CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

(sorry if this thread would have been better someplace else, I wasn't sure where to put it)

My church group has been discussing ways outreach ideas, trying to come up with somewhat unexpected ways to be witnesses for Christ. Well, God really laid a burden on my heart for (surprise, surprise) anime fans! More specifically, I remembered the trip I took Animazement 2004 and was really struck, not just that there was no way you could walk through and not meet anyone who needed Christ, but that 99% of churches would not go anywhere near the place to reach them. So, anyway, I suggested that we adopt this year’s convention as a ministry opportunity. Several ideas were thrown around, from making sandwiches for the inevitable broke people to handing water out to people in the cosplay contest line and several others along those lines. In essence, we want to make a very practical demonstration of Christ’s love in a place where few Christians really make an effort to do so.

Now, here’s the thing: since I brought it up, it’s become my responsibility to gather up information on the possibility of doing such a thing, and I have NO idea what to do. This isn’t really volunteer work, since it would be us doing our own little project instead of helping another one, so all the information that the Animazement website has on that doesn’t really help me much. I really don’t have a clue who in the whole convention planning cabal we should talk to in order to make any kind of arrangements. So here’s my question: is there anyone here who can help us out? Has anybody else tried this sort of thing and knows how to get the ball rolling? On the other side of things, is there anyone around who has helped run a con and can point us in the right direction? Anyone here in the southeast who’s been at Animazement before would be especially helpful *cough-Rev. Doc-cough*, but I’m not too picky at this point.

So, yeah, absolutely any help/guidance/advice/constructive criticism/reality checks would be greatly appreciated!

First of all, I think you and your church ROCK for this idea. What cool people!

Second of all....can you give us more information on the location and time period regarding the event you're speaking of?

I live in the Southeast, but I wouldn't mind travelling a little bit, and I'm sure a few other people probably feel the same way, we just need a little more information.

I'll be checking back for more info.

*Wholeheartedly agrees with what shimmer just said*

Give us some info, and I'd be glad to come help, if my schedule allows it. ^^

Talk to Reverend Doc--from what I remember, he helped organize Animazment last year and can probably tell you what to do from there. If he's not organizing again this year, he should at least be able to tell you who is and how to talk to them.

Yeah, I sort of had him in mind as the idea came together.

Animazement '05 will be taking place on Memorial Day weekend, May 27-29, in Durham, North Carolina. Information on the event can be conveniently obtained at http://www.animazement.com ! If you'd like more information on what exactly our group wants to do, well, that's a slightly stickier matter. As I said before, we've got several different ideas, but we really need to spend some time talking with whoever we need to talk to and find out what is and isn't possible before setteling on one.

For example, one of the ideas I mentioned above was setting up a table or something in the parking lot and making little sandwiches to give out to people. I like that one, since I personally experienced the sensation of litterally not being able to afford real food all weekend. However, to do that, we'd have to make sure it's okay with the hotel to set something up in the parking lot, we'd have to make sure we could do it and not be in the way of other events, and we'd have to do something to aviod making the dealers and establishments in the hotel from getting mad at us for handing out free food. At the moment, we don't know how to do any of that, hence this post.

I'm REALLY glad to hear the possitive feedback, though. Ya'll really my day!

(Oh, to those who are interested, you can see some stuff about our church at http://www.faithnc.org . There's not to much about the College-age group, though, and that's the "us" I keep referring to. Just thought I throw that out there)

Hmm....I will be in Italy until the 28th, but depending upon my time of return and if you guys are still wanting to do something on Sunday, I might head up there anyway. I still think this would be a wonderful experience with a lot of witnessing potential.

If nothing else, maybe I can help with planning. When you figure out exactly what you're doing, let me know if there's anything I can do to help out here in GA.

I saw this thread earlier and I'm sorry for taking so long to get to it. Church related matters and the need to think some things through prevented me from responding sooner.

I will in fact be working on staff at Animazement again this year. We had a staff meeting in Raleigh a little over a week ago to work some things out. I will again be heading up volunteer work so I should be able to help you with this. I am very excited to know that some of you are interested in ministering to the young people at the con. I try to be a witness in what I do. However, most of my time is spent in the Volunteer/Convention Operations Room and I'm only able to get out occasionally to the main floor to meet folks. You will indeed have a chance to make a much bigger impact.

Let me clarify a few things with rules which will help you in making decisions of what your group will and will not be able to do. One of your ideas deals with the distribution of water and or food items. There is a policy in the contract between the hotel and Animazement that no items which the hotel dispenses can be distributed by others on the premises. Naturally, bottled water is sold and there is a resturant at the location. The only exception to this is the room set up with drinks and finger foods given free of charge to convention attendees. This is supplied to convention goers as a service of Animazement (the Con Suite). As the hotel bends over backwards in many areas to help make this convention work the staff has never sought to make a big deal out of this. We had toyed in the past with the idea of allowing a Japanese Restaurant in the area come in and set up in the parking lot to sell food items. However, this also would put us at odds with the aforementioned guidelines so it has never been pursued. We have had an attendee for a number of years that we called the "Pocky Girl." She would go to the dealers room and purchased mass quantities of Pocky and walked around the hotel yelling, "Free pocky!" We never made a big deal out of it as it was a minor infraction (the hotel didn't sell pocky) and she was harmless enough (although I don't remember seeing her last year). And Blitz if you get hungry this year just come to Con Volunteer/Ops and I will get you something to eat.

Another rule you need to be aware of. All volunteer work and interaction with convention goers can only be possible if you have paid to attend the convention. In other words, technically people cannot just walk in off the street and interact with con goers. I know that this is hard to enforce, but the staff employs off duty deputies who can ask individuals to leave the premises if they are not paid attendees if the staff deems it necessary. There are a number of reasons for this the biggest of which is insurance. Plus being a "family friendly" convention we want parents to feel that their young people are relatively safe when they drop them off.

So, have I discouraged you yet? I hope not because there are still some possibilities. Let me run an idea by you that I thought of this morning. During the convention we have 3 video rooms running. The titles that are shown are usually fansubs of newer releases in Japan or titles that the real "otakus" would like to see. One thing that I have been noticing is an increasing number of younger children and adolescents coming to the convention with parents. I see these mostly during the Saturday session when they don't have school. I was thinking that it would be great if they had an opportunity to see some anime titles geared towards their age group which are not seen on television and could be shown in the dubbed format. I was thinking of perhaps episodes of Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar, Fancy Lala, Mao Chan, Di Gi Charat, etc. (I have these titles and could supply them to you to use). I might be able to persuade the staff to give us the smallest video room on Saturday from say 10:00 in the morning to 5 or 6 in the evening. If that was not possible we might be able to set up a TV with a DVD in some corner where kids could gather. What this would involve is one to two running this video room and keeping order in the area. You could even incorporate a couple of people from your group as cosplayers to stand outside the door welcoming kids in costumes like Di Gi Charat characters etc. if they have that interest. If some of your people are more talented at face painting you could practice ahead of time and face paint some of the cuter anime characters on their cheeks. You may have other talents in your group that could be applied to this. I don't think you would be overworked in regard to children at any given time. However, you may attract even some of the older attendees that would like to see these titles and even to have some character face painting done too. In fact, I think something like that might spread to the point that those would be your busiest people because if you were doing anime characters it might become somewhat of a fad thing to go and have it done.

Again, in order to do this you must be paid attendees so it would be best to get your interested people signed up and register as the prices are cheaper now than at the door.

Doing this type of work (running and maintaining a video room) you are designated as volunteers. If your whole group worked about 6 hours each you would receive $10.00 each. It's not much but it will help defray the cost a tiny bit. We pay $5.00 for every 3 hours of work volunteers put in and if they put in 21 hours through the weekend we give them a free preregistration to next year's convention. Just our way of saying thank you.

Anyway, that is one idea that If you are interested I can help you get off the ground by taking it directly to the staff for approval. However, if you have other ideas feel free to bounce them off me. I definitely want to help your group work something out.

Hmmm, this makes things interesting. The whole distribution of food-stuffs bit doesn't come as too much of a surprise (we were sort of hoping against hope there), but the paying attendee amendment will shake us up a bit. See, "paying" tends to require, you know, money, and most of my cohorts tend to have very little of that floating around (these ARE college students we're talking about, after all) I mean, it's still a while off so we'll have to wait and see, but I think that'll definitely make planning though for a while.

So, that said, I honestly can't come up with an answer for the kid's video room concept at the moment. It's a cool idea, especially since our church has a MASSIVE children’s ministry, but would really depend on who will actually be able to participate. Once I've had a chance to talk to people I'll let you know. Ahhh, the thrill of uncertainty... For the record, though, even if NO ONE else can afford to come, I'll be there for sure (and, you know, if a few friendly CAA types showed up as well...)

You know, I just remembered something, and I have given it NO thought prior to this, but I'll ask anyway. I seem to recall reading a topic somewhere around here about some CAA folks doing a fan panel about Christianity in anime at another con. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I can't even remember if I saw that here or somewhere else, but it flashed through my mind just now, and it can’t hurt to ask, right?

You know, I just remembered something, and I have given it NO thought prior to this, but I'll ask anyway. I seem to recall reading a topic somewhere around here about some CAA folks doing a fan panel about Christianity in anime at another con. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I can't even remember if I saw that here or somewhere else, but it flashed through my mind just now, and it can’t hurt to ask, right?

Keely and I did have a panel at this year's Oni-Con, but that's because Keely was on staff with them and was allowed to have her own panel. She talked to the folks at Ushi-con and they let her have it there too, I just wasn't able to attend. But I think what helped our case is that we were the administrators of major Christian sites, but I think it's great your willing to try. I'm going to try to get these tapes digitized (er, sent to Oldphil so HE can digitize) soon so maybe that will help you should you decide to go that route.

Blitzkrieg1701 wrote:You know, I just remembered something, and I have given it NO thought prior to this, but I'll ask anyway. I seem to recall reading a topic somewhere around here about some CAA folks doing a fan panel about Christianity in anime at another con. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? I can't even remember if I saw that here or somewhere else, but it flashed through my mind just now, and it can’t hurt to ask, right?

