Chris:
As
all epics start, Mordak arose to find himself in unfarmiliar surroundings.
This is not his story. My story starts by me losing many an hour of
sleep, awake thinking about a script to write for the guest strip
for MacHall. Lucky me having to go to a two day Con when my favourite
webcomic decides to have guest comic week in preparation for Otakon
just seems like the deepest pile of irony I've had the misfortune
to step in.
So
of course, I wake up late. I had planned to meet Travis on a 9:10am
bus into Adelaide to get to the Con about 15 minutes early. Considering
I wake up at 8:30 - It isn't the most pleasant of situations. In any
event I rush my arse off gettting ready and manage to snag a lift
with my father and arrive in the City before Trav's bus turns up.
I wait... and wait... and then get fed up after 5 minutes and walk
off to the Uni.
The
Con was being held on Campus, and through a little bit of guesswork
and a shot in the dark about which building it was in, I manage to
find it without too much trouble. As I trudge though the door, I set
about getting in the way. Being a member of the Anime society (in
a sense), and was present at some of the commitee meetings that graced
the organisation of the Con - I got to laze around behind the Registration
desk after buying entry from the Reg desk manager, that just happened
to be the delightful script monkey of blancmange, Mark.
At
first the turn-out wasn't that astounding. There wasn't a mass of
people waiting to flood in - lined up down the street, and around
the corner. Just a bunch of people clustering around the entry, shivering.
We just had to hold the Con in Winter, didn't we? Luckily the weather
held up, and the heavens didn't up-end themselves on us.
10
minutes after the Con was supposed to begin, I spotted Trav outside,
and dragged him in. Apoligizing, I told him of leaving early, to which
he revealed that he wasn't on that bus, but the following one. I withdrew
my apologies. By this point it was 5 minutes after the Con was supposed
to begin. Vendors were still in the process of setting up and the
crowd was getting restless. By folly of lapsed communication and poor
management, the general public slowly started to filter in.
The
vendors were not happy. Quasi-security, being Julian - was getting
complaints that people were *gasp* touching their merch! Heaven forbid
items they want sold are being examined by potential patrons... While
this was happening, the 2 Marks, Trav and myself were still milling
around the Reg desk. Of course Mark insisted we go off and do something,
to which I looked into the main hall and scoffed. A few measly stalls,
the consoles, the Dance Dance Revolution machine and the Art comp
were in there, and not all that active. Instead I derived much pleasure
in insulting most of the A trailers that they were playing in the
main theatre.
After
the nth Dragonball Z trailer, I gave up. Ranma 1/2 started playing
and I needed another diversion. So Trav and I went to peruse the main
hall now that things had started moving. What entranced us the most
was the DDR machine, but not for the normal reasons. Two blokes were
thrashing the hell out of the machine and it was slowly moving around
the floor. Of course this just would not do, so I went to report it.
Not long after that something odd happened. Trav and myself were manning
Registration.
It
didn't matter how, but there we were. It was interesting to watch
it all happening. People came in. Gave us 5 or 7 dollars depending
if they wanted a one day or a weekend pass. Then entered. Not suprising
that. That's what normally happens. What was suprising is they just
kept coming. Person after person. It was amazing... we even ended
up running after tickets at the end and had to handwrite them up!
After
a lunch in the theatre, watching the horror that is Ranma 1/2, we
went back to the table, and that's were we stayed for a fair while.
Mark left for some reason I was to later find out, and for the next
few hours it was a steady flow of inquiries and patrons.
There's
only so long I could take the monotony. After procuring myself one
of the AV Con T-Shirts, I made my way to the Staff Room; apparently
where Mark was held up. I came in to find that Mark had obtained a
few things. One was the MCing job for the Quiz Night. The other was
helping rewrite and add questions for said night. I happily joined
in, helping create some real nasty questions, especially for the last
round. Our aim was to create 1 in 10,000 odds questions that would
really tax our contestants. I came up with a few pearlers, including
an obscure Star Wars question as well as a PGA Tour Golf '95 one...
The
Quiz night was pretty fun. Mark did a managable job as MC as I joined
the panel of judges to mark the answers the tables of six gave. 10
rounds of snide comments, assemblances of humour and correct answers.
Truth be told, it was a lot more fun making jokes amongst the judges
table than to do the Quiz. As for the Round 10 questions - all bar
one were answered correctly - Mark's question about Planescape: Torment.
This was mainly because only 5 people in the whole room had played
it, and most of them were judges.
We
left around 10pm, as the Quiz night was timed almost perfectly. On
the train ride home, we decided that we wanted a PC on the Rego desk
for tomorrow. Trav wanted to take his so that he could burn up some
CDs as we wasted time listening to music - mostly to drown out the
shrill sounds of the DDR machine.
Late
to bed again, I managed this time to wake up early - with enough time
to prepare as I packed up and prepared my equipment last evening.
Turns out Trav couldn't take his rig, so I had to take mine. We arrived,
by Trav's car at the Con just before 9 in the morning. As I set up
my machine, I was chargrin to realise I had left my Y cable for my
speakers at home. So much for doing ANYTHING on the damnable thing...
Pre-Con
consisted mainly of me writing up more tickets for the day. Trav printed
out an extra 150 for the day - assuming not that many people would
turn up after the great turn-out yesterday. That was yet to be seen.
Another
frigid morning, another load of people arriving and vendors turning
up late. The morning was pretty boring. Not that many people coming
in, and my computer just a glorified paperweight.
Come
11am, the stores in the City opened, so Trav and I made a quick pilgrimage
to Dick Smith to grab a Y cable. Once we returned with it, the fun
began.
By
that I mean we borrowed Mark's 'Jungle wa itsumo Hale nochi Guu' CDs
and began to watch them from episode 7. At some points during the
day, we managed to attract quite a crowd. Was pretty good. Of course
I had to keep dealing with Rego when everyone else had an unbroken
view of the episodes. I didn't care all that much because in a few
days, I'd just get the episodes off Mark.
Come
4pm, it was time for the Cosplay Ball. This would make most people
shudder in disgust, but as I hadn't seen one as of yet, I was morbidly
fascinated by the whole idea. In my honest opinion - it was the worst
organised event of the whole weekend.
There
was next to nothing organised. Mark found out too late that he was
the MC of this event too, and had to rush around finding out what
awards he had to present, and what precisely was going on.
After
a few failed attempts at getting people on the dancefloor, be it by
Drew, the 2nd in command or by the DJ's throbbing tones, and a few
more unbecoming party games - the Staff huddled around the bar near
a slowly aggrivated crowd.
The
awards were handed out as quickly as possible and the Cosplayers had
their little one on one with the MC. We managed to purchase a Gameboy
Advance for the Door Prize with all of the pure profit our successul
Con made.
After
we cleared out in the evening, we left in our wake an amazingly successful
first Con - that will definately occur next year, and I'm sure for
years to come. Changes will have to be made, but learning from the
mistakes made was certainly done. I for one, thought it horrid that
they had no webcomic Panel *cough*
