This is actually the Pangya panel that was before mine at Fanime
I couldn’t think of something not personal for what was supposed to be the tenth thing for yesterday’s intended “12 Days of Xmas” post so I conceded to write about the experience of putting on a panel at Fanime, the steps I had to go through, and why I am reluctant to devise holding another one at any convention unless I have a really great and structured idea.
I registered for Fanime 2007 on March 15, filed a panel submission to the organizers that same day, and wrote a post asking if anyone who like to participate in a panel about blogging. Lolikit and Spiritsnare both replied in the comments that they could do it so I already had a good number of three participants including myself. I got a response the next day from Rena working in Panels Coordination asking the time frame and also to change the title of the panel from “Blogging Anime and Manga” to something else because there was another one that used a similar title (Lolikit’s panel, ended up being called “Blogs and Anime Popularity”). I decided on “State of the Aniblogosphere” and that I would attempt to look at the past, present, and future of anime blogging and looking at trends.
On April 16, I was added to provide a more detailed description for the program guide and learned on the 18th that the panel was tenatively slated for Sunday at 2pm. That was not the final confirmed time since I received notice that it would take place Saturday at 1pm in the Santa Clara Room. On May 17, I got an e-mail telling me the details of check-in procedure which included checking in at the Panels check-in desk at least 2 hours before the start of your panel and also arriving at Programming Ops 30 minutes before your panel. I remember to do the first but forgot about the second and was instead finishing up a quick Powerpoint presentation in the Internet lounge. I ended up getting scolded by Rena when the panel ended.
As far as actual preparation, I tried to research the early stages of anime blogging as a subset of blogging itself and much of them were journal-like and anecdotal rather than driven by following series from week-to-week. I decided to mention that fact at the beginning and focus the meat of the hour on interesting discussion items of the past year. The topics that were actually discussed, as best as I can recall seven months later, included the mixed reaction of Lucky Star’s first episode, episodic blogging, the cyclical complaints about and series-specific stuff.
The panel actually more a conversation between the three of us than a presentation to the people in the audience although it started out that way. We managed to have some time for questions from the ten or so people that showed up and there was one girl who asked a good question about which blogs write reviews of older series, something that unfortunately none of us could give an answer to off the top of our heads. After the panel was over, a couple people from a podcast asked to interview both myself and Spiritsnare and we agreed and answered questions about how each of us begin writing and other stuff.
While I enjoyed doing the panel, I didn’t feel like I had prepared enough for it. So when I had an idea about a month ago to do a panel for AOD 2008 on Detective Conan, I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I would probably be able to give people an overview of the characters and structure of the series but that I didn’t really have an. For now, I’m holding off on doing it for the expertise reason and also because, as it stands, I would have given it by myself which would have been fine but I don’t feel like doing a bunch of research in the next couple months, especially when I’m trying to get internships and other senior-year-in-college things.
But I did email the AOD press liason to see if I can bring my video camera as a regular attendee if I don’t qualify as press (I doubt I will) so I’ll definitely try to do some reporting on the convention even if I won’t play a direct role in it.
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