From: wang@ocf.berkeley.edu (Albert Sze-Wei Wang)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime
Subject: My perceptions on this pathetic affair [Anime Expo]
Date: 15 Sep 1992 20:23:25 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: bigbang.berkeley.edu
Summary: My honest evaluation


The following information below will be my one and only post on the matter
of Anime Expo regarding recent events.

The following post are not the views of SPJA, Anime Expo, the people who make
up the SPJA or will run Anime Expo, nor of anyone else except myself.  
All the information is to the best of my knowledge true and from my 
interpretation of textual facts I believe all correct.  I emphasize this is 
strictly my own perceptions.  I had done my best to try to keep an open mind 
and to remain fair.  The contents of this post is not meant to defame or
to accuse anyone, but are my personal feelings and beliefs on this matter.
I request that all readers accept it as my point of view only and not a news
story, though some may consider it as such.  These are strictly my 
perceptions on the matter, my perceptions of what I believe is the truth.


Reasons I don't trust Dave Medinnus
-----------------------------------

A man comes out of nowhere and makes demands and threats about running
a rival convention.  This man never spoke about improvements,  or working
together on friendly terms, only to take the convention away from Mike 
Tatsugawa.

Misrepresented Central Park Media.  John O'Donnell did NOT give Dave
Medinnus any official support for AnimeCon.

Dave was a person who adamantly wanted to be chair because he claimed he 
could do a better job than anyone.  He rallied discontented staffers beneath
him and sent demands to Mike Tatsugawa or there will be a rival convention.
Never from the beginning was there a spirit of cooperation or willingness
to work together.  Instead they had to resort to "negotiations."  Dave
Medinnus stated he would not hesitate to use "lawsuits" because they were
a good business practice to eliminate competition.

In the negotiations:

Dave Medinnus made an offer for Mike to be a "ombudsman," an oversight
position which Dave claimed would keep the chairman in line (namely
Dave being the chairman.)  At San Diego, Mike Wallace, Dave's roommate
had gone up to Ethan at Books Nippon and told him that the ombudsman
position was a position with absolutely no power.  Instead of negotiating
in good faith and fairly, Dave had apparently jockeyed to get Mike out of
the way.

Dave had claimed that he did not believe Mike Tatsugawa was competent to 
run a convention and decided to choose a compromise candidate who had not
had any experience chairing anything.  In the spirit of cooperation, Mike
had accepted.  I had spoken to the candidate and we had agreed that my
vote for him would be conditional upon him contacting an old friend of
both of ours and making him vice chair.

The candidate and I have always been good friends and over the time span
of a week, unexplainable behavioral changes occurred.  His behavior had become 
overbearing, vulgar, and untrustworthy.  On several occasions I had
caught him flat out lying.  Instead of getting together with Mike Tatsugawa
to work out problems, he refused to return Mike's phone calls and had
not approached Mike asking him why certain things had been done.  When Mike
tried to explain why a number of the candidate's demands were not legal or
workable, the candidate became explosive and accused Mike of being 
subversive and undermining as well as making other unflattering accusations
about Mike's mental capacity and ability to read English.  The candidate
had taken great lengths to avoid Mike, which was something neither I nor
Mike could understand.  Mike had considered the candidate a friend and
could not understand why the candidate would not listen and only wanted 
Mike to do what he told him (as registration coordinator) to do.  Candidate
had stated that he will continue to do something until someone proves to him
definitively that it is wrong.

Candidate had gone ahead and assembled a staff. Experienced mutual friend 
which I had talked to him about selecting as Vice Chair to help him
make good decisions was never contacted.  Candidate selected two vice chairs,
neither of which had experience running conventions.  I had contacted mutual
friend and when I told him what had happened, had refused to join on current
staff because of current staff situation.

I do not hold candidate at blame for his actions.  I've known him long enough
to know that the candidate did the best he felt for the convention.  My heart
was with him, despite the actions he was apparently doing for which I could
not understand.  Never once did he ask to sit down with Mike to solve any
of the problems he had.  Instead he choose to rant and rave and make 
accusations.  All appearances indicated he was avoiding Mike, almost
deliberately.

Emotional toll on myself had been tremendous and I had voiced my growing
disillusion and disbelief at the situation.  I still could not believe
all this had happened.  Friends had been pit against friends, no attempt
at true reconciliation was ever made by Dave Medinnus.  Everything was a
"negotiation" to get one convention.  Dave Medinnus' position at Anime Expo
'92 had been that of dealer's room coordinator.  

My view of what I perceived:
Dave Medinnus was not an anime fan from the beginning, but a person who 
had originally been in SF fandom and had brought politics into anime by
using a situation to try to run his own convention.  He has stated that he
WANTS the business contacts for his business and had the full support
of AnimeEigo and CPM.  CPM has denied that they had ever given Mr. Medinnus 
full support and it is of my opinion that Dave Medinnus had 
misrepresented them.

I had talked to all parties involved, Mike T, the McLaughlins, Mr. Medinnus.
I have sought consultation from my friends, people in industry, and I
have prayed that maybe this was all just a bad dream.

Even though I have the greatest respect for Dave Medinnus, his actions to
me have not given me any reason to trust him for anything more than possibly
strict business dealings.  For some people I know, not even that.  I have
confidence that Mr. Medinnus is a great organizer, a great planner, and a
person more than qualified to run a convention.  I found Mr. Medinnus
originally very sincere.  However, actions since then have led me to 
become more weary and less willing to trust him.

