So it seems my blog post this morning raised a few eyebrows - and I got an email (and then phone call) from Beth Widera, the owner of MegaCon.
After a lengthy discussion, I agreed to clarify a few facts and we agreed to disagree on others.
FIRST OFF - Mini-MegaCon has been in the works for almost two years. According to Beth, she contacted the staff at Anime Festival Orlando when looking for dates in the summer. The only request given was to have the event as "late in August as possible." MegaCon complied and put the event in the third week of August.
SECOND - Mini-MegaCon has been promoting anime as part of their programming since its inception. I personally was under the impression that the event would not include anime (being so close to AFO,) but Beth has stated this is entirely not true. She included an advertising file used in April of this year that includes "anime" and the event dates.
NOTE: None of the advertising I have seen actually has a "Mini MegaCon" nameplate logo... including the current graphics on the web site header. This, in my opinion, probably contributes to the confusion in the "branding" of MegaCon/Mini-MegaCon.
NEXT - MegaCon (Beth) became aware of Anime Sushi's event lineup at the exact same time I did... via an email on Sunday.
The fact that this action was in poor form and reflects poorly on MegaCon is where she and I disagree.
Anime Sushi has been doing events long enough to have thought better than to begin promoting their anime events less than five days before Anime Festival Orlando. Not only is it counter-advertising, it is disrespectful to AFO's event organizers.
The smart thing would have been to wait five more days and do a strong promotions push AT Anime Festival Orlando - therefore not sending any mixed signals about Orlando anime related events and not stepping on toes.
So is Mini-MegaCon still a fail? Not as badly as initially perceived (it would seem)... but sadly Anime Sushi still is - and (very sadly) their actions reflect on MegaCon. Of course, it's all just business -
But there's still no such thing as business ethics.
"So it goes" - Kurt Vonnegut
EPILOGUE: Thanks for all the replies to my last post - but a decent number of them were filtered and never saw the light of day. Even if you agree with what I'm writing, I don't allow posts that are Anonymous.
3 comments:
Poor form or not I'm still not going to go. I can only hope the rest of my friends do the same after knowing how they've treated one of our fave cons.
AFO for me has always felt like a "local" con because the people involved felt real and were welcoming. My skipping Mini-whats-it isn't going to break any banks or make headlines but it feels like the right thing to do. It's why you shop at a local store instead of "S-Mart".
- Lauren, who is keeping it mostly real and local on the treasure coast
But the fact that Anime Sushi would be a part of Mini-Megacon was put on their website back in April 18, almost four months ago. The fact that they've started advertising again for their convention seems more like they wanted to give people a month advanced warning more then attacking AFO.
Also looking on their website, it was as early as March 23 that Anime Sushi announced their participation: http://www.animesushi.com/smf/index.php?topic=4260.0
I do not want to start any drama, I like both Megacon and AFO, so I want to make sure both sides are known.
It seems like there's getting to be so many cons that stepping on each other's toes is inevitable. I'm hoping with DragonCon just a week before AWA, AWA will still have strong attendance. Having any kind of conventions with some kind of fandom overlap close together usually makes people make a choice in which to attend.
I can understand you guys have a relationship going between the cons so you're disappointed in this behavior. I'm not sure they thought of you as seeing it this way however. They were probably just starting their advertising because its coming up without thinking of it in relation to AFO. Its one big community.
I don't know that much about Mini-Megacon, I assumed it would be like a shorter version of the regular thing, which has a mix of stuff and has always had a growing anime presence as the years progress. I however think Mini-Megacon at this point in time is a bad idea (and unfortunate since they've been planning it so long). I won't be attending because I've already had too many cons this year that didn't go well (I do artist alley). Attendance is always decent, but spending is way down. It'll probably be ok for the con itself, but things seem down for dealers and artists. I'm sticking to only regular Megacon until the economy gets better. I was at AFO and did abysmally. AFO also hurt itself in the poor management of its website and some organization.
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