Programming for conventions and events
So here is what happened in the first 3 1/2 months of 2016 in no particular order.
So yeah, I’ve been busy. Unfortunately, that has led to little time to maintain this space, but here is your catch-up report.
It has been a while, more than I would like to have had. Between a combination of work life, social life, and personal issues, I had completely abandoned this blog to focus on other things. That shouldn’t be okay. Hopefully, I’ll get better at that in the future. Failing that, I promise that if I make enough money, I’m hiring a PR person.
While this blog fell silent, my conventions schedule did not. In the past, I had only gone to four shows, whether as panelist or just an attendee. This year, I’ve done five—Setsucon, Tekko, Saikoucon, and Blurriecon, plus attending Intervention which was fun and informative and worth going to at least once—and I’m not done yet. Next weekend, I’ll be helping staff the Megaroad Toys booth at AUSA like I did last year, but this time holding a special business card exchange on Saturday. Those in the know will know why, but you can come up and say hello all weekend. Two weeks after that, I’ll be at the inaugural Anime Mini debuting my very doge version of Wheel of Fortune. I hope it’ll go smooth because I have big plans for Wheel, which I’ll probably elaborate on in future blog posts.
Speaking of blog, there have been a few maintenance items. I have now listed my list of shows where I’ve done programming. It’s been 10 years since I started, so it kinda makes sense. There’s also been some basic sidebar maintenance and some editing here and there. I hope you all can enjoy my exploits in full once again, and I plan on seeing you back here much sooner than the last time.
Apologies for the delays, but thanks an expected-but-still-arduous move, it’s been a little hectic at MP HQ. However, there is a recap for Tekko 2014.
First of all, thanks to everyone who came to everything I did. On Friday night I ran an 18+ panel about show that aren’t really all that 18+ and 70 people showed up! Anime Fight Club was Standing Room Only, and yet 3/4 were newcomers! Seriously, what?!
Speaking of new, a lot of new material was tried out over the weekend. “How To Set Your Table(top RPG)” was the only panel of mine that I had done before, but initial feedback was good. Obviously, there’s room to improve, but I’m definitely on to something, which is always a plus. The other good omen was a Madoka showing up to the Madoka edition of RIYL.
Regarding the stuff that wasn’t mine, there was, of course, the Improv. My gratitude goes out to Nancy Kepner for allowing us to torture her (PS go buy her stuff) and for the hundreds of fans that turned out to watch. We’ll do better next year. Additionally, Brian and Anime Fight Club continues to surprise and amaze me. There has never been a year at Tekko where I’ve been disappointed. If you went to the panel, you might have seen some of the people that support me and that I want to support back. I’ll drop the links to them here, in case you were interested at all.
Again, thank you all for coming out and supporting me and my friends. I hope to see you all sometime soon.
Anime Fight Club’s getting a new coat of paint. Who wants some? >:3
All times subject to change:
Friday
12:30: RIYL-Madoka Magica, Panel 3
11 PM: Anime For Adults (Not Adult Anime), Panel 2 18+
Mid: Tekko Improv, Main
Saturday
8PM: Anime FIght Club, Panel 2
Sunday
10AM: How To Set Your Table(top RPG)
Five events, seven hours. Another day at the office 🙂
A lot of the fun that comes with doing MelloPanther is just working on the creative processes. In other words, the brainstorming, the molding and the building of things, whether it’s panels or game shows or any sort of programming. Presenting is fun, too, but it’s getting to that point that tends to excite me the most. I have folders full of mock-ups and drafts and layouts for just about anything as well as projects that serve mainly as tutorials, unlikely to see the light of day. Not only is it good practice to hone my skills in design and coding, it keeps the flow of ideas free. In a way, it’s sort of my version of a doodle pad.
I bring all this up because I recently got into a conversation about the tech I use for my games. My weapons of choice are currently Flash and buzzers from Buzz! The Mega Quiz. Flash, because it’s fairly easy to work with and the buzzers because it’s a 20-button joystick which can be mapped to a keyboard. During that conversation, we fell down a bit of a proverbial rabbit hole. At the bottom of this hole was the idea for a whole new buzzer system, able to be constructed on the relatively cheap. If done properly, this new system could drastically change if not revolutionize the way I do game shows. I can’t say much about it right now, primarily because most of it is above my head (I’m a software guy, not a hardware guy–luckily the other people in this conversation were the latter) but I’m very excited and I hope to get the ball running on this soon because I can’t wait to tell you all about it!
So let me briefly mention a list of things that went wrong for me at Setsucon.
So here’s a list of things that actually went right
All in all, I’d say it was a net positive weekend and I’d love to go back. In spite of everything that happened, I’ve been doing this for so long that I’ve built up sort of a resilience and ability to adapt to when things go pear-shaped. Mean old State College didn’t get the best of me no matter how hard it tried, and I’ll just be back stronger and better for the next time.
As of right now, it looks like MP will be making its next date in April, but of course, there’s always the chance that things change. Watch this space for more :3
Did you watch the Million Second Quiz? I did. It wasn’t appointment viewing, but it was good enough. It also helps that I don’t have the disdain for host Ryan Seacrest as some people might. (Fun fact: he hosted an American Gladiators spin-off) Regardless, a high-concept game like MSQ can spark one’s imagination, especially if you’re in a position to make panels and games for conventions.
For starters, it’s pretty clear that doing a 1,000,000-second game is untenable at the convention level. That’s nearly 278 hours or 11.6 days. No show lasts that long and I don’t think there is any place in the US that would have conventions on back-to-back weeks. However, 100,000 seconds is actually plausible. At less than 28 hours, it can be easily spread out over three days of programming, and 10万秒QUIZ (read “Juuman-byo Quiz”) kinda rolls off the tongue. The issue is finding enough writing and enough financial resources to pull it off. A Thousand Second Quiz can easily take up a panel, and saves on material, but then you have the issue of trying to distribute 17 minutes of material throughout at 60-minute program.
Will I be doing a Quiz of Definitive Length in the future? Well, if you want me to, sure. Get your favorite convention that they need one, and I’d be happy to work something out. It could just be a mater of time.