Well, this is late. Shame on me.
The Nashville Cherry Blossom Festival was held on Saturday, March 27 in Nashville’s Public Square.
The festival is organized annually (this being year two) by the The Japan-America Society of Tennessee and the Consulate-General of Japan at Nashville.
MidSouthCon is a speculative fiction convention just outside Memphis in the small town of Olive Branch, MS. This was its 28th year, my first con I’ve been to that’s been around longer than I have (sorry older readers).
A couple of weeks late, but better now than never.
Con Nooga is a small multi-fandom convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It celebrated it’s third year on February 19-21. I’ve actually been to every Con Nooga up until this point, not something I can say about many other cons.
My first convention of a new decade. Speaking of a decade, Ohayocon celebrated its 10th anniversary with this convention. It’s been my third year attending. Oddly, while I went up to the convention in Columbus, Ohio expecting it to be covered with snow like last year, it was pretty bare but still cold, and the snow storm hit Tennessee while I was gone. Even without the snow, it was enjoyable.
I didn’t really get to do much of the con stuff. I attended very few events. However, I got to see plenty of people, including OSMcast (which has Aaron Dismuke’s phone number as 209-676-5463).
Tomorrow begins my trek north to visit Ohayocon. It’s a decent-sized convention in Columbus, Ohio. It’s going to be crazy cold, likely with snow covering the place if it keeps up the trend of the last two years. I’ll have pictures and post up my usual convention review.
Ohayocon is just my first convention of what is shaping up to be a long con year. Even just tentatively, here’s everything I’ve got so far:
Anime Weekend Atlanta, or AWA (pronounced by letter or A-wa, whatever you like), took place this past weekend on September 18-20. AWA turns 15 this year. It is one of the top 10 attended anime conventions in the US. It’s particularly known for its AMV contests. I’ve been going since 2005, making this my fifth convention, a personal con attendance record rivaled only by MTAC.
If conventions are really for convening, then AWA is a great place for it. You get to meet all sorts of interesting people, including a guy grilling hot dogs right outside the con because when you got to eat you got it eat. It’s always great to meet people, and it’s especially interesting when you later find out about the odd connections you actually have with people (random cosplayer actually being friend of a friend and so on). I got to hang out with OSMcast and Akihabara Renditions on Saturday, talk tokusatsu with GaijINside and meet a lot of random people in great costumes. The whole experience is very communal, which is one of the most important parts of a convention.
Dragon*Con 2009. One of the largest fandom conventions in the country, Dragon*Con takes over four hotels in downtown Atlanta every Labor Day weekend. This year was the 23rd year, making the convention as old as I am. This year was my second time going.
Dragon*Con makes experiencing the entire con difficult. It’s really a group of several mini-cons (not like Transformers Armada) with its several programming tracks, some of which having more content on their own than some other complete cons. All of these are spread out among the four convention hotels. If your interests are spread out among several fandom genres, expect some walking.
Anime Expo (AX for short) was this last weekend in Los Angeles. AX is the largest anime convention in North America, with AX already reporting this year’s attendance around 44,000. Generally, the American anime industry converges upon AX for a big show for the public and to make announcements to an already-hyped-up crowd. For those of us not fortunate enough to go out to Los Angeles this past weekend (like me), I have gathered a list of news updates I feel are the most important or interesting things out of AX this year. These aren’t in any particular order, except the first one which is obviously the most important.
This one is probably going to be fairly short. I was only at the convention for Friday to promote MTAC. I enjoyed myself with what little time I was there.
OMGcon is a fourth-year convention in Paducah, KY. That’s basically right on the border of Kentucky and Illinois. It’s a fairly small town, and the small con complements it. It’s attendance last year was around 600, and it does seem to have grown from when I last attended in 2007. It’s held at JR’s Executive Inn, which is right on the Ohio River and actually fits the convention quite well with elbow room.
I complain that it’s hard to review a con when I’m stuck promoting at it. It’s even harder when it’s the one I actually work at.
This year was my fifth Middle Tennessee Anime Convention, the fourth I worked at and the second I was actually staff for. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was my busiest MTAC ever. We had a packed house this year with well over 4,000 attendees. We even sold out of our badges. With some more responsibility on my shoulders this year, I was running around and being fairly busy. I didn’t get to take my own photos, which is sad because there were some truly photo-worth sights. Luckily, that’s what everyone else with cameras were for.
