To me, the relationship between AD and ATC makes perfect sense. But on the other hand, my dad's an attorney so concepts like 'reading the fine print' are stuff I've been familiar with since elementary school.
As for the MAS thing... eh, the people at MAS are cool, I'm friends with some of them, but MAS is an anime club, not a convention. This reminds me of the fact that this year other than joining the group registration for the discounted rate, I'm going to ACen entirely seperately from the anime club here at NDSU. The mindset it takes to run a club and a convention are entirely seperate things, and while club-run conventions *can* become major things, they will have to change along the way. I've been to two club-run conventions before, Sogen, and the day-long Scorch Con the MSUM gaming club puts on each semester. And especially in the case of the latter, the lack of experience and knowledge of how to run such event is *very* evident.
So my point is, MAS is cool, but MAS is not an anime con. MAS does not even represent a majority of the folks who'll be attending AD, as many of those aren't even college age to begin with. Anime clubs are inherently different from anime cons, and that really needs to be taken into consideration when it comes to stuff like programming and so on. Similarly, having attended cons makes a huge difference. I might have only been going to cons for a few years, but in that time I've been to quite a few cons and know the ropes. That was one of my biggest warnings to my friend on Sogen staff, was that with so many of their staff not having experience going to cons, I was expecting they'd probably have a rough time their first year running one. (and also was a large factor in why I went down there pretty solely to volunteer and help them run the thing)
And just in general, there's a lot of people who really truly mean well, but don't have the experience/expertise yet to be able to make good judgements. MAS people are cool, but I'm particularly wary of messing with a formula that *is* proven to work (and three years running, at that)...
It'll also be interesting to see if the consensus on staff that we don't want to become another ACen holds up after we secure bigger, more spacious quarters for 2008.
Now, I should point out that I'm one of the (probably very few) people on staff who thinks that running a large con *is* fun, but I'm just weird like that... >_>
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As for the MAS thing... eh, the people at MAS are cool, I'm friends with some of them, but MAS is an anime club, not a convention. This reminds me of the fact that this year other than joining the group registration for the discounted rate, I'm going to ACen entirely seperately from the anime club here at NDSU. The mindset it takes to run a club and a convention are entirely seperate things, and while club-run conventions *can* become major things, they will have to change along the way. I've been to two club-run conventions before, Sogen, and the day-long Scorch Con the MSUM gaming club puts on each semester. And especially in the case of the latter, the lack of experience and knowledge of how to run such event is *very* evident.
So my point is, MAS is cool, but MAS is not an anime con. MAS does not even represent a majority of the folks who'll be attending AD, as many of those aren't even college age to begin with. Anime clubs are inherently different from anime cons, and that really needs to be taken into consideration when it comes to stuff like programming and so on. Similarly, having attended cons makes a huge difference. I might have only been going to cons for a few years, but in that time I've been to quite a few cons and know the ropes. That was one of my biggest warnings to my friend on Sogen staff, was that with so many of their staff not having experience going to cons, I was expecting they'd probably have a rough time their first year running one. (and also was a large factor in why I went down there pretty solely to volunteer and help them run the thing)
And just in general, there's a lot of people who really truly mean well, but don't have the experience/expertise yet to be able to make good judgements. MAS people are cool, but I'm particularly wary of messing with a formula that *is* proven to work (and three years running, at that)...
It'll also be interesting to see if the consensus on staff that we don't want to become another ACen holds up after we secure bigger, more spacious quarters for 2008.
Now, I should point out that I'm one of the (probably very few) people on staff who thinks that running a large con *is* fun, but I'm just weird like that... >_>