Otakon’s staff should be congratulated for their excellent work in preparing for and running the convention so smoothly, especially considering the staggering count of 30,000+ people that needed to be dealt with this year. However, despite this overall success, there are still issues that could be addressed.
Otakon’s staff should be congratulated for their excellent work in preparing for and running the convention so smoothly, especially considering the staggering count of 30,000+ people that needed to be dealt with this year. However, despite this overall success, there are still issues that could be addressed. The two primary aspects I hope Otakon’s staff strive to improve upon in future years are crowd control and scheduling.
For most of the weekend, people fill almost any open space in the BCC-- standing, sitting, walking, and pretty much doing anything else publicly acceptable. It seems to me that steps should be taken to try to alleviate random crowding, and one solution I would like to see is adding "social" areas such as additional seating (especially in the dealer’s hall). and perhaps rooms designated as lounges or general-purpose areas that could be used to step aside from the day’s activity. There may have been some such areas this year, such as the Jam Room, but there were no clear designations and the BCC staff have a tendency to get angry if you use space they don’t want you to (even if it’s not marked) like the open space in front of the large loading gates in the Dealer’s Room. Additional signage to help direct attendees to events and free areas would be very useful to make sure people get where they’re going instead of wandering aimlessly, and could also help denote where people can and cannot sit.
Otakon's lines have become somewhat infamous in the online community, and not without reason. Many events required lining up between a half hour and an hour beforehand, with the exception of concerts with their scheduled seating times. Panel 3, which housed large industry events, had a clearly marked and well-controlled line queue, but Panels 1 and 2 were mired in confusion (especially after a last-minute schedule change) and it was difficult to ascertain where the lines there began and how they compared with the seating available in the room. The pre-event seating period used to ease concert congestion isn’t feasible for most events due to time constraints, and people could just end up in line even earlier to get in. The only immediate solutions I immediately see are assigning more staff to oversee and limit the lines and creating defined queues for panel rooms other than 3. The additional staff solution would also have been useful in my other queue problem of the convention, which was the long line that formed for autographs after the Chemistry concert. No staff members were around past the front of the line to tell attendees how far the line would be allowed to go or if the session’s time would be adjusted for the change of session location that occurred. It turned out that everyone got in, but people toward the end of the line spent an hour wondering if they were wasting their time by waiting, and that is disappointing.
The line to get into the dealer’s room deserves special mention, as it was so long at opening each day that it wrapped around the registration area and stretched far beyond anywhere I had seen it in previous years. The line lasted for well over half an hour after the room opened on Friday as people were slowly funneled in through the single entrance point designated by Otakon staff. I cannot help but feel that the convention could have been more comfortable and probably safer as well if the dealer’s room was given a second entrance/exit point even if only during its peak hours. I realize that doing so would require additional staff, but such a long line requires monitoring too and I think the tradeoff would be worthwhile.
2011 was the first year that I felt like I really could not attend the majority of what I would have liked to during the convention. Events catering to the same fans were often held in similar or concurrent times, forcing a choice between them. This could be an effective means of controlling the crowds in many cases, as with placing the very popular K-On Concert and the screening of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya at the same time, but the one I felt was glaring was that the Sunrise and Bandai Entertainment panels were held back to back. These two companies, at least for mecha fans, are so well-connected that forcing a choice between them was a very uncomfortable thing to do-- especially when there was uncertainty if there would be a room clearing after Sunrise.Fitting in everything one wants to do before the dealer’s room closes on Saturday, which is a full two hours earlier than on Friday, is difficult. I have never really understood why the room doesn’t remain open until 8:00 on both days, as it seems certain that a significant number of sales are being lost to the difference. The hall was very well-attended during the additional hours given during Otakon 2010 to compensate for a pulled fire alarm, and I see no reason to think this would not be the case if the hours were made standard,
All complaints aside, I must applaud the successes of the convention. Handling the number of people that come to the event is not an easy task, and the logistics of securing so many hotels, vendors, and events are staggering. That the convention occurs at all is a victory, and there are some improvements every year as the planners learn from previous years. In particular, the Otakon staff should be thanked for the much-needed improvement in water availability this year and the BCC should be applauded for making food and drink more easily available for purchase. In previous years, finding a usable water dispenser could be difficult, and finding one that was not empty was even mores. This year, panel rooms had multiple dispensers and the ones in the Dealer's Room and Artist's Alley still had water left in them most times I checked. Keeping hydrated is very important on long days like those Otakon attendees tend to spend, so seeing the effort to keep liquids and, with the BCC stalls, food available was very pleasing. Even the usually devastated vending machines seemed to have been kept at least moderately stocked this year. The cafes open throughout the convention, in particular in Artist’s Alley, the Dealer’s Room, and the third and fourth floors offered much-needed opportunities to purchase food and drink during the con.
Otakon 2011 lived up to the precedent set by previous year's events, giving attendees a variety of exciting activities and an opportunity to join together in celebration of Japanese popular culture. The concerts and panels I attended went on without much trouble, and although the lines got out of control, the convention overall ended up being a pleasant experience. Given the scale of the convention and the amount of effort it takes to bring it all together, my complaints were minor. If Otakon's staff and schedule can keep offering high quality guests and activities while compensating for the ever-growing crowd, Otakon will certainly remain, as its tagline implies, one of the finest conventions for the otaku generation.