My Experience Volunteering at Anime Expo 2010

 <- This year I donned the yellow vest and helped run Anime expo. While cosplaying while volunteering was totally acceptable, I found wearing my Yasogami High Uniform quite distracting.

While I did spend a lot of time doing standard issue convention shenanigans at this year’s Anime Expo, I also spent some time volunteering in order to get a free pass. This is because I sort of had a financial crash, and not going to expo was simply not an option in my book. While I initially applied for a staff position, upon realizing that I was not going to get the position, I immediately applied to volunteer, in order to have a something to convince them to put me on staff in the future.

While I was contemplating this, I realized it would give me much more expertise on the ways of the anime convention, and make me get one step closer to my goal of becoming an Anime Expo sage. Furthermore, it would allow me to have a much deeper knowledge of the inner workings of the convention. Hence, on day 0 I set out on my journey to work at the convention.

I worked at quite a few postions, including registration, the manga lounge, bag stuffing, and guarding a choke point. I rate these postions as follows:

Manga lounge > Bag stuffing > Registration > Standing in line at a con > Choke points

Choke Points: This position was possibly the most banal thing I’ve ever done. I only did it for two hours and avoided it like the plague afterwards. The job consisted of sitting at a position in the convention center and preventing anybody from getting through, to ensure that the people at a real checkpoint had an easier time checking everybody’s badge. Unfortunately, I was guarding the top of a stairwell that leads to a shortcut to the movie theaters. People’s reactions to me not allowing them to go through ranged from moderately irritated to downright hostile. Furthermore, there was nothing to do besides sit there and prevent people from going through. This job REALLY sucked.

Registration: I spent a good 6 hours of my required 16 working with the people in registration. For two of them, I was working as backup in case somebody needed help. This is because the computers in registration had technical difficulties, and the system prevented non- staff (I.E. volunteers like me) from handling any form of money. This resulted in me only being able to tell people where stuff is, and not being able to do much. These people were not in a good mood, because they had to wait for their badge due to technical difficulties, and I was unfortunately not given the means to acquire the badge for them. I really should have gotten the phone number of the girl I was working with though, hehe

The other four hours I spent in registration were not that bad really. I was assigned to hand out goodie bags to people who got their badges on day 4. Unfortunately, only a select few suckers show up to a convention on day 4, so I didn’t do much. At least I was doing something, rather than sitting there hoping for something to do, and I got to see all the people who were attending that day.

Bag Stuffing: I wound up spending about 2 hours stuffing the registration bags I would wind up handing out on day 4. This job would seem incredibly boring, as all I was doing was picking up an item, putting it in a bag, and passing it to the next person, like an assembly line. However, I got to wave at AKB48 (yes, one of them waved back) while running it, because they wound up going past the staff-only area where we assembled bags. Also, I wound up working with a couple of attractive girls dressed as vocaloids, which was nice. It’s always better to work with people than sitting by yourself, like at the chokepoints.  However, one guy I was working with was a little…. dense. He seemed to think my telling the vocaloids I’m working with about the when and where of the official rave was connected to work at all, and that I should quit it and get to base so I can do better stuff.

Manga Lounge: This was definitely my favorite place to work during the convention. One time I worked here for two hours, and just had to ensure that the books were in their proper locations. Although it never stopped, I was never bored.

The best part was when I was checking people out of the library in the morning. Since the library wasn’t very crowded at that time, I got to spend a good portion of that time reading. I managed to get through both “Vampire Knight” volume 8 and The “Wallflower” volume 1  in between signing people out. Also, I ran into a few of my friends while working the library, which was nice.

Staffers: Time to gossip about the rest of the staff! The rest of the staff was hardworking, hardcore, and definitely overworked. I got this vibe during the volunteer orientation when the person in charge of telling us what’s going on picked up a megaphone, said hi, and nearly collapsed right there. This was very discouraging, but it also told us that the staff was willing to work to that point, making them seem slightly crazier than the rest of the people at the convention. Upon chatting with them during the course of the convention, I’ve gathered that there were major staff cuts, which made running the show a bit more difficult, but the people who remained seemed entirely capable of stepping up to the challenge. Although the workload does intimidate me a bit, some part of me wants to find out if I’m capable of joining those fools crazy enough to try to run this convention. Hats off to them BTW, I know the people at my regular job probably couldn’t pull this type of thing off for the perks they got.

Other Volunteers: The volunteers were consistently less competent than the actual staff. I believe this is due to requirements for being a volunteer include willing to put on a vest for 16 hours and helping run the convention. This allows several slackers to get on board. However, a good amount of the volunteers were very good, and willing to get the job done to ensure that this convention was good for the people who showed up. Because without them, the con would collapse from all the minor tasks that need to be done.

Mostly, volunteering at Anime expo was pretty fun, considering I got inside information on the infrastructure of the convention, got to contribute to the actual convention, and got in free. Also, since I worked mostly morning shifts, I didn’t miss any important stuff, like the AMV contest and late night raves (Hey, sometimes you just have to cut sleep out of your schedule to get the most out of your convention.) Assuming I don’t get a staff position, I will most likely be volunteering at the convention again next year! Look for me in the green vest!

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My Journey through Anime Expo 2010
Getting the most out of an anime convention
Convention Trances: Drawing on the Essence of an Anime convention
Anime Expo 2009