Not like the fairy tale story in Shrek, I will be attending a small anime convention in a place I never thought of before. And that place is in Arizona outside of Phoenix, the convention is Saboten-Con. It was a last minute decision because of a family emergency and the con is taking place next door where I made plans to stay.

And its only 6 days away from the con I’ve been waiting for since April, and that is Zenkaikon. And that is where I’ll report my experience from this Arizona based convention.

Last week, we’ve been announcing conventions we are planning to go to for next year. And most of the new conventions we are covering for the third season in 2010 are small size conventions throughout the northeast of the United States. For more of Con Goer, go to www.congoers.com.

ANIME CONVENTION FACTS OF ANTHONY!

1. How many times have you been to a convention? More than 20

2. Do you sleep at conventions? At the convention center, no.

3. Do you eat? If I didn’t, I would probably be dead.

4. Are you shameless at conventions?: Hell no.

5. On average, how much money do you spend?: Usually no more than $100; that’s how much I spent at AB.

6. Do you go to conventions to pick up people? No

7. Do you go to conventions to bang people? OMG NO!

8. How much cellulite do you see when you go to conventions?: I don’t care.

9a. Do you cosplay?: Rarely, don’t have time to make the cosplay.

9b. Do you watch skits on youtube?: No, I watch them on Vidgle!

10. Does your cosplay show a lot of skin? Why?

11. Is your cosplay the epitome of badassery?: No

12. Do you wait in line for things?: I don’t normally wait onlines anymore; in the old days yes. But now since I cover the cons under press, I don’t.

13. How many friends have you met from conventions? Several.

14. Have you ever been drunk at a convention?: No

15. Name your conventions (the early years I am lost at, i think we went to I-CON 21):
2002:
Anime Expo NY
I-con 21

2003:
Big Apple Anime Fest
I-con 22

2004:
I-con 23

2005:
I-con 24

2006:
Otakon

2007:
I-con 26
Anime Boston
Otakon
MangaNEXT
New York Anime Festival

2008:
I-con 27
New York Comic-con
Otakon
MangaNEXT
New York Anime Festival

2009:
I-con 28
New York Comic-con
Otakon
Anime Boston
Katsucon
Zenkaikon
New York Anime Festival
AnimeUSA OR Another Anime Con

16. Do you go to conventions alone or with a bunch of people? Usually with friends

17. Get your own room or mooch off of someone?: Have own room

18. Ever partied hard with a voice actor?: No, I just keep in touch with them.

19. Taken a picture with Silent Bob? I even had an interview with him! That idiot never said a word!

20. Jay too? Nope

21. Gotten home to find out you’ve lost weight from walking around so DAMN much? I probably do with all the stress.

22. Hugged random people? No

23. Kissed random people? No

24. Stalked someone who was cosplaying your favorite bishi character? No

25. Gotten a g/f or b/f out of a convention?: No

26. Hooked up with someone?: No

27. Tell the truth now… : No

28. Had a temporary convention love that ended by Monday morning?: No

29. Raved until you fell over? : No

30. Flirted with a dealer to get a discount?: Yes… that’s why I have so much free stuff in my room! jk

31. Taken pictures of people?: Yes

32. Had your picture taken?: Yes. Including people taking pictures of me wearing a mario hat with the BSOD shirt!

33. Gone to a photoshoot?: Yes

34. Planned a photoshoot?: No

35. Been stalked?: Yes.

36. Been annoyed by someone?: Yes.

37. Done the annoying?: I hope not.

39. Had such a miserable time you wanted to leave but didn’t?: I-CON 28, and thank god I didn’t. Stayed the entire day into the morning!

40. Gotten in a fight?: Not a physical one, possibly a verbal one but I don’t remember

41. Tried to stage a fight? Yes.

42. Success? Yes.

43. Freaked out when you saw one of your most favorite characters?: Nope

44. Someone freaked out when they saw your cosplay? Yes

45. Hung out with random people that you’d just met? Yes

46. Reunited with a friend? No

47. Broken off with a friend? At a con, no I don’t think so

48. Cried at a convention? Yes.

49. Saved trash from stuff you bought?: No

50. Eaten ramen and drunk ramune like they were air?: I have high blood pressuer so I can’t eat ramen.

51. Slept in the same bed as someone you’ve only known a few hours?: No

52. Made any money? With Vidgle’s Con Goer, I wish

53. Made someone else money? With interviews on Vidgle, maybe.

54. Sick of this survey? It was nice knowing you!

55. Okay…last question. Favorite convention you’ve ever been to?
I would say Otakon 2006.

Hey everyone,

Otakon has gone and went and this year was alright. As I write this, I am getting this Con Goer project together with everyone so we can get it up as soon as possible. And with our air conditioning not working in my office, our computers keep overheating and we are sweating to get this done.

