From: jake@shakala.com (Jake McFarland)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime
Subject: Anime Expo Conflicts
Date: 24 Dec 92 01:06:51 GMT
Organization: Shakala BBS (ClanZen Radio Network) Sunnyvale, CA 408-734-2289

The following is a message from Charlie Prael, who follows the
r.a.a. by remote (I download for him). After reading my last 
post, he asked me if I would post this for him:

A number of people have made some rather interesting 
comments about what went on "behind the scenes" at 
AX '92.  From what I've seen, mostof those comments 
were made by people who were "sneaking in" and looking
from the sidelines.  I could, of course, be wrong.  But 
I rather doubt it.

I'd like to offeb F=5]!Q"%I9QIMA
Q%Y
        =UQR|what went on. Mine is rather different -- I was the 
Operations 
director for AX92.  As of the Thursday before the convention, 
my job was to floor-manage the whole thing, and do whatever was 
necessary to bring it off in a safe, legal, and hopefully 
successful manner.  My job, in short, was to backstop every 
single person in the convention -- up to and including the chairman.

Most of you probably thought that the convention went fairly 
smoothly, with a few minor glitches (such as the 1/2 hour late 
start of the masquerade). I certainly hope so.  From the inside, 
however, "smooth" is not the way to describe what happened.  I'll 
just give y'all a few samplers, so that you get the basic idea. 
I assure you -- the following is by no means the limit of 
what happened.

o  I had to overstaff this convention greatly beyond the norm. 
   At AC91, I had 4 staff - myself, my backup, and 2 people in 
   the ConOps office. That was for a first-run convention with a 
   staff that had largely never run a convention.  For AE92, I brought 
   in 7 people.  Those 7 people worked signficantly HARDER than the 
   4 I'd had the previous year at AC91. For a convention that 
   supposedly had the previous year's experience behind it.

o  Thursday afternoon, during move-in, the con staff was essentially
   paralyzed, after the chair decided to go to San Francisco (from 
   San Jose) to get the business license he had been told to get 4 
   months previously. He was one of only two people authorized to 
   work with the hotel at that point, when we were trying to move 
   people into rooms and pre-set function space. What makes this 
   inexcusable is that Mike was warned well in advance (February) 
   that both problems would crop up, and how he should deal with 
   them.  He didn't until forcefully reminded ON THURSDAY.

o  Saturday evening was full of interesting problems.  A few of 
   note were:
   -  Fumbling the dinner badly enough that it took two of 
      my people 4 hours to path things up.  This does not count 
      the guest that was antagonized enough that she almost walked 
      out.  After that was patched up, Mike immediately proceeded to 
      insult her.
   -  Jerking around one of the staff members enough that he literally 
      collapsed.  The staffer had to be put on R&R overnight, after 
      being checked by a medic.
   -  Mis-scheduling the main programming space enough that I had to 
      scrap the existing schedule and run the whole thing by hand.  
      There was, for instance, no allowance for the 1 hour of setup 
      and room changeover time needed before the masquerade.  You might 
      have noted above where I said that the masquerade started 1/2 hour 
      late, at 9:30.  The original schedule would have started it 
      at 10:30 -- if that.

o  Mis-informing the staff about the dates of the convention, such 
   that one entire department almost entirely left Sunday night -- 
   with all of the rest of Monday, and Tuesday's loadout still to go.

Many of you have heard about the alleged meeting between MT and 
Dave Medinnus, wherein both agreed not to discuss any plans or take 
any actions for a month after the convention.  Folks, I was *there* 
for it.  I participated.  I offered the services of most of South 
Bay fandom to the resulting convention -- the same people who make 
Silicon, Baycon, Timecon, Unicon, and now ConFrancisco happen.  
I listened to MT agree not to make ANY comments, or ANY decisions.  
I also saw his message violating that agreement some 2 weeks later. 
Say what you like. I watched Mike speak a falsehood to myself and 
to my friends.

Many of you think that AE92 ran smoothly, and that as a result 
MT should bepraised.  It didn't run smoothly because of him.  
It ran smoothly IN SPITE of him.  

BTW-- If any of you have any questions about my bona fides, 
look inside your program books from AC91 or AE92.  If you have 
any questions, reply to Jake, and he'll pass them on to me.

Charlie Prael
Ops Director, AnimeCon 1991
Ops Director, AnimeExpo 1992

---End Message From Charlie---

What Charlie does not mention is (1) that he is not a member 
of Anime America, mostly because he is running the Operations
Division for the 1993 World Science Fiction Convention in 
San Francisco, and doesn't have the time to do both.


------------------------------------------------------------------
Jake McFarland  - jake@shakala.com 
Shakala BBS (ClanZen Radio Network) Sunnyvale, CA 408-734-2289
Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime