Ryan Kopf
Ryan Kopf is the organizer of more than six annual conventions in the Midwest. In his youth he ran for mayor of Muscatine, Iowa, in 2007 at age 19, began a youth advocacy campaign to build a youth center in Muscatine, started two online news magazines, and developed dozens of websites. He is perhaps best known for his software development work, including founding UpcomingCons.com, a complete directory of Anime, Sci-Fi, Comic, and Game Conventions. He is currently helping organize several anime conventions, and manging several businesses.
UpcomingCons.com
Ryan built UpcomingCons.com with a desire to promote fandom as a whole, not entirely focused on one genre. Ryan knew that, with the right technology and knowledge, he could develop an extremely useful website that would bring fans together and promote fandom as a whole.
This Entry
This encyclopedia entry is mostly just a test for formatting the UpcomingCons.com Website. We are trying to make our encyclopedia look cool, and this entry is the main place that we test new features.
Ryan Kopf’s story
Ryan Kopf grew up in the Midwest, lucky enough to land in a middle school that had a decent computer lab. Ryan visited this lab every day to learn more about computer programming, practicing with HTML and Perl on a free webhost, and learning a little about game design from RPG Maker. After working with RPG Maker, which comes from Japan, and watching shows like Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z, Ryan started to become familiar with the anime culture world. Eventually he found out what “anime” was when watching Trigun in High School.
Since his youth, Ryan went on to create some succesful anime conventions, and turned his attention to full-time business management and software development.
Conventions
Kopf organizes some very large events that have a focus on anime, video games, and popular culture. His events focus primarily on the Japanese anime side of things, as it appears he has been an anime fan for a long time, and has regularly visited Tokyo to connect with Japanese companies and potential convention guests.
The largest of these conventions is called Anime Midwest and it is held in Chicago every year. The three-day event is an annual festival celebrating Japanese animation and culture. Thousands of people come together to cosplay and meet famous guests from the anime industry.
Official Website
Japan Travel Book
Learn Japanese the Easy Way: Through My Adventures in Japan.
Travel to Japan
In addition to running conventions, Ryan is a polyglot who speaks Spanish and Japanese as well as his native English. Every year Ryan travels to Japan to meet with business people to discuss working together on anime conventions in the United States, such as by collaborating to bring a performing artist to the US. His organization usually brings a full group’s worth of 4 or more people to stay in Tokyo for an entire month, as staying for a long time is more economical than short trips.
The group usually stays for the entire month of Japan, and spends that time immersing themselves in both Japanese culture and language, in order to bring these experiences back to the US to improve his anime conventions.
Websites
Since middle school, Ryan has extensively studied website design and development, knowing all the best practices across several languages, including everything from the basics – HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript – to more advanced technologies like AI/ML algorithms, Rust, ReactJS, Ruby on Rails, etc. He knows many other programming languages including Perl, Python, and PHP. Most of his websites focus on providing information for nerds and geeks who like anime. Ryan considers himself a nerd and actively promotes nerdy culture.
Anime Midwest
Anime Midwest is Ryan’s largest convention, happening annually in Chicago. The event brings together almost 20,000 fans of anime and Japanese culture to celebrate a weekend of entertaining events, shopping, games, and more.
Bio
Ryan has a longer bio on his website that goes back quite a ways.