The truths aren't found in the accusations that are the shadows cast by
figures before a fire.  The truths are found only in the figures themselves.
Trying to distinguish the truth of the figures from their shadows 
is a fruitless task.  I found no reason to look at the shadows when I could
look at the figures, even if it was painful for my eyes.

The candidate is still a dear friend of mine.  I am still troubled emotionally 
by this whole thing and have considered leaving anime all together.  I
still might.  I have seen what I consider an outsider intentionally try to
destroy the fabric of local anime fandom in this area and trying to ferment
discontent on the net.  

Probably the best kept secret was that Anime Expo '92 (except for video and
registration whish were understaffed at Anime Con and learned from the
experience) was BADLY UNDERSTAFFED!!!
The chairman of the convention and a lot of the staff members ended up with a
severe brunt of work which left them burned to a crisp.  Every aspect of the
Expo which was not present in Anime Con was a victim of understaffing and,
in error (and probably because he didn't know any better) the
chairman was particularly guilty in trying to fill all those holes himself,
leading to the multitudes of problems which resulted in what could be construed
as neglect of the staffers.
Mike Tatsugawa's shortfalls to the disgruntled staff members of AnimeExpo
'92 was something I had berated Mike about.  Mike knows it.  He realizes
the things he did wrong.  It does nothing to excuse him.  On the contrary,
it holds him that much more responsible for his actions.  He did everything
he could for the fans, but had offended people on the staff.  Communications
problems had developed and I did my best to fill those holes even though
they were not my responsibility, in fact most of the people on the AE
staff didn't consider it their responsibility.  I have given my solemn
word that many of the problems which occurred at AE will not happen again,
especially in the area of communicating important information to the people
who need them.  

For those interested in wanting to find out how this whole thing started,
I list for you all Mike Tatsugawa's duties as chairman of AnimeExpo '92:

Aspects of the Expo which the chairman did not conduct at Anime Con but
conducted for the Expo included: 
	1) formation of the new non-profit corporation including personnel, all
paperwork, fees, drafting of necessary documents, and sending and correction of
all documents to required state and local authorities.
	2) Liason work through proper channels directly with the Japanese
corporations to solicit cooperation and corporate participation as well as
participation of guests of honor from Japan.
	3) Anime Reference Guide; handling all aspects of editting, finding
	synopses, and printing.
	4) Negotiating with a company to do the convention T-shirts
	5) Direct answer to queries to questions from the fans about the
	 Expo via letter or email, including membership and info letters.
	6) Obtainance of proper city, county, state, federal licenses.
	7) Sending out all the PRs
	8) Picked up and returned all films
	9) Coordinated Banquets
	10) Aided in hotel negotiations
	11) Dealt with all tax matters
	12) Dealt with all legal matters
	13) All trouble shooting of duties listed in both of these lists.

Aspects of the Expo which occurred at Anime Con which the chairman conducted
included:
	1) Generation of all PRs.
	2) Program Book assembly and layout and cover art search
	3) Recruitment of the staff for the convention
	4) Finding proper insurance to cover the convention
	5) Obtaining art for the T-shirt
	6) Some flier distribution to local comic places
	7) Creating all the fliers for the publicity of the convention
        8) Finding printer for all printed materials including PRs, ARG, and
        Program book


From the fans, and guests, Expo '92 was complemented time after time from
people about how much they really enjoyed the Expo and had a fun time.
By all criteria, Anime Expo '92 was a success, but to some of the staff
it was not because they felt they were neglected.
But alas, from Anime Con '91, Expo92 arrives, we're all suppose to be more 
experienced, right?
In some departments yes, video and reg most specifically.  In most cases no be-
cause we had to rebuild departments from scratch; the largest one, the great-
est hole left by Gainax, was the entire realm of guest relations and corporate
participation in the convention.  That ENTIRE aspect had to be rebuilt and in
addition to the Expo chairman's previous jobs when he was vice chair of Anime
Con, he now had the job of filling that vaccum left by Gainax.  Re-establishing
links with Japan, sending feelers through proper corporate channels, trying one
after another to find guests from Japan are things that are not at all trivial
for a person who started with nothing in that direction and did the best he
could.  Looking at the list of things the chair of Anime Expo had to do, I have
found that the work load is NOT at all TRIVIAL.  Only an insane person or an
otaku of all otakus would be crazy enough to do all of that and still maintain
his sanity.  He lost sleep in the process, sacrificed time at work and could
have been fired, AND he was a graduate student at SFSU who was also teaching
classes.  Oh and now there are accusations he SUPPOSEDLY never cared about
the fans.  A person who invited fans to the chair's room to talk about anime,
(remember the @!, and other get togethers?) the Expo, a person who walked
around talking to the fans and who was crazy enough to do what he did to
pull the '92 expo off.


	ANIME EXPO '93 will go on.  As a veteran of Bay Con '90, Anime Con 
'91, and Anime Expo '92, I will do my best to make Anime Expo '93 a success.
I will do my best for my friends, for the fans, and because some of the 
stories in anime have meant a great deal to me and gave me hope when I
thought there was none.  


Albert Sze-Wei Wang

-- 
The Daimyo               | Never forget love
wang@ocf.berkeley.edu    | Like a dream,
                         | Please tell me the secret...
Ningyo Tsukai            |     -Eve Tokimatsuri from Himitsu Kudasai, MZ23 p2