Organizing a Convention, Page 2

Creating an anime convention, or a sci-fi convention, or a comic book convention doesn't have to be too tough. Let's first discuss the various types of conventions.

What kind of convention do you want to organize?

Anime Conventions

Anime conventions are actually usually very similar to each other, mainly varying in size and guests. Starting an anime convention is easy enough. Get a convention center that can comfortably fit a couple hundred attendees. Get your meeting space free if you make a hundred room nights or so, and don't be liable for more than a couple thousand if you go over. Then get one to three guests, usually voice actors, and don't pay a stipend over $300 each (if you do, you're starting too high). After this you'll plan for panel events, a cosplay masquerade, and a dance. There's more to it, though, so read on.

Sci-Fi Conventions

Sci-Fi conventions can be quite a bit varied, and their popular seems to have a while ago. There are several still very popular, regularly-attended sci-fi conventions in the world. Most of them, even the long-running conventions, have around 500 people, unlike anime conventions where the average reaches into the thousands for established conventions. First year sci-fi cons usually get local special effects producers, small-time actors, or others that are usually nearby and easy to bring to the con. Sci-fi cons usually bring the same attendees every year, so starting a new one is not something we're able to elaborate on very well.

Comic Conventions

There are a few different types of comic cons. The smallest comic book conventions are common - one dealer picks a date and invites people to buy comics, and calls it a comic book convention. Slightly bigger, but still small comic cons usually just center on a lot of dealers in a room with a whole lot of different comics. We don't see a lot of medium sized comic cons. Then you reach to the large-scale comic cons: C2E2, Comic Con International, Etc. These cons bring together huge comic book publishers like Marvel and DC and get thousands of attendees. We don't know much about this yet, so we're still focusing on anime cons really.

What size do you want your convention?

They say that size doesn't matter, but it really can matter a lot. Depending on the type of convention you want to organize, size can make a huge difference in what to expect. A comic book convention with 40 attendees reading comic books and discussing them will be a different experience compared to a pop culture expo with 15,000 people attending. In order to fit the definition of a "convention" from UpcomingCons's perspective you need to be expecting at least 100 people to attend. This is a good number because around that number you aren't really able to know and tailor the event to each individual person; by that point you are simply trying to great a massive fun event.