So how was this Otakon, well I had a great time but I felt like I could of done more with my time there. My allergies were bothering me and that caused me to be a bit ill during the weekend. On Sunday, I realized that it was the air conditioner in my hotel room and throughout the hotel I stayed at, the Hilton. If you don’t know about my allergies, I have a disease called eczema which effects my skin. If there is something I am allergic too in the air, such as dust, mold, etc., my skin will get infected quite quickly. And if my skin does get infected, it means that the air is not clean; not only for me but for everyone.

This Otakon was quite relaxing though we were working hard for Con Goer. What upsets me about this year’s Otakon was the panels. I inquired a panel I wanted to do earlier this year and they declined me. And I asked everyone about this panel, and they thought it would of been awesome. So, that panel is going to need to wait for another convention.

Otakon had many interesting guests that I know or don’t know. I was able to have a press conference with Tony Oliver and Travis Willingham. Many thanks to Otakon Press and Otakon Guest Relations for making that possible. The press conferences will be uploaded sometime next week.

There was once again another opening animation from MadHouse. Not as good as last year’s, but it is still hilarious to watch. And as we promise to Otakon, this animation is not available on Vidgle or anywhere else. So if you didn’t see it, WHERE WERE YOU?

This is my second time covering Otakon under press since I started Con Goer back in 2008. So our coverage will be going up in the next two weeks and each episode will be up every other day.

Some people have asked why we haven’t get the videos up all at once. Well here is why, because we are available in iTunes, Microsoft Marketplace, TV, Veoh, Google Video, and other platforms, we upload each video every other day so each third-party site can pick up our videos. Some sites, like iTunes, tends to skip videos if videos are posted too close to each other. And yes, XBox 360 and Wii people, we are working on a module on the Vidgle website that will allow you to watch Vidgle on your XBox360 and Wii. Playstation 3 users will still need to wait.

More Otakon reports to come… remember the coverage of Otakon is available here.

And also, stay tune in August as we launch Vidgle 2.0, a new version of the website that will replace our old watch gallery, which is currently in 1.3. The codes are totally being re-written and everything will be sitting on our podcast module.

It’s finally up! The entire masquerade from Katsucon 15 is now up on Vidgle! We apologize for the delay, its just we have been busy with our other coverage of New York Comic Con and Wicked Faire as well. And we are also working and laying out a new show on Vidgle which requires us to have a set.

Ok, forget about the production, let’s talk about the masquerade for just a minute. This video link is also updated on the podcast feed (check iTunes or your podcast software to see if you already have the video downloaded already). I may suggest you to subscribe to Vidgle because this video is long which requires a lot of bandwidth. In fact, it might be best to have a copy on your computer incase if you want to share it with friends. Individual videos of the masquerade will be posted in the upcoming days as well so you can jump to a certain skit without downloading the entire skit verison (which is this). If you are a fan of HD, the skits were shot in HD but won’t be up until April when we will be launching our HD podcast feed.

Oh yeah, the link… I almost forgot. The video is available here on vidgle.com. Of course if you want a higher quality, subscribe to the Vidgle podcast feed by clicking here or searching Vidgle on iTunes.

And finally, on the next episode of the Con Goer… we will be having a new voice announcer. If you are a big fan of Newgrounds, her voice might sound familier to you. Until then, enjoy watching the Con Goer as we are swinging by with Season 2!

We’re now done uploading all of our content from New York Comic Con 2009! You can take a peak at our coverage on Vidgle by clicking here. Next stop is Katsucon in Arlington, Virginia, which was taken a week after New York Comic Con! Then we will have Jeff Mach’s Wicked Faire coverage ready for you once when Katsu is done!

Not as good as last year, Fred and I talked about our experience at New York Comic Con on the WRAJ Internet Radio podcast. Our video reports will start coming in later this month. Click here to listen.

Vidgle’s New York Anime Festival coverage has begun! To meet expertise, we will be updating our videos twice a week instead of one (from Otakon) in an experiment for next year’s Con Goer coverages. The twentieth episode of the Con Goer is up right now, and that’s the Friday Out and About edition. We will also bring you the World Cosplay Summit panel in its entirely this Sunday!

If you have subscribed to our podcast, you should have it by now, if not, UPDATE IT! You can watch it on the Vidgle website by clicking here, checking out the Vidgle Channel on Veoh, subscribe on iTunes, or check out the podcast page to subscribe! (Yes, a lot of ways to check us out) You can see the complete coverage of NYAF by clicking here.

