This is actually going to be a two-parter on attenting KinToki-con. First a review – and then my impressions of their professional focus.
KinToki-Con is a new anime-themed convention in Sacramento, CA. Since I've never been to Sacramento, and since they invited me, I wanted to give it a shot. Of course I did some career panels – along with some creativity panels. I'll let you know how those went.
So let's get to it!
Location:
KinToki-Con is located in the Hyatt in downtown Sacramento. It's a pretty nice facility and good for a small to medium convention. Extremely classy place, very polite staff, and the room rates were reasonable considering the location. The in-hotel food was really expensive however, which was annoying – and it was often expensive in erratic ways ($12 for a mixed drink I don't get, but $14 for gourmet sliders and sweet potato fries made sense).
Convention:
This was pretty well-run for a first year con. Things got done on time, there were no incidents, and there was a lot of stuff to do.
There was also a wide smattering of events, from music shows to panels to game tournaments. The convention managed to have not only a little bit of everything, but enough of everything to make it work and be very entertaining.
My Events:
So what did I do? Well, here's the rundown.
The Power Of Brainstorming: My usual creativity panel. This one usually ends with a brainstorming session but instead we ended up doing more discussions. A neat idea that came out of this I want to share with my fellow progeeks – a brainstorming or creativity "boot camp" at a convention. I like that idea.
The State Of The Geekonomy: This was a new, stripped-down version of the presentation to only focus on major, audience-relevant trends. This went pretty good and we had a lot of great discussions go on. I think the focus definitely helped, and it also helped look at the overal narrative for the attendees.
Crossover Mania: Not a professional one, but this is an idea I want to encourage you ALL to steal. The audience assembled the most insane yet consistent crossover they could – in this case we merged Ergo Proxy, One Piece, FMA, Code Geas, Hellboy, Hellsing, Harlock, Soul Eater, Golgo13, and Black Jack. I definitely want to do this again – and I think as a kind of competitive event or have different teams do it.
Why You Don't Have Your Dream Job: My inexplicably popular panel on a depressing subject made its come back and as usual, people enjoyed it. This one is pretty automatic to do, so I want to work to punch it up so I don't get lazy.
Overall:
A fun con. I'd DEFINITELY go back because if this is year one? Year two is going to be great!