge, and the poor folks at the single information desk must have gotten awfully beaten up. I talked with several of the convention Security people concerning the long lines and safety issues, and their general attitude was "I'm not told what's going on, and there's nothing I can do about it". Not good.
So... too much centralized decision-making from a virtually invisible convention staff, a lack of people on the ground to make things happen when they needed to (and probably denied the authority to do so even if they could), a technical staff that adopted an attitude of "we're the experts, you little guys should just sit down and break out your crayons" even when they were woefully unprepared to execute The Plan... it all adds up to a very marginal convention experience.
"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." -- C.S. Lewis