Article: CamCon 2012 Convention Report

Introduction

Before I give you my thoughts on my time at Camcon, I think it would be helpful to outline my personal investment in this event.

I have lived for the overwhelming majority of my life either in or near Cambridge, and even as an early teenage brat I was frustrated by the lack of anime events that took place in the East of England, and doubly frustrated by the awkwardness and cost of attending events taking place in the rest of the country.

So I was initially thrilled when I heard about Camcon - a combined "anime, sci-fi, comics, manga and gaming event" (as the pamphlet pitched it) taking place in lovely Cambridge. However, a number of worrying items began to cause alarm bells to ring as organisation for the event ramped up - I'll get to these shortly. The night before the event, I confided in a friend (during my third pint of the evening) that I was both keenly hopeful that the event would be successful, but also acutely worried that it would fall flat.

Thankfully the bulk of my fears did not come to pass. While the event was not without fault or issue, I feel it was a successful first outing for Camcon, particularly given that there was previously no recent template for how to run an event of this sort in Cambridge. The prevailing atmosphere at the event was upbeat and excited, and this was certainly aided by the helpfulness of the organisers who clearly wanted to make sure the event succeeded, even if they seemed a little overwhelmed at times.

A lot of the issues the event experienced can be chalked up to teething problems coming to grips with running such an event, naivety on the part of the organisers (this is a first year convention, after all) and pure, random bad luck.

With a little consolidation and hindsight, these things could be easily rectified or minimised in future iterations. In a chat I had later in the day a committee member made clear that they were paying attention and that they were certainly hoping to repeat the event next year. Here's hoping that nothing has happened to change their minds since then!