We will be covering MangaNEXT next weekend, I will be reporting with Louis.

It’s the first night of New York Anime Festival. So far everything seems fine. However, the concern about last year seems to be this year’s as well. The convention ends to early in the evening, 9pm, which is not a late convention compared to other conventions that usually ends at 2 in the morning (such as Otakon and I-CON). Then again, in its New York City, the city that never sleeps!

I did last year recommend Reed Exhibitions, the operator of NYAF and New York Comic Con, to leave the Javits Center and move to another location. The suggestion of location was Time Square, such as the Marriott Marquis. Anime Expo and Big Apple Anime Festival were there and I thought it was at a great location I expressed to them. There are Pros and Cons with the location, such as the Javits is closer to Penn, and Times Square has more hotels and places to eats. I think you would say that to any con, large and small, there is going to be pros and cons.

We were unable to do the first podcast because the Con Goer’s podcast co-host, Fred, was not able to show up Friday. We will be doing a podcast tomorrow right from our hotel room. In February, we are planning to record audio podcasts at the convention floor of New York Comic Con at the Podcast Arena.

Don’t call me foolish, but when it comes to batteries forget about. I can complain for hours about how batteries are so untrustworthy. My 3 year old PowerBook G4 12″ laptop battery is having a charge issue, its a long story of what’s going on but I have a sense of what’s wrong. The old battery that I had up till 2006, which was recalled, was good, it sometimes lasted a good five hours if I had the backlight low and nothing else on (including wireless, Bluetooth, Audio, CD/DVD, etc.). And now, the battery that I had for two years has been acting funny now for the past few months. And as you see on top, thats right, a ten hour charge, but its not actually true. The battery doesn’t want to charge when in use, including sleep mode, which results the kernal reports to the OS that it would take 10 hours (in Mac OS, the charge time length variable can’t be any higher than 10 hours). Then out of no where, the battery thinks its fully charged, and when you use 16% of power from the battery, it will lose its charge. From my knowledge, it seems to be a dead cell. At this rate, I think I’m going to need to order a new battery. Also something that I ran into last night, it seems like I can’t burn CDs with this issue. I’m getting an error that I have never ran into before, which says that there is not enough power to power the laser to write onto the CD.

May be this is a sign for a new laptop?

I am waiting for the next operating system to come next year, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, until I get a new laptop. My current laptop will become a Final Cut Pro and audio production laptop so that podcast episodes on WRAJ and Vidgle can be produced on the field, which will mostly be used for the Con Goer. I was quite surprised of how many audio and video podcasts were using my laptop model to produce the shows. However, most of the podcasts have upgraded this year to a newer Mac laptop model.

Vidgle’s Otakon Coverage Can Be Found at www.vidgle.com/congoer/otakon.

All I have to say is “wow” about our Otakon coverage two weeks ago. As the leader with four reporters, four photographers, producers, cameramen, and a few contributors; we had a total of over 3,000 photos and eight hours of video coverage! Otakon marks as the largest coverage that we’ve done with our “Con Goer” series; Con Goer is the most viewed series on Vidgle. The photos has been posted, and the video podcast episodes are coming in weekly since Otakon.

I would like to thank Jen, Sarah, I-hsiu, Kim, and especially Jon Ko who have taken pictures of Otakon like mad! Most of the pictures are up, but the ones missing are most of the masquerade photos. Those will be up very soon. You can take a look at our pictures here.

With the video podcast coverage, we are getting many hits with our current two episodes. We are planning to launch the Friday episode in a few days! There will also be a Saturday and Sunday Out and About coverage, and a wrap up report in the upcoming weeks. We will have videos of the Phoenix Wright Trail panel and JamProject’s press conference as well. Again, you can watch the videos here.

We did run into a mic issue when we were interviewing with a  Mr. Game and Watch cosplayer (which will be on the next episode). It turns out that one of our reporter microphones died so we got stuck with one and prayed that the second one won’t die for the entire weekend. We normally bring extra microphones but the connector part from the microphone to the camera broke, so a microphone replacement won’t do and a trip to the Best Buy down the street won’t do either since the part is not found in stores.

We will be publishing a review of my Otakon experience in the upcoming week on the Vidgle blog and everyone else will be a writing a response as well.

Our next con coverage for the Con Goer is New York Anime Festival in September. The final con coverage for this year will be MangaNEXT, which will take place on Halloween weekend. We will then have the “Best of 2008″ in December as the reporters and crew sit down at our studios and discuss their favorite cons of this past year.