Day one is starting right now, more or less. Pre-reg night was a total success for the con' which was actually really surprising: registration lines were flying through, there were prizes handed out to keep people entertained in the lines, and the new convention center is MASSIVE. Considering last year's con' was about 5000 people, this is allowing for a very spacious setup so far.
Anyway, the big reason I wanted to post before we headed out . . . remember my post last year about that train-wreck of a Masquerade Ball?
Here's my post-ball post for this year:
Heya, it's the guy who called people liars when they said they "couldn't dance". It's about 1am, and I only got home about half an hour ago after helping clean up the last of the dance.
Before I say what I'm about to say, I first wanna refresh everyone's memories from last year and my first post after that:
http://animeevolution.net/index.php?topic=7323.msg268058#msg268058
Now that out of the way . . . . .
. . . I'm absolutely over the moon right now with how well things went. The music was good, the attendance was way more than we were expecting and, above all, people seemed to really be enjoying themselves. For children's charity, I also understood we made about $310 tonight (or a sum around there), which is never a bad thing.
For everyone who attended, my thanks go out to all of you for coming out and really affirming that people WANT this event at our con. I really couldn't be happier right now. I mean, I could be, but I'm not a perfectionist. As things are right now, this was amazing.
A huge thanks goes out to Peter and Carol, our dance instructors. I've done two different anime convention "masquerade dance lessons" now and learned a couple really interesting steps from both (well, one more interesting than the other). I was glad to learn 'em, but the straight up truth was that I absolutely didn't use those lessons later on when the actual masquerade got going. With Peter's box step and rumba step (I think it was?), not only was I using it quite a bit tonight, but I was seeing a lot of people using the steps tonight! That in itself really speaks for how good our lesson was (which I also loved for being so compact and concise). Thanks so much, Peter and Carol! Also, I need to say it was a total pleasure watching the two of you strut your stuff out there. T'was very inspirational.
Arka and Cruz, your music work was masterful now that you were left to your own devices without certain people pestering you. Also, the requests never seemed to bog you guys down, and the good music kept rolling along.
And then of course, Janet . . . the girl who STOPPED me from getting everyone to thank her at the end of the ball . . . you put together a hell of a ball. It was a bit of a last minute rush job, you sorta had all this responsibility dropped into your lap . . . and you pulled it off wonderfully. Mad props, and I'm pretty sad that we won't have you for next year. Hopefully you've inspired us for next year so we can keep it up. Also, you literally built a bridge for us. It doesn't get much more hardcore than that.
Another quick thanks to Doctor Konme who helped us build the bridge, and to Vyce for helping us out with the bag-as-prize. Always saving our butts.
So of course things could have been better. Next year we can hopefully get things prepared faster/sooner so we don't waste too much time, and that hopefully we can get the serious planning quicker. Decorations are always tricky, so those can be done better next year with more time to plan it out. Also, if I had known there'd be so many attendees, I'm sure we would have made more than 120 dance cards.
Going to the dance cards, I think the theory was better than our implementation. It still worked pretty well, but the "secret dancer" thingy could have been smoother. If anyone read Janet's post from earlier, you can see that we tried to get volunteers for this, but this ultimately fell through so we were left to pick people at random (and then we lost a couple pens in the process. Ah well). So hopefully with more time to lead up, we can get some volunteers all ready and willing to go.
One quick question for everyone who was there: how did you guys find the dance card games? Did they help people get around and ask each other to dance, or was it just an extra complication in the way of enjoying the ball for the sake of the ball? Like, I thought it went alright, but I do wanna know how you felt about it too.
But these are all easy fixes, mostly, so long we have people dedicated to keep this going. But we can worry about that later. For now, I'm just extremely, extremely pleased. You guys kick ass!
Thanks!
I'm not gonna take too much credit for this year, though I did inadvertently end up helping out a lot for this ball (for one thing, a LOT of the music selection - Peter totally dug my picks). But yeah.
I'm calling this a redemption year. It was awesome.
This is from the Anime Evolution forums (1 of 4 sites that take up all my online time these days):
http://animeevolution.net/index.php?topic=7773.0
Gotta say . . . I smiled a little more as this week carried on with this thread . . .
. . . in other news, orange juice mixed with Canada Dry ginger ale is very tasty - kinda tastes like Fanta, but with pulp. I do enjoy that pulp, gotta say . . .
