Hopefully, economy allowing, we’ll be at ACen this year!

I attended the 2007 ACEN with a few friends for fun, and it was neat seeing a lot of people having fun, but there was way too much disorganization.

Yes there should have been something special with the 10 year anniversary, but it seems the people who run it could careless about it.

I have attended Katsucon, A-Kon and a few others, and out of all my experiences A-kon was the best out of the cons I attended.

Then in 2008 I decided to go to ACEN (SHOOT ME) it seems ACEN always attracts the asshole overpriced dealers in the convention hall, to top it off a bunch of them selling fansubs that shouldn’t really cost anything, or the dealers selling cheap chinese knockoff merchandise you can get in China town in Chicago.

People who worked for ACEN will post all kinds of excuses on the net on why it went wrong, all I have to say it was their crappy organization and poor planning.

I helped a few anime clubs with a small localized convention a few years back, and we had it all planned out just in case more people showed up than expected.

it all worked out in the end, the mini con was a success, and now the con is a regular thing.

to me ACEN needs people who can actually run a con rather than a bunch of pompus fan boys. Megazone a old anime club in Chicago, most of the people running ACEN are from that club, and they were a bunch of arrogant jerks back then.

why would they change now?.

if any of you are from the midwest, get a bunch of people together and contact the ACEN crew and give them the much needed help they need.

This way it will be a more memorable experience we all can enjoy, if not ACEN will be one of the cons that will slowly disappear from existence to the shitty planning and organization.

1. we happily attracted around 20,000 people at the peak of registration (not including staff, IRT, guests, artists, delers or their crews)

2. The masquarade was completely the fault of the fire marshall, he did not deliver the capacity information on the ballroom until too late FORCING us to make tickets.

3.The lack of smooth flowing operations was there, I cant deny that, but it was mostly because at max we expected 12,500 con-goers not 20,000 plus. I attribute the rest of the fault to massive system bugs in registration (and a slightly grumpy reg. crew, they worked 14+ hours on friday and 15 on saturday to get you through, they didnt have too, seriously they could have turned any one who wasnt pre-reg away if they wanted too.)

Anne Packrat – We’ll be at AX this year providing full coverage! Can’t wait!!!

You should try attending one of the huge cons if you haven’t already (Otakon or AX), Ms. Rachel. Quite a fun and occasionally overwhelming experience. It’s a bit like Acen but there’s just so much MORE of everything.

Trivia time…according to animecons.com, the attendence figures for North
American anime conventions in 2006 are as follows:

Anime Expo: 40,647 total, 32,930 paid
Otakon: estimated 32,902 total, 22,302 paid
A-Kon: 12,500 estimated paid
Anime North: 12,500 estimated total, 11,286 paid
Anime Central: 11,500 estimated total
FanimeCon: estimated 10,000 paid
Anime Weekend Atlanta: 8,949 paid
Anime Boston: 9,354 total, estimated 8,854 paid
Sakura-Con: 8,300 estimated total, 7,500 estimated paid
Katsucon: 6,400 estimated total, 5,664 paid

You can see the Jan. 1, 2007 article here:

http://animecons.com/news/article.shtml/403

Since there are still many conventions left to go in 2007, perhaps the
comment was to the effect that ACen is 2nd in attendance so far this
year.