Zenkaikon, another small con in near a densely populated area.  I can’t remember where I first saw Zenkaikon being mentioned.  But apparently they did such a good job in advertisement everyone in the surrounding Pennsylvania area and further heard about it and crawled out of the woodwork.  I booked a hotel room months in advance but never finalized the plans to go until a few days before the con.  A weekend before the con I met up with people from a cosplay.com meet and told them about it, by Monday everyone pre-registered when they announced the attendance cap and we were good to go.

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Day One Saturday

I arrived with my group to the con an hour after the official opening thinking small con, since we are late they should be able to breeze through registration fairly fast since they claimed to let the pre-registered guests to start to get their badges an hour earlier. We drove in the parking lot and saw a massive sea of people.

The number one Con faux pas was in full force attendee registration. You can have a horrible con. But making people wait hours to get into a horrible con will compound the hate. I was able to shave off some time to peek what was going on as I had another friend closer to the front of the line. As I got to the door they made an announcement that they would no longer be taking Saturday registration at the door for walk-ups. And that anyone who wasn’t preregistered could wait in line to register for Sunday.

The girl was right at the cut-off. One of the many people looking through the glass door after the news in despair.

Funny thing though. I met her the next day in the same place.

After that announcement and the people in front of me got processed.
I got inside to see an continued inside waiting line for the walk-up registration. And found out they suffered from the relying on computer registration issues that plague conventions. They had 4 working stations trying to process 1,300 or so attendees. One processing walk-ups and the other 3 to check names. It took about 45 seconds process me with no mistakes. Even with that relatively fast time doing a quick number crunch it would take a minimum of 4 hours to get through their imposed 1,300 headcount cap.

I eventually got my badge and then got to walk around downstairs and red flag number two was also quickly apparent. Not enough space even with the proposed attendance cap. Just by judging that the place was going to be packed most of the time. While its hard to find facility and space friendly to conventions. It reminded me of Reed Exhibition’s first New York Comic Con. They weren’t ready for the onslaught of people coming out of the woodwork. Also with most cons you expect people to go inside and outside so you can fudge the capacity numbers in letting more people attend than fire code would ever allow. But with this location’s physical layout there weren’t too many walkways and there were no reasons to go outside. So the halls and rooms were packed consistently with people in areas with events. So when an major event ends the hallways became flooded.

I eventually got into my hotel room about 4 hours after they started to process registration. And from my window I saw the line was still being processed.

Even with those issues Zenkaikon turned out to be a decent little con. So with good panels, an impressive three bands booked, yes three bands for a small convention and a hard working staff. The con went as smooth as it could of possibly went. The registration lines were somewhat forgivable with the quality of the con.  Panel-wise I didn’t stay too long during them because they didn’t fit my schedule. The ones I did attend had a good crowd in all of them. I did catch the two of the three bands. I never heard them play before. I caught the middle/end of Geist which is a J-rock band. They were at Kinokuniya a Japanese Bookstore for a meet and greet a month or so earlier. I really didn’t know who they were then either even though they were right in front of me.

Then there was Eyeshine who’s connection to an anime convention is Johnny Yong Bosch who’s of Power Rangers fame and he still voice acts. Me not being into the J-rock scene and Eyeshine not being a J-rock band, performance wise I liked this band much better with its play style.

Nothing screams rockstar more than playing with the lights on! (Then again most of the shots I got wouldn’t of come out) Work with what you got as they say, I don’t think the hotel lights had dimmer switches. One of the more interesting parts was they did planned to do a second set the next day. Saturday night’s crowd was small. And for some reason an early Sunday morning concert brought in more people. Go figure.

Now this is how a band with a loyal following. I’m guessing this girl was a fan because I saw her sitting on the floor in the beginning with her guitar. I left to cover other parts of the con and came back later to see she was on stage playing with the band.

Johnny Yong Bosch really does put his full the effort into entertainment. Zenkaikon without his support would of been hurting. Between his personal meet/greet autograph session for the Power Rangers/Anime part of this life. Which he impressively went though everyone he could until he had to physically leave to get ready for the next event. And having the band stay for hours after the Sunday show to sign things and meet fans. It all was an impressive feat.

Zenkaikon is growing and in a healthy manner I’d say. They didn’t purposely overstep their ability to run the con. They might have been a little understaffed but definitely tried to head off their problems early with the attendance cap. The location they are at now isn’t the best location but its conveniently located for people at the least to get to. Lets see what problems they can work out by next year.

As far as pictures that were taken. This go around it was so tight I decided to stick with my brand new Tokina 11-16/2.8 80% of the time and more Lensbaby playtime. It was so tight and I like full body shots the 11-16 was the only way to go. I may have to in the future start using a flash again as I’ve been becoming addicted to fast glass so much that I was pushing ISO the whole time.   I found my D300’s sensor has some hot pixels which I’ve never noticed. But by pushing it to ISO 3200 it somehow warmed up the sensor so that even at ISO 1600 the hot pixel shows up sometimes. I’ll need to get that fixed after Christmas during a downtime. So if you’re wondering why everyone’s so distorted being taller or fatter than normal. Everything’s alright its the lens distorting the world.