Sorry about some of the regulations. Naturally, time is running out fast in regard to planning things like video rooms as titles, etc. are planned in advance. So given, there may have not been enough time to pull something like that together. It may be something I suggest to the staff for next year's convention.

As for panels, Ashley did a panel recently and that is what you are thinking about. So you could talk to her about that. But here again you need to work fast as these are filling up quickly. That of course is another division from mine. There is a link on the website where you can email about the possibility of doing a panel. If I can help with anything else just let me know.

Yeah, that was more of a random brain blip than a serious suggestion. There are a few few fellows in our group who would really be well suited for such a project, and they're the one's who would probobly have the most truoble getting the money together to go. Also, I kind of wonder just doing a panel would undermine our original goal: presenting a witness with a real practical element to back it up. (Not that it doesn't sound kind of fun, though)

I have a feeling that the Saturday kids' room idea will be more popular, mainly because we have more people who are skilled at the art of child watching than we do people equiped to engage a room full of otaku in any sort of discussion. (a daunting prospect for anyone, if you think about it )

In any case, we'll be having a group meeting to decide on all this stuff Sunday, so I'll know for sure what we want to do then. Is there anyone else who'll be at Animazement and would be interested in helping out? The possibility of additional helping hands would really help.

Sorry, I do not have any new advice for you Blitzkrieg1701, but I do want to encourage you and let you know that I will be praying for you.

-kaji

Well, when you come right down to it, that's about all ANY of us can do, right? Thanks!

Okay, folks, we are ON. Well, we wanna be, at least. The group has formally decided to go after the possibility of running a young-people's video room. Looks like that whole cash thing will be far less of an issue than I feared. So I guess the ball is in your court now, oh Rev. Doc sir. Just tell us what is decided and we shall go along with it.

Quick question: are there age requirements for volunteers? We know several people who would be enterested in taking part, but they're not quite out of high-school yet. The Volunteer page didn't say anything about that, but we don't want to approach them or tell you "we'll have X number of people" before making sure it's acceptible.

Blitzkrieg1701 wrote:Okay, folks, we are ON. Well, we wanna be, at least. The group has formally decided to go after the possibility of running a young-people's video room. Looks like that whole cash thing will be far less of an issue than I feared. So I guess the ball is in your court now, oh Rev. Doc sir. Just tell us what is decided and we shall go along with it.

Quick question: are there age requirements for volunteers? We know several people who would be enterested in taking part, but they're not quite out of high-school yet. The Volunteer page didn't say anything about that, but we don't want to approach them or tell you "we'll have X number of people" before making sure it's acceptible.

High school age is not a problem. In fact, most of the volunteers we use come straight off the floor to work and are usually 16 to 20. If you could give me a guesstimate as to a number that would do at this point.

I'll make a contact on the staff board tonight and see the response I get and we'll will go from there.

Oh, okay! *insert relieved sigh* It's sounds like we'll be able to muster a gang of 6 or 7 souls in total. A bit more than it would take to keep an eye on one room, but some of us would like to be able step out and enjoy the con for a least a few minutes, so we're hoping to get a shift thing going.

bump to remove poster tag ^^

Blitzkrieg1701 wrote:Oh, okay! *insert relieved sigh* It's sounds like we'll be able to muster a gang of 6 or 7 souls in total. A bit more than it would take to keep an eye on one room, but some of us would like to be able step out and enjoy the con for a least a few minutes, so we're hoping to get a shift thing going.

6 or 7 would be more than enough. I posted a note on the staff site last night and thus far it has received one response. They made the comment that last year they were apporached by several parents who requested that some anime titles be shown for their younger children. So right now I am getting some positive feedback to the idea. I made the suggestion of a 6 hour block, however, I'm not sure if it will receive that much time or not. It may turn out to be more of a 4 hour section from say 1 to 5 or something like that. We'll wait and see.

I brought up the idea of doing some anime character face painting. Is there anyone in your group who is capable of doing that? They suggested that if that were the case then we would let some of your group set up a table in artist alley to do that. That would give you some additional exposure. Plus the staff member felt that something like that would not only be well received by the children, but by most of the convention goers and therefore you would be ministering to a larger age bracket. If you do not have someone who has done this in the past you have enough time to start training a couple of people between now and then.

We are in the midst of setting up volunteer meetings between now and the convention (there will be at least 2 with 3 at the most between now and then). I would be happy to set up a meeting with your group who will be participating while I am in the Raleigh area at your church for any training (face painting etc.) and prayer time if that is a possiblity.

I will let you know as I receive more feedback and how this is progressing.

Well that's good to hear! We'll be happy take ANY amount of time that's provided.

Concerning the face panting idea, we do have one or two individuals who know their way around drawing anime characters, myself being one of them. But I'm pretty sure that hasn't ever involved using a person's face as a surface (and I know that I, for one, have proven very clumsy whenever paints have been involved). It is a cool idea, though, and we'll definitely look into it. Who knows what untapped talents lie hidden within our collective minds? I'll also see when a good time for a meeting would be, since I'm sure that would do everyone some good.